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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History,
+1660-1783, by A. T. Mahan
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783
+
+
+Author: A. T. Mahan
+
+
+
+Release Date: September 26, 2004 [eBook #13529]
+Most recently updated: November 19, 2007
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INFLUENCE OF SEA POWER UPON
+HISTORY, 1660-1783***
+
+
+E-text prepared by A. E. Warren and revised by Jeannie Howse, Frank van
+Drogen, Paul Hollander, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
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+
+
+ +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+ | Transcriber's Note: |
+ | |
+ | Inconsistent hyphenation, and spelling in the original |
+ | document have been preserved. |
+ | |
+ | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For |
+ | a complete list, please see the end of this document. |
+ | |
+ +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE INFLUENCE OF SEA POWER UPON HISTORY 1660-1783
+
+by
+
+A. T. MAHAN, D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+Author of "The Influence of Sea Power upon the French
+Revolution and Empire, 1793-1812," etc.
+
+Twelfth Edition
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+Boston
+Little, Brown and Company
+
+Copyright, 1890,
+by Captain A. T. Mahan.
+
+Copyright, 1918,
+by Ellen Lyle Mahan.
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The definite object proposed in this work is an examination of the
+general history of Europe and America with particular reference to the
+effect of sea power upon the course of that history. Historians
+generally have been unfamiliar with the conditions of the sea, having
+as to it neither special interest nor special knowledge; and the
+profound determining influence of maritime strength upon great issues
+has consequently been overlooked. This is even more true of particular
+occasions than of the general tendency of sea power. It is easy to say
+in a general way, that the use and control of the sea is and has been
+a great factor in the history of the world; it is more troublesome to
+seek out and show its exact bearing at a particular juncture. Yet,
+unless this be done, the acknowledgment of general importance remains
+vague and unsubstantial; not resting, as it should, upon a collection
+of special instances in which the precise effect has been made clear,
+by an analysis of the conditions at the given moments.
+
+A curious exemplification of this tendency to slight the bearing of
+maritime power upon events may be drawn from two writers of that
+English nation which more than any other has owed its greatness to the
+sea. "Twice," says Arnold in his History of Rome, "Has there been
+witnessed the struggle of the highest individual genius against the
+resources and institutions of a great nation, and in both cases the
+nation was victorious. For seventeen years Hannibal strove against
+Rome, for sixteen years Napoleon strove against England; the efforts
+of the first ended in Zama, those of the second in Waterloo." Sir
+Edward Creasy, quoting this, adds: "One point, however, of the
+similitude between the two wars has scarcely been adequately dwelt on;
+that is, the remarkable parallel between the Roman general who finally
+defeated the great Carthaginian, and the English general who gave the
+last deadly overthrow to the French emperor. Scipio and Wellington
+both held for many years commands of high importance, but distant from
+the main theatres of warfare. The same country was the scene of the
+principal military career of each. It was in Spain that Scipio, like
+Wellington, successively encountered and overthrew nearly all the
+subordinate generals of the enemy before being opposed to the chief
+champion and conqueror himself. Both Scipio and Wellington restored
+their countrymen's confidence in arms when shaken by a series of
+reverses, and each of them closed a long and perilous war by a
+complete and overwhelming defeat of the chosen leader and the chosen
+veterans of the foe."
+
+Neither of these Englishmen mentions the yet more striking
+coincidence, that in both cases the mastery of the sea rested with the
+victor. The Roman control of the water forced Hannibal to that long,
+perilous march through Gaul in which more than half his veteran troops
+wasted away; it enabled the elder Scipio, while sending his army from
+the Rhone on to Spain, to intercept Hannibal's communications, to
+return in person and face the invader at the Trebia. Throughout the
+war the legions passed by water, unmolested and unwearied, between
+Spain, which was Hannibal's base, and Italy, while the issue of the
+decisive battle of the Metaurus, hinging as it did upon the interior
+position of the Roman armies with reference to the forces of Hasdrubal
+and Hannibal, was ultimately due to the fact that the younger brother
+could not bring his succoring reinforcements by sea, but only by the
+land route through Gaul. Hence at the critical moment the two
+Carthaginian armies were separated by the length of Italy, and one was
+destroyed by the combined action of the Roman generals.
+
+On the other hand, naval historians have troubled themselves little
+about the connection between general history and their own particular
+topic, limiting themselves generally to the duty of simple chroniclers
+of naval occurrences. This is less true of the French than of the
+English; the genius and training of the former people leading them to
+more careful inquiry into the causes of particular results and the
+mutual relation of events.
+
+There is not, however, within the knowledge of the author any work
+that professes the particular object here sought; namely, an estimate
+of the effect of sea power upon the course of history and the
+prosperity of nations. As other histories deal with the wars,
+politics, social and economical conditions of countries, touching upon
+maritime matters only incidentally and generally unsympathetically, so
+the present work aims at putting maritime interests in the foreground,
+without divorcing them, however, from their surroundings of cause and
+effect in general history, but seeking to show how they modified the
+latter, and were modified by them.
+
+The period embraced is from 1660, when the sailing-ship era, with its
+distinctive features, had fairly begun, to 1783, the end of the
+American Revolution. While the thread of general history upon which
+the successive maritime events is strung is intentionally slight, the
+effort has been to present a clear as well as accurate outline.
+Writing as a naval officer in full sympathy with his profession, the
+author has not hesitated to digress freely on questions of naval
+policy, strategy, and tactics; but as technical language has been
+avoided, it is hoped that these matters, simply presented, will be
+found of interest to the unprofessional reader.
+
+ A. T. MAHAN
+
+DECEMBER, 1889.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY.
+
+History of Sea Power one of contest between nations, therefore
+ largely military 1
+Permanence of the teachings of history 2
+Unsettled condition of modern naval opinion 2
+Contrasts between historical classes of war-ships 2
+Essential distinction between weather and lee gage 5
+Analogous to other offensive and defensive positions 6
+Consequent effect upon naval policy 6
+Lessons of history apply especially to strategy 7
+Less obviously to tactics, but still applicable 9
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS:
+ The battle of the Nile, A.D. 1798 10
+ Trafalgar, A.D. 1805 11
+ Siege of Gibraltar, A.D. 1779-1782 12
+ Actium, B.C. 31, and Lepanto, A.D. 1571 13
+ Second Punic War, B.C. 218-201 14
+
+Naval strategic combinations surer now than formerly 22
+Wide scope of naval strategy 22
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+DISCUSSION OF THE ELEMENTS OF SEA POWER.
+
+The sea a great common 25
+Advantages of water-carriage over that by land 25
+Navies exist for the protection of commerce 26
+Dependence of commerce upon secure seaports 27
+Development of colonies and colonial posts 28
+Links in the chain of Sea Power: production, shipping, colonies 28
+General conditions affecting Sea Power:
+ I. Geographical position 29
+ II. Physical conformation 35
+ III. Extent of territory 42
+ IV. Number of population 44
+ V. National character 50
+ VI. Character and policy of governments 58
+ England 59
+ Holland 67
+ France 69
+Influence of colonies on Sea Power 82
+The United States:
+ Its weakness in Sea Power 83
+ Its chief interest in internal development 84
+ Danger from blockades 85
+ Dependence of the navy upon the shipping interest 87
+Conclusion of the discussion of the elements of Sea Power 88
+Purpose of the historical narrative 89
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+STATE OF EUROPE IN 1660.--SECOND ANGLO-DUTCH WAR, 1665-1667.--SEA
+BATTLES OF LOWESTOFT AND OF THE FOUR DAYS
+
+Accession of Charles II. and Louis XIV. 90
+Followed shortly by general wars 91
+French policy formulated by Henry IV. and Richelieu 92
+Condition of France in 1660 93
+Condition of Spain 94
+Condition of the Dutch United Provinces 96
+Their commerce and colonies 97
+Character of their government 98
+Parties in the State 99
+Condition of England in 1660 99
+Characteristics of French, English, and Dutch ships 101
+Conditions of other European States 102
+Louis XIV. the leading personality in Europe 103
+His policy 104
+Colbert's administrative acts 105
+Second Anglo-Dutch War, 1665 107
+Battle of Lowestoft, 1665 108
+Fire-ships, compared with torpedo-cruisers 109
+The group formation 112
+The order of battle for sailing-ships 115
+The Four Days' Battle, 1666 117
+Military merits of the opposing fleets 126
+Soldiers commanding fleets, discussion 127
+Ruyter in the Thames, 1667 132
+Peace of Breda, 1667 132
+Military value of commerce-destroying 132
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+WAR OF ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN ALLIANCE AGAINST THE UNITED
+PROVINCES, 1672-1674.--FINALLY, OF FRANCE AGAINST COMBINED
+EUROPE, 1674-1678.--SEA BATTLES OF SOLEBAY, THE TEXEL, AND
+STROMBOLI.
+
+Aggressions of Louis XIV. on Spanish Netherlands 139
+Policy of the United Provinces 139
+Triple alliance between England, Holland, and Sweden 140
+Anger of Louis XIV. 140
+Leibnitz proposes to Louis to seize Egypt 141
+His memorial 142
+Bargaining between Louis XIV. and Charles II. 143
+The two kings declare war against the United Provinces 144
+Military character of this war 144
+Naval strategy of the Dutch 144
+Tactical combinations of De Ruyter 145
+Inefficiency of Dutch naval administration 145
+Battle of Solebay, 1672 146
+Tactical comments 147
+Effect of the battle on the course of the war 148
+Land campaign of the French in Holland 149
+Murder of John De Witt, Grand Pensionary of Holland 150
+Accession to power of William of Orange 150
+Uneasiness among European States 150
+Naval battles off Schoneveldt, 1673 151
+Naval battle of the Texel, 1673 152
+Effect upon the general war 154
+Equivocal action of the French fleet 155
+General ineffectiveness of maritime coalitions 156
+Military character of De Ruyter 157
+Coalition against France 158
+Peace between England and the United Provinces 158
+Sicilian revolt against Spain 159
+Battle of Stromboli, 1676 161
+Illustration of Clerk's naval tactics 163
+De Ruyter killed off Agosta 165
+England becomes hostile to France 166
+Sufferings of the United Provinces 167
+Peace of Nimeguen, 1678 168
+Effects of the war on France and Holland 169
+Notice of Comte d'Estrées 170
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+ENGLISH REVOLUTION.--WAR OF THE LEAGUE OF AUGSBURG,
+1688-1697.--SEA BATTLES OF BEACHY HEAD AND LA HOUGUE.
+
+Aggressive policy of Louis XIV. 173
+State of French, English, and Dutch navies 174
+Accession of James II. 175
+Formation of the League of Augsburg 176
+Louis declares war against the Emperor of Germany 177
+Revolution in England 178
+Louis declares war against the United Provinces 178
+William and Mary crowned 178
+James II. lands in Ireland 179
+Misdirection of French naval forces 180
+William III. lands in Ireland 181
+Naval battle of Beachy Head, 1690 182
+Tourville's military character 184
+Battle of the Boyne, 1690 186
+End of the struggle in Ireland 186
+Naval battle of La Hougue, 1692 189
+Destruction of French ships 190
+Influence of Sea Power in this war 191
+Attack and defence of commerce 193
+Peculiar characteristics of French privateering 195
+Peace of Ryswick, 1697 197
+Exhaustion of France: its causes 198
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION, 1702-1713.--SEA BATTLE OF MALAGA.
+
+Failure of the Spanish line of the House of Austria 201
+King of Spain wills the succession to the Duke of Anjou 202
+Death of the King of Spain 202
+Louis XIV. accepts the bequests 203
+He seizes towns in Spanish Netherlands 203
+Offensive alliance between England, Holland, and Austria 204
+Declarations of war 205
+The allies proclaim Carlos III. King of Spain 206
+Affair of the Vigo galleons 207
+Portugal joins the allies 208
+Character of the naval warfare 209
+Capture of Gibraltar by the English 210
+Naval battle of Malaga, 1704 211
+Decay of the French navy 212
+Progress of the land war 213
+Allies seize Sardinia and Minorca 215
+Disgrace of Marlborough 216
+England offers terms of peace 217
+Peace of Utrecht, 1713 218
+Terms of the peace 219
+Results of the war to the different belligerents 219
+Commanding position of Great Britain 224
+Sea Power dependent upon both commerce and naval strength 225
+Peculiar position of France as regards Sea Power 226
+Depressed condition of France 227
+Commercial prosperity of England 228
+Ineffectiveness of commerce-destroying 229
+Duguay-Trouin's expedition against Rio de Janeiro, 1711 230
+War between Russia and Sweden 231
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE REGENCY IN FRANCE.--ALBERONI IN SPAIN.--POLICIES OF WALPOLE
+AND FLEURI.--WAR OF THE POLISH SUCCESSION.--ENGLISH CONTRABAND
+TRADE IN SPANISH AMERICA.--GREAT BRITAIN DECLARES WAR AGAINST
+SPAIN.--1715-1739.
+
+Death of Queen Anne and Louis XIV. 232
+Accession of George I. 232
+Regency of Philip of Orleans 233
+Administration of Alberoni in Spain 234
+Spaniards invade Sardinia 235
+Alliance of Austria, England, Holland, and France 235
+Spaniards invade Sicily 236
+Destruction of Spanish navy off Cape Passaro, 1718 237
+Failure and dismissal of Alberoni 239
+Spain accepts terms 239
+Great Britain interferes in the Baltic 239
+Death of Philip of Orleans 241
+Administration of Fleuri in France 241
+Growth of French commerce 242
+France in the East Indies 243
+Troubles between England and Spain 244
+English contraband trade in Spanish America 245
+Illegal search of English ships 246
+Walpole's struggles to preserve peace 247
+War of the Polish Succession 247
+Creation of the Bourbon kingdom of the Two Sicilies 248
+Bourbon family compact 248
+France acquires Bar and Lorraine 249
+England declares war against Spain 250
+Morality of the English action toward Spain 250
+Decay of the French navy 252
+Death of Walpole and of Fleuri 253
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+WAR BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN AND SPAIN, 1739.--WAR OF THE AUSTRIAN
+SUCCESSION, 1740.--FRANCE JOINS SPAIN AGAINST GREAT BRITAIN,
+1744.--SEA BATTLES OF MATTHEWS, ANSON, AND HAWKE.--PEACE OF
+AIX-LA-CHAPELLE, 1748.
+
+Characteristics of the wars from 1739 to 1783 254
+Neglect of the navy by French government 254
+Colonial possessions of the French, English, and Spaniards 255
+Dupleix and La Bourdonnais in India 258
+Condition of the contending navies 259
+Expeditions of Vernon and Anson 261
+Outbreak of the War of the Austrian Succession 262
+England allies herself to Austria 262
+Naval affairs in the Mediterranean 263
+Influence of Sea Power on the war 264
+Naval battle off Toulon, 1744 265
+Causes of English failure 267
+Courts-martial following the action 268
+Inefficient action of English navy 269
+Capture of Louisburg by New England colonists, 1745 269
+Causes which concurred to neutralize England's Sea Power 269
+France overruns Belgium and invades Holland 270
+Naval actions of Anson and Hawke 271
+Brilliant defence of Commodore l'Étenduère 272
+Projects of Dupleix and La Bourdonnais in the East Indies 273
+Influence of Sea Power in Indian affairs 275
+La Bourdonnais reduces Madras 276
+Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748 277
+Madras exchanged for Louisburg 277
+Results of the war 278
+Effect of Sea Power on the issue 279
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+SEVEN YEARS' WAR, 1756-1763.--ENGLAND'S OVERWHELMING POWER AND
+CONQUESTS ON THE SEAS, IN NORTH AMERICA, EUROPE, AND EAST AND WEST
+INDIES.--SEA BATTLES: BYNG OFF MINORCA; HAWKE AND CONFLANS; POCOCK
+AND D'ACHÉ IN EAST INDIES.
+
+Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle leaves many questions unsettled 281
+Dupleix pursues his aggressive policy 281
+He is recalled from India 282
+His policy abandoned by the French 282
+Agitation in North America 283
+Braddock's expedition, 1755 284
+Seizure of French ships by the English, while at peace 285
+French expedition against Port Mahon, 1756 285
+Byng sails to relieve the place 286
+Byng's action off Port Mahon, 1756 286
+Characteristics of the French naval policy 287
+Byng returns to Gibraltar 290
+He is relieved, tried by court-martial, and shot 290
+Formal declarations of war by England and France 291
+England's appreciation of the maritime character of the war 291
+France is drawn into a continental struggle 292
+The Seven Years' War (1756-1763) begins 293
+Pitt becomes Prime Minister of England 293
+Operations in North America 293
+Fall of Louisburg, 1758 294
+Fall of Quebec, 1759, and of Montreal, 1760 294
+Influence of Sea Power on the continental war 295
+English plans for the general naval operations 296
+Choiseul becomes Minister in France 297
+He plans an invasion of England 297
+Sailing of the Toulon fleet, 1759 298
+Its disastrous encounter with Boscawen 299
+Consequent frustration of the invasion of England 300
+Project to invade Scotland 300
+Sailing of the Brest fleet 300
+Hawke falls in with it and disperses it, 1759 302
+Accession of Charles III. to Spanish throne 304
+Death of George II. 304
+Clive in India 305
+Battle of Plassey, 1757 306
+Decisive influence of Sea Power upon the issues in India 307
+Naval actions between Pocock and D'Aché, 1758, 1759 307
+Destitute condition of French naval stations in India 309
+The French fleet abandons the struggle 310
+Final fall of the French power in India 310
+Ruined condition of the French navy 311
+Alliance between France and Spain 313
+England declares war against Spain 313
+Rapid conquest of French and Spanish colonies 314
+French and Spaniards invade Portugal 316
+The invasion repelled by England 316
+Severe reverses of the Spaniards in all quarters 316
+Spain sues for peace 317
+Losses of British mercantile shipping 317
+Increase of British commerce 318
+Commanding position of Great Britain 319
+Relations of England and Portugal 320
+Terms of the Treaty of Paris 321
+Opposition to the treaty in Great Britain 322
+Results of the maritime war 323
+Results of the continental war 324
+Influence of Sea Power in countries politically unstable 324
+Interest of the United States in the Central American Isthmus 325
+Effects of the Seven Years' War on the later history of
+ Great Britain 326
+Subsequent acquisitions of Great Britain 327
+British success due to maritime superiority 328
+Mutual dependence of seaports and fleets 329
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+COURSE OF EVENTS FROM THE PEACE OF PARIS TO 1778.--MARITIME WAR
+CONSEQUENT UPON THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.--SEA BATTLE OFF USHANT.
+
+French discontent with the Treaty of Paris 330
+Revival of the French navy 331
+Discipline among French naval officers of the time 332
+Choiseul's foreign policy 333
+Domestic troubles in Great Britain 334
+Controversies with the North American colonies 334
+Genoa cedes Corsica to France 334
+Dispute between England and Spain about the Falkland Islands 335
+Choiseul dismissed 336
+Death of Louis XV. 336
+Naval policy of Louis XVI. 337
+Characteristics of the maritime war of 1778 338
+Instructions of Louis XVI. to the French admirals 339
+Strength of English navy 341
+Characteristics of the military situation in America 341
+The line of the Hudson 342
+Burgoyne's expedition from Canada 343
+Howe carries his army from New York to the Chesapeake 343
+Surrender of Burgoyne, 1777 343
+American privateering 344
+Clandestine support of the Americans by France 345
+Treaty between France and the Americans 346
+Vital importance of the French fleet to the Americans 347
+The military situation in the different quarters of the globe 347
+Breach between France and England 350
+Sailing of the British and French fleets 350
+Battle of Ushant, 1778 351
+Position of a naval commander-in-chief in battle 353
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+MARITIME WAR IN NORTH AMERICA AND WEST INDIES, 1778-1781.--ITS
+INFLUENCE UPON THE COURSE OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.--FLEET
+ACTIONS OFF GRENADA, DOMINICA, AND CHESAPEAKE BAY.
+
+D'Estaing sails from Toulon for Delaware Bay, 1778 359
+British ordered to evacuate Philadelphia 359
+Rapidity of Lord Howe's movements 360
+D'Estaing arrives too late 360
+Follows Howe to New York 360
+Fails to attack there and sails for Newport 361
+Howe follows him there 362
+Both fleets dispersed by a storm 362
+D'Estaing takes his fleet to Boston 363
+Howe's activity foils D'Estaing at all points 363
+D'Estaing sails for the West Indies 365
+The English seize Sta. Lucia 365
+Ineffectual attempts of D'Estaing to dislodge them 366
+D'Estaing captures Grenada 367
+Naval battle of Grenada, 1779; English ships crippled 367
+D'Estaing fails to improve his advantages 370
+Reasons for his neglect 371
+French naval policy 372
+English operations in the Southern States 375
+D'Estaing takes his fleet to Savannah 375
+His fruitless assault on Savannah 376
+D'Estaing returns to France 376
+Fall of Charleston 376
+De Guichen takes command in the West Indies 376
+Rodney arrives to command English fleet 377
+His military character 377
+First action between Rodney and De Guichen, 1780 378
+Breaking the line 380
+Subsequent movements of Rodney and De Guichen 381
+Rodney divides his fleet 381
+Goes in person to New York 381
+De Guichen returns to France 381
+Arrival of French forces in Newport 382
+Rodney returns to the West Indies 382
+War between England and Holland 382
+Disasters to the United States in 1780 382
+De Grasse sails from Brest for the West Indies, 1781 383
+Engagement with English fleet off Martinique 383
+Cornwallis overruns the Southern States 384
+He retires upon Wilmington, N.C., and thence to Virginia 385
+Arnold on the James River 385
+The French fleet leaves Newport to intercept Arnold 385
+Meets the English fleet off the Chesapeake, 1781 386
+French fleet returns to Newport 387
+Cornwallis occupies Yorktown 387
+De Grasse sails from Hayti for the Chesapeake 388
+Action with the British fleet, 1781 389
+Surrender of Cornwallis, 1781 390
+Criticism of the British naval operations 390
+Energy and address shown by De Grasse 392
+Difficulties of Great Britain's position in the war of 1778 392
+The military policy best fitted to cope with them 393
+Position of the French squadron in Newport, R.I., 1780 394
+Great Britain's defensive position and inferior numbers 396
+Consequent necessity for a vigorous initiative 396
+Washington's opinions as to the influence of Sea Power on the
+ American contest 397
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+MARITIME WAR IN EUROPE, 1779-1782.
+
+Objectives of the allied operations in Europe 401
+Spain declares war against England 401
+Allied fleets enter the English Channel, 1779 402
+Abortive issue of the cruise 403
+Rodney sails with supplies for Gibraltar 403
+Defeats the Spanish squadron of Langara and relieves the place 404
+The allies capture a great British convoy 404
+The armed neutrality of the Baltic powers, 1780 405
+England declares war against Holland 406
+Gibraltar is revictualled by Admiral Derby 407
+The allied fleets again in the Channel, 1781 408
+They retire without effecting any damage to England 408
+Destruction of a French convoy for the West Indies 408
+Fall of Port Mahon, 1782 409
+The allied fleets assemble at Algesiras 409
+Grand attack of the allies on Gibraltar, which fails, 1782 410
+Lord Howe succeeds in revictualling Gibraltar 412
+Action between his fleet and that of the allies 412
+Conduct of the war of 1778 by the English government 412
+Influence of Sea Power 416
+Proper use of the naval forces 416
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+EVENTS IN THE EAST INDIES, 1778-1781.--SUFFREN SAILS FROM BREST
+FOR INDIA, 1781.--HIS BRILLIANT NAVAL CAMPAIGN IN THE INDIAN SEAS,
+1782, 1783.
+
+Neglect of India by the French government 419
+England at war with Mysore and with the Mahrattas 420
+Arrival of the French squadron under Comte d'Orves 420
+It effects nothing and returns to the Isle of France 420
+Suffren sails from Brest with five ships-of-the-line, 1781 421
+Attacks an English squadron in the Cape Verde Islands, 1781 422
+Conduct and results of this attack 424
+Distinguishing merits of Suffren as a naval leader 425
+Suffren saves the Cape Colony from the English 427
+He reaches the Isle of France 427
+Succeeds to the chief command of the French fleet 427
+Meets the British squadron under Hughes at Madras 427
+Analysis of the naval strategic situation in India 428
+The first battle between Suffren and Hughes, Feb. 17, 1782 430
+Suffren's views of the naval situation in India 433
+Tactical oversights made by Suffren 434
+Inadequate support received by him from his captains 435
+Suffren goes to Pondicherry, Hughes to Trincomalee 436
+The second battle between Suffren and Hughes, April 12, 1782 437
+Suffren's tactics in the action 439
+Relative injuries received by the opposing fleets 441
+Contemporaneous English criticisms upon Hughes's conduct 442
+Destitute condition of Suffren's fleet 443
+His activity and success in supplying wants 443
+He communicates with Hyder Ali, Sultan of Mysore 443
+Firmness and insight shown by Suffren 445
+His refusal to obey orders from home to leave the Indian Coast 446
+The third battle between Suffren and Hughes, July 6, 1782 447
+Qualities shown by Hughes 449
+Stubborn fighting by the British admiral and captains 449
+Suffren deprives three captains of their commands 449
+Dilatory conduct of Admiral Hughes 450
+Suffren attacks and takes Trincomalee 450
+Strategic importance of this success 451
+Comparative condition of the two fleets in material for repairs 451
+The English government despatches powerful reinforcements 452
+The French court fails to support Suffren 452
+The fourth battle between Suffren and Hughes, Sept. 3, 1782 453
+Mismanagement and injuries of the French 455
+Contrast between the captains in the opposing fleets 456
+Two ships of Suffren's fleet grounded and lost 457
+Arrival of British reinforcements under Admiral Bickerton 458
+Approach of bad-weather season; Hughes goes to Bombay 458
+Military situation of French and English in India 459
+Delays of the French reinforcements under Bussy 460
+Suffren takes his fleet to Achem, in Sumatra 460
+He returns to the Indian coast 461
+Arrival of Bussy 461
+Decline of the French power on shore 461
+The English besiege Bussy in Cuddalore by land and sea 462
+Suffren relieves the place 462
+The fifth battle between Suffren and Hughes, June 20, 1783 463
+Decisive character of Suffren's action 463
+News of the peace received at Madras 463
+Suffren sails for France 464
+His flattering reception everywhere 464
+His distinguishing military qualities 465
+His later career and death 466
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+EVENTS IN THE WEST INDIES AFTER THE SURRENDER OF YORKTOWN.--
+ENCOUNTERS OF DE GRASSE WITH HOOD.--THE SEA BATTLE OF THE
+SAINTS.--1781-1782.
+
+Maritime struggle transferred from the continent to West Indies 468
+De Grasse sails for the islands 469
+French expedition against the island of St. Christopher,
+ January, 1782 469
+Hood attempts to relieve the garrison 470
+Manoeuvres of the two fleets 471
+Action between De Grasse and Hood 472
+Hood seizes the anchorage left by De Grasse 473
+De Grasse attacks Hood at his anchorage 474
+Hood maintains his position 475
+Surrender of the garrison and island 475
+Merits of Hood's action 476
+Criticism upon De Grasse's conduct 477
+Rodney arrives in West Indies from England 479
+Junction of Rodney and Hood at Antigua 479
+De Grasse returns to Martinique 479
+Allied plans to capture Jamaica 479
+Rodney takes his station at Sta. Lucia 480
+The French fleet sails and is pursued by Rodney 480
+Action of April 9, 1782 481
+Criticism upon the action 483
+The chase continued; accidents to French ships 484
+The naval battle of the Saints, April 12, 1782 485
+Rodney breaks the French line 488
+Capture of the French commander-in-chief and five
+ ships-of-the-line 489
+Details of the action 489
+Analysis of the effects of Rodney's manoeuvre 491
+Tactical bearing of improvements in naval equipment 493
+Lessons of this short naval campaign 495
+Rodney's failure to pursue the French fleet 496
+Examination of his reasons and of the actual conditions 497
+Probable effect of this failure upon the conditions of peace 498
+Rodney's opinions upon the battle of April 12 499
+Successes achieved by Rodney during his command 500
+He is recalled by a new ministry 500
+Exaggerated view of the effects of this battle upon the war 500
+Subsequent career of De Grasse 501
+Court-martial ordered upon the officers of the French fleet 502
+Findings of the court 502
+De Grasse appeals against the finding 503
+He is severely rebuked by the king 503
+Deaths of De Grasse, Rodney, and Hood 504
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+CRITICAL DISCUSSION OF THE MARITIME WAR OF 1778.
+
+The war of 1778 purely maritime 505
+Peculiar interest therefore attaching to it 506
+Successive steps in the critical study of a war 507
+Distinction between "object" and "objective" 507
+Parties to the war of 1778 507
+Objects of the different belligerents 508
+Foundations of the British Empire of the seas 510
+Threatened by the revolt of the colonies 510
+The British fleet inferior in numbers to the allies 511
+Choice of objectives 511
+The fleets indicated as the keys of the situation everywhere 513
+Elements essential to an active naval war 514
+The bases of operations in the war of 1778:--
+ In Europe 515
+ On the American continent 515
+ In the West Indies 516
+ In the East Indies 518
+Strategic bearing of the trade-winds and monsoons 518
+The bases abroad generally deficient in resources 519
+Consequent increased importance of the communications 519
+The navies the guardians of the communications 520
+Need of intermediate ports between Europe and India 520
+Inquiry into the disposition of the naval forces 521
+Difficulty of obtaining information at sea 521
+Perplexity as to the destination of a naval expedition 522
+Disadvantages of the defensive 523
+England upon the defensive in 1778 523
+Consequent necessity for wise and vigorous action 524
+The key of the situation 525
+British naval policy in the Napoleonic wars 525
+British naval policy in the Seven Years' War 527
+Difficulties attending this policy 527
+Disposition of the British navy in the war of 1778 528
+Resulting inferiority on many critical occasions 528
+Effect on the navy of the failure to fortify naval bases 529
+The distribution of the British navy exposes it to being
+ out-numbered at many points 531
+The British naval policy in 1778 and in other wars compared 532
+Naval policy of the allies 535
+Divergent counsels of the coalition 536
+"Ulterior objects" 537
+The allied navies systematically assume a defensive attitude 538
+Dangers of this line of action 538
+Glamour of commerce-destroying 539
+The conditions of peace, 1783 540
+
+INDEX 543
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+LIST OF MAPS.
+
+ I. Mediterranean Sea 15
+ II. English Channel and North Sea 107
+III. Indian Peninsula and Ceylon 257
+ IV. North Atlantic Ocean 532
+
+
+PLANS OF NAVAL BATTLES.
+
+_In these plans, when the capital letters A, B, C, and D are used, all
+positions marked by the same capital are simultaneous._
+
+ I. Four Days' Battle, 1666 119
+ II. Four Days' Battle, 1666 124
+ III. Battle of Solebay, 1672 146
+ IV. Battle of the Texel, 1673 153
+ V. Battle of Stromboli, 1676 161
+ V a. Pocock and D'Aché, 1758 161
+ VI. Battle of Beachy Head, 1690 183
+ VI a. Battle of La Hougue, 1692 183
+ VII. Matthews's Action off Toulon, 1744 265
+VII a. Byng's Action off Minorca, 1756 265
+ VIII. Hawke and Conflans, 1759 303
+ IX. Battle of Ushant, 1778 351
+ X. D'Estaing and Byron, 1779 368
+ XI. Rodney and De Guichen, April 17, 1780 378
+ XII. Arbuthnot and Destouches, 1781 386
+ XIII. Suffren at Porto Praya, 1781 423
+ XIV. Suffren and Hughes, February 17, 1782 431
+ XV. Suffren and Hughes, April 12, 1782 438
+ XVI. Suffren and Hughes, July 6, 1782 447
+ XVII. Suffren and Hughes, September 3, 1782 454
+XVIII. Hood and De Grasse, January, 1782 470
+ XIX. Hood and De Grasse, January, 1782 472
+ XX. Rodney and De Grasse, April 9, 1782 482
+ XXI. Rodney's Victory, April 12, 1782 486
+
+
+
+
+INFLUENCE
+
+OF
+
+SEA POWER UPON HISTORY.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY.
+
+
+The history of Sea Power is largely, though by no means solely, a
+narrative of contests between nations, of mutual rivalries, of
+violence frequently culminating in war. The profound influence of sea
+commerce upon the wealth and strength of countries was clearly seen
+long before the true principles which governed its growth and
+prosperity were detected. To secure to one's own people a
+disproportionate share of such benefits, every effort was made to
+exclude others, either by the peaceful legislative methods of monopoly
+or prohibitory regulations, or, when these failed, by direct violence.
+The clash of interests, the angry feelings roused by conflicting
+attempts thus to appropriate the larger share, if not the whole, of
+the advantages of commerce, and of distant unsettled commercial
+regions, led to wars. On the other hand, wars arising from other
+causes have been greatly modified in their conduct and issue by the
+control of the sea. Therefore the history of sea power, while
+embracing in its broad sweep all that tends to make a people great
+upon the sea or by the sea, is largely a military history; and it is
+in this aspect that it will be mainly, though not exclusively,
+regarded in the following pages.
+
+A study of the military history of the past, such as this, is enjoined
+by great military leaders as essential to correct ideas and to the
+skilful conduct of war in the future. Napoleon names among the
+campaigns to be studied by the aspiring soldier, those of Alexander,
+Hannibal, and Cæsar, to whom gunpowder was unknown; and there is a
+substantial agreement among professional writers that, while many of
+the conditions of war vary from age to age with the progress of
+weapons, there are certain teachings in the school of history which
+remain constant, and being, therefore, of universal application, can
+be elevated to the rank of general principles. For the same reason the
+study of the sea history of the past will be found instructive, by its
+illustration of the general principles of maritime war,
+notwithstanding the great changes that have been brought about in
+naval weapons by the scientific advances of the past half century, and
+by the introduction of steam as the motive power.
+
+It is doubly necessary thus to study critically the history and
+experience of naval warfare in the days of sailing-ships, because
+while these will be found to afford lessons of present application and
+value, steam navies have as yet made no history which can be quoted as
+decisive in its teaching. Of the one we have much experimental
+knowledge; of the other, practically none. Hence theories about the
+naval warfare of the future are almost wholly presumptive; and
+although the attempt has been made to give them a more solid basis by
+dwelling upon the resemblance between fleets of steamships and fleets
+of galleys moved by oars, which have a long and well-known history, it
+will be well not to be carried away by this analogy until it has been
+thoroughly tested. The resemblance is indeed far from superficial. The
+feature which the steamer and the galley have in common is the ability
+to move in any direction independent of the wind. Such a power makes a
+radical distinction between those classes of vessels and the
+sailing-ship; for the latter can follow only a limited number of
+courses when the wind blows, and must remain motionless when it fails.
+But while it is wise to observe things that are alike, it is also wise
+to look for things that differ; for when the imagination is carried
+away by the detection of points of resemblance,--one of the most
+pleasing of mental pursuits,--it is apt to be impatient of any
+divergence in its new-found parallels, and so may overlook or refuse
+to recognize such. Thus the galley and the steamship have in common,
+though unequally developed, the important characteristic mentioned,
+but in at least two points they differ; and in an appeal to the
+history of the galley for lessons as to fighting steamships, the
+differences as well as the likeness must be kept steadily in view, or
+false deductions may be made. The motive power of the galley when in
+use necessarily and rapidly declined, because human strength could not
+long maintain such exhausting efforts, and consequently tactical
+movements could continue but for a limited time;[1] and again, during
+the galley period offensive weapons were not only of short range, but
+were almost wholly confined to hand-to-hand encounter. These two
+conditions led almost necessarily to a rush upon each other, not,
+however, without some dexterous attempts to turn or double on the
+enemy, followed by a hand-to-hand _mêlée_. In such a rush and such a
+_mêlée_ a great consensus of respectable, even eminent, naval opinion
+of the present day finds the necessary outcome of modern naval
+weapons,--a kind of Donnybrook Fair, in which, as the history of
+_mêlées_ shows, it will be hard to know friend from foe. Whatever may
+prove to be the worth of this opinion, it cannot claim an historical
+basis in the sole fact that galley and steamship can move at any
+moment directly upon the enemy, and carry a beak upon their prow,
+regardless of the points in which galley and steamship differ. As yet
+this opinion is only a presumption, upon which final judgment may well
+be deferred until the trial of battle has given further light. Until
+that time there is room for the opposite view,--that a _mêlée_
+between numerically equal fleets, in which skill is reduced to a
+minimum, is not the best that can be done with the elaborate and
+mighty weapons of this age. The surer of himself an admiral is, the
+finer the tactical development of his fleet, the better his captains,
+the more reluctant must he necessarily be to enter into a _mêlée_ with
+equal forces, in which all these advantages will be thrown away,
+chance reign supreme, and his fleet be placed on terms of equality
+with an assemblage of ships which have never before acted together.[2]
+History has lessons as to when _mêlées_ are, or are not, in order.
+
+The galley, then, has one striking resemblance to the steamer, but
+differs in other important features which are not so immediately
+apparent and are therefore less accounted of. In the sailing-ship, on
+the contrary, the striking feature is the difference between it and
+the more modern vessel; the points of resemblance, though existing and
+easy to find, are not so obvious, and therefore are less heeded. This
+impression is enhanced by the sense of utter weakness in the
+sailing-ship as compared with the steamer, owing to its dependence
+upon the wind; forgetting that, as the former fought with its equals,
+the tactical lessons are valid. The galley was never reduced to
+impotence by a calm, and hence receives more respect in our day than
+the sailing-ship; yet the latter displaced it and remained supreme
+until the utilization of steam. The powers to injure an enemy from a
+great distance, to manoeuvre for an unlimited length of time without
+wearing out the men, to devote the greater part of the crew to the
+offensive weapons instead of to the oar, are common to the sailing
+vessel and the steamer, and are at least as important, tactically
+considered, as the power of the galley to move in a calm or against
+the wind.
+
+In tracing resemblances there is a tendency not only to overlook
+points of difference, but to exaggerate points of likeness,--to be
+fanciful. It may be so considered to point out that as the
+sailing-ship had guns of long range, with comparatively great
+penetrative power, and carronades, which were of shorter range but
+great smashing effect, so the modern steamer has its batteries of
+long-range guns and of torpedoes, the latter being effective only
+within a limited distance and then injuring by smashing, while the
+gun, as of old, aims at penetration. Yet these are distinctly tactical
+considerations, which must affect the plans of admirals and captains;
+and the analogy is real, not forced. So also both the sailing-ship and
+the steamer contemplate direct contact with an enemy's vessel,--the
+former to carry her by boarding, the latter to sink her by ramming;
+and to both this is the most difficult of their tasks, for to effect
+it the ship must be carried to a single point of the field of action,
+whereas projectile weapons may be used from many points of a wide
+area.
+
+The relative positions of two sailing-ships, or fleets, with reference
+to the direction of the wind involved most important tactical
+questions, and were perhaps the chief care of the seamen of that age.
+To a superficial glance it may appear that since this has become a
+matter of such indifference to the steamer, no analogies to it are to
+be found in present conditions, and the lessons of history in this
+respect are valueless. A more careful consideration of the
+distinguishing characteristics of the lee and the weather "gage,"[3]
+directed to their essential features and disregarding secondary
+details, will show that this is a mistake. The distinguishing feature
+of the weather-gage was that it conferred the power of giving or
+refusing battle at will, which in turn carries the usual advantage of
+an offensive attitude in the choice of the method of attack. This
+advantage was accompanied by certain drawbacks, such as irregularity
+introduced into the order, exposure to raking or enfilading cannonade,
+and the sacrifice of part or all of the artillery-fire of the
+assailant,--all which were incurred in approaching the enemy. The
+ship, or fleet, with the lee-gage could not attack; if it did not wish
+to retreat, its action was confined to the defensive, and to receiving
+battle on the enemy's terms. This disadvantage was compensated by the
+comparative ease of maintaining the order of battle undisturbed, and
+by a sustained artillery-fire to which the enemy for a time was unable
+to reply. Historically, these favorable and unfavorable
+characteristics have their counterpart and analogy in the offensive
+and defensive operations of all ages. The offence undertakes certain
+risks and disadvantages in order to reach and destroy the enemy; the
+defence, so long as it remains such, refuses the risks of advance,
+holds on to a careful, well-ordered position, and avails itself of the
+exposure to which the assailant submits himself. These radical
+differences between the weather and the lee gage were so clearly
+recognized, through the cloud of lesser details accompanying them,
+that the former was ordinarily chosen by the English, because their
+steady policy was to assail and destroy their enemy; whereas the
+French sought the lee-gage, because by so doing they were usually able
+to cripple the enemy as he approached, and thus evade decisive
+encounters and preserve their ships. The French, with rare exceptions,
+subordinated the action of the navy to other military considerations,
+grudged the money spent upon it, and therefore sought to economize
+their fleet by assuming a defensive position and limiting its efforts
+to the repelling of assaults. For this course the lee-gage, skilfully
+used, was admirably adapted so long as an enemy displayed more courage
+than conduct; but when Rodney showed an intention to use the advantage
+of the wind, not merely to attack, but to make a formidable
+concentration on a part of the enemy's line, his wary opponent, De
+Guichen, changed his tactics. In the first of their three actions the
+Frenchman took the lee-gage; but after recognizing Rodney's purpose he
+manoeuvred for the advantage of the wind, not to attack, but to refuse
+action except on his own terms. The power to assume the offensive, or
+to refuse battle, rests no longer with the wind, but with the party
+which has the greater speed; which in a fleet will depend not only
+upon the speed of the individual ships, but also upon their tactical
+uniformity of action. Henceforth the ships which have the greatest
+speed will have the weather-gage.
+
+It is not therefore a vain expectation, as many think, to look for
+useful lessons in the history of sailing-ships as well as in that of
+galleys. Both have their points of resemblance to the modern ship;
+both have also points of essential difference, which make it
+impossible to cite their experiences or modes of action as tactical
+_precedents_ to be followed. But a precedent is different from and
+less valuable than a principle. The former may be originally faulty,
+or may cease to apply through change of circumstances; the latter has
+its root in the essential nature of things, and, however various its
+application as conditions change, remains a standard to which action
+must conform to attain success. War has such principles; their
+existence is detected by the study of the past, which reveals them in
+successes and in failures, the same from age to age. Conditions and
+weapons change; but to cope with the one or successfully wield the
+others, respect must be had to these constant teachings of history in
+the tactics of the battlefield, or in those wider operations of war
+which are comprised under the name of strategy.
+
+It is however in these wider operations, which embrace a whole theatre
+of war, and in a maritime contest may cover a large portion of the
+globe, that the teachings of history have a more evident and permanent
+value, because the conditions remain more permanent. The theatre of
+war may be larger or smaller, its difficulties more or less
+pronounced, the contending armies more or less great, the necessary
+movements more or less easy, but these are simply differences of
+scale, of degree, not of kind. As a wilderness gives place to
+civilization, as means of communication multiply, as roads are opened,
+rivers bridged, food-resources increased, the operations of war become
+easier, more rapid, more extensive; but the principles to which they
+must be conformed remain the same. When the march on foot was replaced
+by carrying troops in coaches, when the latter in turn gave place to
+railroads, the scale of distances was increased, or, if you will, the
+scale of time diminished; but the principles which dictated the point
+at which the army should be concentrated, the direction in which it
+should move, the part of the enemy's position which it should assail,
+the protection of communications, were not altered. So, on the sea,
+the advance from the galley timidly creeping from port to port to the
+sailing-ship launching out boldly to the ends of the earth, and from
+the latter to the steamship of our own time, has increased the scope
+and the rapidity of naval operations without necessarily changing the
+principles which should direct them; and the speech of Hermocrates
+twenty-three hundred years ago, before quoted, contained a correct
+strategic plan, which is as applicable in its principles now as it was
+then. Before hostile armies or fleets are brought into con_tact_ (a
+word which perhaps better than any other indicates the dividing line
+between tactics and strategy), there are a number of questions to be
+decided, covering the whole plan of operations throughout the theatre
+of war. Among these are the proper function of the navy in the war;
+its true objective; the point or points upon which it should be
+concentrated; the establishment of depots of coal and supplies; the
+maintenance of communications between these depots and the home base;
+the military value of commerce-destroying as a decisive or a secondary
+operation of war; the system upon which commerce-destroying can be
+most efficiently conducted, whether by scattered cruisers or by
+holding in force some vital centre through which commercial shipping
+must pass. All these are strategic questions, and upon all these
+history has a great deal to say. There has been of late a valuable
+discussion in English naval circles as to the comparative merits of
+the policies of two great English admirals, Lord Howe and Lord St.
+Vincent, in the disposition of the English navy when at war with
+France. The question is purely strategic, and is not of mere
+historical interest; it is of vital importance now, and the principles
+upon which its decision rests are the same now as then. St. Vincent's
+policy saved England from invasion, and in the hands of Nelson and his
+brother admirals led straight up to Trafalgar.
+
+It is then particularly in the field of naval strategy that the
+teachings of the past have a value which is in no degree lessened.
+They are there useful not only as illustrative of principles, but also
+as precedents, owing to the comparative permanence of the conditions.
+This is less obviously true as to tactics, when the fleets come into
+collision at the point to which strategic considerations have brought
+them. The unresting progress of mankind causes continual change in the
+weapons; and with that must come a continual change in the manner of
+fighting,--in the handling and disposition of troops or ships on the
+battlefield. Hence arises a tendency on the part of many connected
+with maritime matters to think that no advantage is to be gained from
+the study of former experiences; that time so used is wasted. This
+view, though natural, not only leaves wholly out of sight those broad
+strategic considerations which lead nations to put fleets afloat,
+which direct the sphere of their action, and so have modified and will
+continue to modify the history of the world, but is one-sided and
+narrow even as to tactics. The battles of the past succeeded or failed
+according as they were fought in conformity with the principles of
+war; and the seaman who carefully studies the causes of success or
+failure will not only detect and gradually assimilate these
+principles, but will also acquire increased aptitude in applying them
+to the tactical use of the ships and weapons of his own day. He will
+observe also that changes of tactics have not only taken place _after_
+changes in weapons, which necessarily is the case, but that the
+interval between such changes has been unduly long. This doubtless
+arises from the fact that an improvement of weapons is due to the
+energy of one or two men, while changes in tactics have to overcome
+the inertia of a conservative class; but it is a great evil. It can be
+remedied only by a candid recognition of each change, by careful study
+of the powers and limitations of the new ship or weapon, and by a
+consequent adaptation of the method of using it to the qualities it
+possesses, which will constitute its tactics. History shows that it is
+vain to hope that military men generally will be at the pains to do
+this, but that the one who does will go into battle with a great
+advantage,--a lesson in itself of no mean value.
+
+We may therefore accept now the words of a French tactician, Morogues,
+who wrote a century and a quarter ago: "Naval tactics are based upon
+conditions the chief causes of which, namely the arms, may change;
+which in turn causes necessarily a change in the construction of
+ships, in the manner of handling them, and so finally in the
+disposition and handling of fleets." His further statement, that "it
+is not a science founded upon principles absolutely invariable," is
+more open to criticism. It would be more correct to say that the
+application of its principles varies as the weapons change. The
+application of the principles doubtless varies also in strategy from
+time to time, but the variation is far less; and hence the recognition
+of the underlying principle is easier. This statement is of sufficient
+importance to our subject to receive some illustrations from
+historical events.
+
+The battle of the Nile, in 1798, was not only an overwhelming victory
+for the English over the French fleet, but had also the decisive
+effect of destroying the communications between France and Napoleon's
+army in Egypt. In the battle itself the English admiral, Nelson, gave
+a most brilliant example of grand tactics, if that be, as has been
+defined, "the art of making good combinations preliminary to battles
+as well as during their progress." The particular tactical combination
+depended upon a condition now passed away, which was the inability of
+the lee ships of a fleet at anchor to come to the help of the weather
+ones before the latter were destroyed; but the principles which
+underlay the combination, namely, to choose that part of the enemy's
+order which can least easily be helped, and to attack it with superior
+forces, has not passed away. The action of Admiral Jervis at Cape St.
+Vincent, when with fifteen ships he won a victory over twenty-seven,
+was dictated by the same principle, though in this case the enemy was
+not at anchor, but under way. Yet men's minds are so constituted that
+they seem more impressed by the transiency of the conditions than by
+the undying principle which coped with them. In the strategic effect
+of Nelson's victory upon the course of the war, on the contrary, the
+principle involved is not only more easily recognized, but it is at
+once seen to be applicable to our own day. The issue of the enterprise
+in Egypt depended upon keeping open the communications with France.
+The victory of the Nile destroyed the naval force, by which alone the
+communications could be assured, and determined the final failure; and
+it is at once seen, not only that the blow was struck in accordance
+with the principle of striking at the enemy's line of communication,
+but also that the same principle is valid now, and would be equally so
+in the days of the galley as of the sailing-ship or steamer.
+
+Nevertheless, a vague feeling of contempt for the past, supposed to be
+obsolete, combines with natural indolence to blind men even to those
+permanent strategic lessons which lie close to the surface of naval
+history. For instance, how many look upon the battle of Trafalgar, the
+crown of Nelson's glory and the seal of his genius, as other than an
+isolated event of exceptional grandeur? How many ask themselves the
+strategic question, "How did the ships come to be just there?" How
+many realize it to be the final act in a great strategic drama,
+extending over a year or more, in which two of the greatest leaders
+that ever lived, Napoleon and Nelson, were pitted against each other?
+At Trafalgar it was not Villeneuve that failed, but Napoleon that was
+vanquished; not Nelson that won, but England that was saved; and why?
+Because Napoleon's combinations failed, and Nelson's intuitions and
+activity kept the English fleet ever on the track of the enemy, and
+brought it up in time at the decisive moment.[4] The tactics at
+Trafalgar, while open to criticism in detail, were in their main
+features conformable to the principles of war, and their audacity was
+justified as well by the urgency of the case as by the results; but
+the great lessons of efficiency in preparation, of activity and energy
+in execution, and of thought and insight on the part of the English
+leader during the previous months, are strategic lessons, and as such
+they still remain good.
+
+In these two cases events were worked out to their natural and
+decisive end. A third may be cited, in which, as no such definite end
+was reached, an opinion as to what should have been done may be open
+to dispute. In the war of the American Revolution, France and Spain
+became allies against England in 1779. The united fleets thrice
+appeared in the English Channel, once to the number of sixty-six sail
+of the line, driving the English fleet to seek refuge in its ports
+because far inferior in numbers. Now, the great aim of Spain was to
+recover Gibraltar and Jamaica; and to the former end immense efforts
+both by land and sea were put forth by the allies against that nearly
+impregnable fortress. They were fruitless. The question suggested--and
+it is purely one of naval strategy--is this: Would not Gibraltar have
+been more surely recovered by controlling the English Channel,
+attacking the British fleet even in its harbors, and threatening
+England with annihilation of commerce and invasion at home, than by
+far greater efforts directed against a distant and very strong outpost
+of her empire? The English people, from long immunity, were
+particularly sensitive to fears of invasion, and their great
+confidence in their fleets, if rudely shaken, would have left them
+proportionately disheartened. However decided, the question as a point
+of strategy is fair; and it is proposed in another form by a French
+officer of the period, who favored directing the great effort on a
+West India island which might be exchanged against Gibraltar. It is
+not, however, likely that England would have given up the key of the
+Mediterranean for any other foreign possession, though she might have
+yielded it to save her firesides and her capital. Napoleon once said
+that he would reconquer Pondicherry on the banks of the Vistula. Could
+he have controlled the English Channel, as the allied fleet did for a
+moment in 1779, can it be doubted that he would have conquered
+Gibraltar on the shores of England?
+
+To impress more strongly the truth that history both suggests
+strategic study and illustrates the principles of war by the facts
+which it transmits, two more instances will be taken, which are more
+remote in time than the period specially considered in this work. How
+did it happen that, in two great contests between the powers of the
+East and of the West in the Mediterranean, in one of which the empire
+of the known world was at stake, the opposing fleets met on spots so
+near each other as Actium and Lepanto? Was this a mere coincidence, or
+was it due to conditions that recurred, and may recur again?[5] If the
+latter, it is worth while to study out the reason; for if there should
+again arise a great eastern power of the sea like that of Antony or of
+Turkey, the strategic questions would be similar. At present, indeed,
+it seems that the centre of sea power, resting mainly with England and
+France, is overwhelmingly in the West; but should any chance add to
+the control of the Black Sea basin, which Russia now has, the
+possession of the entrance to the Mediterranean, the existing
+strategic conditions affecting sea power would all be modified. Now,
+were the West arrayed against the East, England and France would go at
+once unopposed to the Levant, as they did in 1854, and as England
+alone went in 1878; in case of the change suggested, the East, as
+twice before, would meet the West half-way.
+
+At a very conspicuous and momentous period of the world's history, Sea
+Power had a strategic bearing and weight which has received scant
+recognition. There cannot now be had the full knowledge necessary for
+tracing in detail its influence upon the issue of the second Punic
+War; but the indications which remain are sufficient to warrant the
+assertion that it was a determining factor. An accurate judgment upon
+this point cannot be formed by mastering only such facts of the
+particular contest as have been clearly transmitted, for as usual the
+naval transactions have been slightingly passed over; there is needed
+also familiarity with the details of general naval history in order to
+draw, from slight indications, correct inferences based upon a
+knowledge of what has been possible at periods whose history is well
+known. The control of the sea, however real, does not imply that an
+enemy's single ships or small squadrons cannot steal out of port,
+cannot cross more or less frequented tracts of ocean, make harassing
+descents upon unprotected points of a long coast-line, enter blockaded
+harbors. On the contrary, history has shown that such evasions are
+always possible, to some extent, to the weaker party, however great
+the inequality of naval strength. It is not therefore inconsistent
+with the general control of the sea, or of a decisive part of it, by
+the Roman fleets, that the Carthaginian admiral Bomilcar in the fourth
+year of the war, after the stunning defeat of Cannæ, landed four
+thousand men and a body of elephants in south Italy; nor that in the
+seventh year, flying from the Roman fleet off Syracuse, he again
+appeared at Tarentum, then in Hannibal's hands; nor that Hannibal sent
+despatch vessels to Carthage; nor even that, at last, he withdrew in
+safety to Africa with his wasted army. None of these things prove that
+the government in Carthage could, if it wished, have sent Hannibal the
+constant support which, as a matter of fact, he did not receive; but
+they do tend to create a natural impression that such help could have
+been given. Therefore the statement, that the Roman preponderance at
+sea had a decisive effect upon the course of the war, needs to be made
+good by an examination of ascertained facts. Thus the kind and degree
+of its influence may be fairly estimated.
+
+ [Illustration: MEDITERRANEAN SEA]
+
+At the beginning of the war, Mommsen says, Rome controlled the seas.
+To whatever cause, or combination of causes, it be attributed, this
+essentially non-maritime state had in the first Punic War established
+over its sea-faring rival a naval supremacy, which still lasted. In
+the second war there was no naval battle of importance,--a
+circumstance which in itself, and still more in connection with other
+well-ascertained facts, indicates a superiority analogous to that
+which at other epochs has been marked by the same feature.
+
+As Hannibal left no memoirs, the motives are unknown which determined
+him to the perilous and almost ruinous march through Gaul and across
+the Alps. It is certain, however, that his fleet on the coast of Spain
+was not strong enough to contend with that of Rome. Had it been, he
+might still have followed the road he actually did, for reasons that
+weighed with him; but had he gone by the sea, he would not have lost
+thirty-three thousand out of the sixty thousand veteran soldiers with
+whom he started.
+
+While Hannibal was making this dangerous march, the Romans were
+sending to Spain, under the two elder Scipios, one part of their
+fleet, carrying a consular army. This made the voyage without serious
+loss, and the army established itself successfully north of the Ebro,
+on Hannibal's line of communications. At the same time another
+squadron, with an army commanded by the other consul, was sent to
+Sicily. The two together numbered two hundred and twenty ships. On its
+station each met and defeated a Carthaginian squadron with an ease
+which may be inferred from the slight mention made of the actions, and
+which indicates the actual superiority of the Roman fleet.
+
+After the second year the war assumed the following shape: Hannibal,
+having entered Italy by the north, after a series of successes had
+passed southward around Rome and fixed himself in southern Italy,
+living off the country,--a condition which tended to alienate the
+people, and was especially precarious when in contact with the mighty
+political and military system of control which Rome had there
+established. It was therefore from the first urgently necessary that
+he should establish, between himself and some reliable base, that
+stream of supplies and reinforcements which in terms of modern war is
+called "communications." There were three friendly regions which
+might, each or all, serve as such a base,--Carthage itself, Macedonia,
+and Spain. With the first two, communication could be had only by sea.
+From Spain, where his firmest support was found, he could be reached
+by both land and sea, unless an enemy barred the passage; but the sea
+route was the shorter and easier.
+
+In the first years of the war, Rome, by her sea power, controlled
+absolutely the basin between Italy, Sicily, and Spain, known as the
+Tyrrhenian and Sardinian Seas. The sea-coast from the Ebro to the
+Tiber was mostly friendly to her. In the fourth year, after the battle
+of Cannæ, Syracuse forsook the Roman alliance, the revolt spread
+through Sicily, and Macedonia also entered into an offensive league
+with Hannibal. These changes extended the necessary operations of the
+Roman fleet, and taxed its strength. What disposition was made of it,
+and how did it thereafter influence the struggle?
+
+The indications are clear that Rome at no time ceased to control the
+Tyrrhenian Sea, for her squadrons passed unmolested from Italy to
+Spain. On the Spanish coast also she had full sway till the younger
+Scipio saw fit to lay up the fleet. In the Adriatic, a squadron and
+naval station were established at Brindisi to check Macedonia, which
+performed their task so well that not a soldier of the phalanxes ever
+set foot in Italy. "The want of a war fleet," says Mommsen, "paralyzed
+Philip in all his movements." Here the effect of Sea Power is not even
+a matter of inference.
+
+In Sicily, the struggle centred about Syracuse. The fleets of Carthage
+and Rome met there, but the superiority evidently lay with the latter;
+for though the Carthaginians at times succeeded in throwing supplies
+into the city, they avoided meeting the Roman fleet in battle. With
+Lilybæum, Palermo, and Messina in its hands, the latter was well based
+in the north coast of the island. Access by the south was left open
+to the Carthaginians, and they were thus able to maintain the
+insurrection.
+
+Putting these facts together, it is a reasonable inference, and
+supported by the whole tenor of the history, that the Roman sea power
+controlled the sea north of a line drawn from Tarragona in Spain to
+Lilybæum (the modern Marsala), at the west end of Sicily, thence round
+by the north side of the island through the straits of Messina down to
+Syracuse, and from there to Brindisi in the Adriatic. This control
+lasted, unshaken, throughout the war. It did not exclude maritime
+raids, large or small, such as have been spoken of; but it did forbid
+the sustained and secure communications of which Hannibal was in
+deadly need.
+
+On the other hand, it seems equally plain that for the first ten years
+of the war the Roman fleet was not strong enough for sustained
+operations in the sea between Sicily and Carthage, nor indeed much to
+the south of the line indicated. When Hannibal started, he assigned
+such ships as he had to maintaining the communications between Spain
+and Africa, which the Romans did not then attempt to disturb.
+
+The Roman sea power, therefore, threw Macedonia wholly out of the war.
+It did not keep Carthage from maintaining a useful and most harassing
+diversion in Sicily; but it did prevent her sending troops, when they
+would have been most useful, to her great general in Italy. How was it
+as to Spain?
+
+Spain was the region upon which the father of Hannibal and Hannibal
+himself had based their intended invasion of Italy. For eighteen years
+before this began they had occupied the country, extending and
+consolidating their power, both political and military, with rare
+sagacity. They had raised, and trained in local wars, a large and now
+veteran army. Upon his own departure, Hannibal intrusted the
+government to his younger brother, Hasdrubal, who preserved toward him
+to the end a loyalty and devotion which he had no reason to hope from
+the faction-cursed mother-city in Africa.
+
+At the time of his starting, the Carthaginian power in Spain was
+secured from Cadiz to the river Ebro. The region between this river
+and the Pyrenees was inhabited by tribes friendly to the Romans, but
+unable, in the absence of the latter, to oppose a successful
+resistance to Hannibal. He put them down, leaving eleven thousand
+soldiers under Hanno to keep military possession of the country, lest
+the Romans should establish themselves there, and thus disturb his
+communications with his base.
+
+Cnæus Scipio, however, arrived on the spot by sea the same year with
+twenty thousand men, defeated Hanno, and occupied both the coast and
+interior north of the Ebro. The Romans thus held ground by which they
+entirely closed the road between Hannibal and reinforcements from
+Hasdrubal, and whence they could attack the Carthaginian power in
+Spain; while their own communications with Italy, being by water, were
+secured by their naval supremacy. They made a naval base at Tarragona,
+confronting that of Hasdrubal at Cartagena, and then invaded the
+Carthaginian dominions. The war in Spain went on under the elder
+Scipios, seemingly a side issue, with varying fortune for seven years;
+at the end of which time Hasdrubal inflicted upon them a crushing
+defeat, the two brothers were killed, and the Carthaginians nearly
+succeeded in breaking through to the Pyrenees with reinforcements for
+Hannibal. The attempt, however, was checked for the moment; and before
+it could be renewed, the fall of Capua released twelve thousand
+veteran Romans, who were sent to Spain under Claudius Nero, a man of
+exceptional ability, to whom was due later the most decisive military
+movement made by any Roman general during the Second Punic War. This
+seasonable reinforcement, which again assured the shaken grip on
+Hasdrubal's line of march, came by sea,--a way which, though most
+rapid and easy, was closed to the Carthaginians by the Roman navy.
+
+Two years later the younger Publius Scipio, celebrated afterward as
+Africanus, received the command in Spain, and captured Cartagena by a
+combined military and naval attack; after which he took the most
+extraordinary step of breaking up his fleet and transferring the
+seamen to the army. Not contented to act merely as the "containing"[6]
+force against Hasdrubal by closing the passes of the Pyrenees, Scipio
+pushed forward into southern Spain, and fought a severe but indecisive
+battle on the Guadalquivir; after which Hasdrubal slipped away from
+him, hurried north, crossed the Pyrenees at their extreme west, and
+pressed on to Italy, where Hannibal's position was daily growing
+weaker, the natural waste of his army not being replaced.
+
+The war had lasted ten years, when Hasdrubal, having met little loss
+on the way, entered Italy at the north. The troops he brought, could
+they be safely united with those under the command of the unrivalled
+Hannibal, might give a decisive turn to the war, for Rome herself was
+nearly exhausted; the iron links which bound her own colonies and the
+allied States to her were strained to the utmost, and some had already
+snapped. But the military position of the two brothers was also
+perilous in the extreme. One being at the river Metaurus, the other in
+Apulia, two hundred miles apart, each was confronted by a superior
+enemy, and both these Roman armies were between their separated
+opponents. This false situation, as well as the long delay of
+Hasdrubal's coming, was due to the Roman control of the sea, which
+throughout the war limited the mutual support of the Carthaginian
+brothers to the route through Gaul. At the very time that Hasdrubal
+was making his long and dangerous circuit by land, Scipio had sent
+eleven thousand men from Spain by sea to reinforce the army opposed to
+him. The upshot was that messengers from Hasdrubal to Hannibal, having
+to pass over so wide a belt of hostile country, fell into the hands of
+Claudius Nero, commanding the southern Roman army, who thus learned
+the route which Hasdrubal intended to take. Nero correctly appreciated
+the situation, and, escaping the vigilance of Hannibal, made a rapid
+march with eight thousand of his best troops to join the forces in the
+north. The junction being effected, the two consuls fell upon
+Hasdrubal in overwhelming numbers and destroyed his army; the
+Carthaginian leader himself falling in the battle. Hannibal's first
+news of the disaster was by the head of his brother being thrown into
+his camp. He is said to have exclaimed that Rome would now be mistress
+of the world; and the battle of Metaurus is generally accepted as
+decisive of the struggle between the two States.
+
+The military situation which finally resulted in the battle of the
+Metaurus and the triumph of Rome may be summed up as follows: To
+overthrow Rome it was necessary to attack her in Italy at the heart of
+her power, and shatter the strongly linked confederacy of which she
+was the head. This was the objective. To reach it, the Carthaginians
+needed a solid base of operations and a secure line of communications.
+The former was established in Spain by the genius of the great Barca
+family; the latter was never achieved. There were two lines
+possible,--the one direct by sea, the other circuitous through Gaul.
+The first was blocked by the Roman sea power, the second imperilled
+and finally intercepted through the occupation of northern Spain by
+the Roman army. This occupation was made possible through the control
+of the sea, which the Carthaginians never endangered. With respect to
+Hannibal and his base, therefore, Rome occupied two central positions,
+Rome itself and northern Spain, joined by an easy interior line of
+communications, the sea; by which mutual support was continually
+given.
+
+Had the Mediterranean been a level desert of land, in which the Romans
+held strong mountain ranges in Corsica and Sardinia, fortified posts
+at Tarragona, Lilybæum, and Messina, the Italian coast-line nearly to
+Genoa, and allied fortresses in Marseilles and other points; had they
+also possessed an armed force capable by its character of traversing
+that desert at will, but in which their opponents were very inferior
+and therefore compelled to a great circuit in order to concentrate
+their troops, the military situation would have been at once
+recognized, and no words would have been too strong to express the
+value and effect of that peculiar force. It would have been perceived,
+also, that the enemy's force of the same kind might, however inferior
+in strength, make an inroad, or raid, upon the territory thus held,
+might burn a village or waste a few miles of borderland, might even
+cut off a convoy at times, without, in a military sense, endangering
+the communications. Such predatory operations have been carried on in
+all ages by the weaker maritime belligerent, but they by no means
+warrant the inference, irreconcilable with the known facts, "that
+neither Rome nor Carthage could be said to have undisputed mastery of
+the sea," because "Roman fleets sometimes visited the coasts of
+Africa, and Carthaginian fleets in the same way appeared off the coast
+of Italy." In the case under consideration, the navy played the part
+of such a force upon the supposed desert; but as it acts on an element
+strange to most writers, as its members have been from time immemorial
+a strange race apart, without prophets of their own, neither
+themselves nor their calling understood, its immense determining
+influence upon the history of that era, and consequently upon the
+history of the world, has been overlooked. If the preceding argument
+is sound, it is as defective to omit sea power from the list of
+principal factors in the result, as it would be absurd to claim for it
+an exclusive influence.
+
+Instances such as have been cited, drawn from widely separated periods
+of time, both before and after that specially treated in this work,
+serve to illustrate the intrinsic interest of the subject, and the
+character of the lessons which history has to teach. As before
+observed, these come more often under the head of strategy than of
+tactics; they bear rather upon the conduct of campaigns than of
+battles, and hence are fraught with more lasting value. To quote a
+great authority in this connection, Jomini says: "Happening to be in
+Paris near the end of 1851, a distinguished person did me the honor to
+ask my opinion as to whether recent improvements in firearms would
+cause any great modifications in the way of making war. I replied that
+they would probably have an influence upon the details of tactics, but
+that in great strategic operations and the grand combinations of
+battles, victory would, now as ever, result from the application of
+the principles which had led to the success of great generals in all
+ages; of Alexander and Cæsar, as well as of Frederick and Napoleon."
+This study has become more than ever important now to navies, because
+of the great and steady power of movement possessed by the modern
+steamer. The best-planned schemes might fail through stress of weather
+in the days of the galley and the sailing-ship; but this difficulty
+has almost disappeared. The principles which should direct great naval
+combinations have been applicable to all ages, and are deducible from
+history; but the power to carry them out with little regard to the
+weather is a recent gain.
+
+The definitions usually given of the word "strategy" confine it to
+military combinations embracing one or more fields of operations,
+either wholly distinct or mutually dependent, but always regarded as
+actual or immediate scenes of war. However this may be on shore, a
+recent French author is quite right in pointing out that such a
+definition is too narrow for naval strategy. "This," he says, "differs
+from military strategy in that it is as necessary in peace as in war.
+Indeed, in peace it may gain its most decisive victories by occupying
+in a country, either by purchase or treaty, excellent positions which
+would perhaps hardly be got by war. It learns to profit by all
+opportunities of settling on some chosen point of a coast, and to
+render definitive an occupation which at first was only transient." A
+generation that has seen England within ten years occupy successively
+Cyprus and Egypt, under terms and conditions on their face transient,
+but which have not yet led to the abandonment of the positions taken,
+can readily agree with this remark; which indeed receives constant
+illustration from the quiet persistency with which all the great sea
+powers are seeking position after position, less noted and less
+noteworthy than Cyprus and Egypt, in the different seas to which their
+people and their ships penetrate. "Naval strategy has indeed for its
+end to found, support, and increase, as well in peace as in war, the
+sea power of a country;" and therefore its study has an interest and
+value for all citizens of a free country, but especially for those who
+are charged with its foreign and military relations.
+
+The general conditions that either are essential to or powerfully
+affect the greatness of a nation upon the sea will now be examined;
+after which a more particular consideration of the various maritime
+nations of Europe at the middle of the seventeenth century, where the
+historical survey begins, will serve at once to illustrate and give
+precision to the conclusions upon the general subject.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ NOTE.--The brilliancy of Nelson's fame, dimming as it does that
+ of all his contemporaries, and the implicit trust felt by
+ England in him as the one man able to save her from the schemes
+ of Napoleon, should not of course obscure the fact that only one
+ portion of the field was, or could be, occupied by him.
+ Napoleon's aim, in the campaign which ended at Trafalgar, was to
+ unite in the West Indies the French fleets of Brest, Toulon, and
+ Rochefort, together with a strong body of Spanish ships, thus
+ forming an overwhelming force which he intended should return
+ together to the English Channel and cover the crossing of the
+ French army. He naturally expected that, with England's
+ interests scattered all over the world, confusion and
+ distraction would arise from ignorance of the destination of the
+ French squadrons, and the English navy be drawn away from his
+ objective point. The portion of the field committed to Nelson
+ was the Mediterranean, where he watched the great arsenal of
+ Toulon and the highways alike to the East and to the Atlantic.
+ This was inferior in consequence to no other, and assumed
+ additional importance in the eyes of Nelson from his conviction
+ that the former attempts on Egypt would be renewed. Owing to
+ this persuasion he took at first a false step, which delayed his
+ pursuit of the Toulon fleet when it sailed under the command of
+ Villeneuve; and the latter was further favored by a long
+ continuance of fair winds, while the English had head winds. But
+ while all this is true, while the failure of Napoleon's
+ combinations must be attributed to the tenacious grip of the
+ English blockade off Brest, _as well as_ to Nelson's energetic
+ pursuit of the Toulon fleet when it escaped to the West Indies
+ and again on its hasty return to Europe, the latter is fairly
+ entitled to the eminent distinction which history has accorded
+ it, and which is asserted in the text. Nelson did not, indeed,
+ fathom the intentions of Napoleon. This may have been owing, as
+ some have said, to lack of insight; but it may be more simply
+ laid to the usual disadvantage under which the defence lies
+ before the blow has fallen, of ignorance as to the point
+ threatened by the offence. It is insight enough to fasten on the
+ key of a situation; and this Nelson rightly saw was the fleet,
+ not the station. Consequently, his action has afforded a
+ striking instance of how tenacity of purpose and untiring energy
+ in execution can repair a first mistake and baffle deeply laid
+ plans. His Mediterranean command embraced many duties and cares;
+ but amid and dominating them all, he saw clearly the Toulon
+ fleet as the controlling factor there, and an important factor
+ in any naval combination of the Emperor. Hence his attention was
+ unwaveringly fixed upon it; so much so that he called it "his
+ fleet," a phrase which has somewhat vexed the sensibilities of
+ French critics. This simple and accurate view of the military
+ situation strengthened him in taking the fearless resolution and
+ bearing the immense responsibility of abandoning his station in
+ order to follow "his fleet." Determined thus on a pursuit the
+ undeniable wisdom of which should not obscure the greatness of
+ mind that undertook it, he followed so vigorously as to reach
+ Cadiz on his return a week before Villeneuve entered Ferrol,
+ despite unavoidable delays arising from false information and
+ uncertainty as to the enemy's movements. The same untiring ardor
+ enabled him to bring up his own ships from Cadiz to Brest in
+ time to make the fleet there superior to Villeneuve's, had the
+ latter persisted in his attempt to reach the neighborhood. The
+ English, very inferior in aggregate number of vessels to the
+ allied fleets, were by this seasonable reinforcement of eight
+ veteran ships put into the best possible position strategically,
+ as will be pointed out in dealing with similar conditions in the
+ war of the American Revolution. Their forces were united in one
+ great fleet in the Bay of Biscay, interposed between the two
+ divisions of the enemy in Brest and Ferrol, superior in number
+ to either singly, and with a strong probability of being able to
+ deal with one before the other could come up. This was due to
+ able action all round on the part of the English authorities;
+ but above all other factors in the result stands Nelson's
+ single-minded pursuit of "his fleet."
+
+ This interesting series of strategic movements ended on the 14th
+ of August, when Villeneuve, in despair of reaching Brest, headed
+ for Cadiz, where he anchored on the 20th. As soon as Napoleon
+ heard of this, after an outburst of rage against the admiral, he
+ at once dictated the series of movements which resulted in Ulm
+ and Austerlitz, abandoning his purposes against England. The
+ battle of Trafalgar, fought October 21, was therefore separated
+ by a space of two months from the extensive movements of which
+ it was nevertheless the outcome. Isolated from them in point of
+ time, it was none the less the seal of Nelson's genius, affixed
+ later to the record he had made in the near past. With equal
+ truth it is said that England was saved at Trafalgar, though the
+ Emperor had then given up his intended invasion; the destruction
+ there emphasized and sealed the strategic triumph which had
+ noiselessly foiled Napoleon's plans.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Thus Hermocrates of Syracuse, advocating the policy of thwarting
+the Athenian expedition against his city (B.C. 413) by going boldly to
+meet it, and keeping on the flank of its line of advance, said: "As
+their advance must be slow, we shall have a thousand opportunities to
+attack them; but if they clear their ships for action and in a body
+bear down expeditiously upon us, they must ply hard at their oars, and
+_when spent with toil_ we can fall upon them."
+
+[2] The writer must guard himself from appearing to advocate elaborate
+tactical movements issuing in barren demonstrations. He believes that
+a fleet seeking a decisive result must close with its enemy, but not
+until some advantage has been obtained for the collision, which will
+usually be gained by manoeuvring, and will fall to the best drilled
+and managed fleet. In truth, barren results have as often followed
+upon headlong, close encounters as upon the most timid tactical
+trifling.
+
+[3] A ship was said to have the weather-gage, or "the advantage of the
+wind," or "to be to windward," when the wind allowed her to steer for
+her opponent, and did not let the latter head straight for her. The
+extreme case was when the wind blew direct from one to the other; but
+there was a large space on either side of this line to which the term
+"weather-gage" applied. If the lee ship be taken as the centre of a
+circle, there were nearly three eighths of its area in which the other
+might be and still keep the advantage of the wind to a greater or less
+degree. Lee is the opposite of weather.
+
+[4] See note at end of Introductory Chapter, page 23.
+
+[5] The battle of Navarino (1827) between Turkey and the Western
+Powers was fought in this neighborhood.
+
+[6] A "containing" force is one to which, in a military combination,
+is assigned the duty of stopping, or delaying the advance of a portion
+of the enemy, while the main effort of the army or armies is being
+exerted in a different quarter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+DISCUSSION OF THE ELEMENTS OF SEA POWER.
+
+
+The first and most obvious light in which the sea presents itself from
+the political and social point of view is that of a great highway; or
+better, perhaps, of a wide common, over which men may pass in all
+directions, but on which some well-worn paths show that controlling
+reasons have led them to choose certain lines of travel rather than
+others. These lines of travel are called trade routes; and the reasons
+which have determined them are to be sought in the history of the
+world.
+
+Notwithstanding all the familiar and unfamiliar dangers of the sea,
+both travel and traffic by water have always been easier and cheaper
+than by land. The commercial greatness of Holland was due not only to
+her shipping at sea, but also to the numerous tranquil water-ways
+which gave such cheap and easy access to her own interior and to that
+of Germany. This advantage of carriage by water over that by land was
+yet more marked in a period when roads were few and very bad, wars
+frequent and society unsettled, as was the case two hundred years ago.
+Sea traffic then went in peril of robbers, but was nevertheless safer
+and quicker than that by land. A Dutch writer of that time, estimating
+the chances of his country in a war with England, notices among other
+things that the water-ways of England failed to penetrate the country
+sufficiently; therefore, the roads being bad, goods from one part of
+the kingdom to the other must go by sea, and be exposed to capture by
+the way. As regards purely internal trade, this danger has generally
+disappeared at the present day. In most civilized countries, now, the
+destruction or disappearance of the coasting trade would only be an
+inconvenience, although water transit is still the cheaper.
+Nevertheless, as late as the wars of the French Republic and the First
+Empire, those who are familiar with the history of the period, and the
+light naval literature that has grown up around it, know how constant
+is the mention of convoys stealing from point to point along the
+French coast, although the sea swarmed with English cruisers and there
+were good inland roads.
+
+Under modern conditions, however, home trade is but a part of the
+business of a country bordering on the sea. Foreign necessaries or
+luxuries must be brought to its ports, either in its own or in foreign
+ships, which will return, bearing in exchange the products of the
+country, whether they be the fruits of the earth or the works of men's
+hands; and it is the wish of every nation that this shipping business
+should be done by its own vessels. The ships that thus sail to and fro
+must have secure ports to which to return, and must, as far as
+possible, be followed by the protection of their country throughout
+the voyage.
+
+This protection in time of war must be extended by armed shipping. The
+necessity of a navy, in the restricted sense of the word, springs,
+therefore, from the existence of a peaceful shipping, and disappears
+with it, except in the case of a nation which has aggressive
+tendencies, and keeps up a navy merely as a branch of the military
+establishment. As the United States has at present no aggressive
+purposes, and as its merchant service has disappeared, the dwindling
+of the armed fleet and general lack of interest in it are strictly
+logical consequences. When for any reason sea trade is again found to
+pay, a large enough shipping interest will reappear to compel the
+revival of the war fleet. It is possible that when a canal route
+through the Central-American Isthmus is seen to be a near certainty,
+the aggressive impulse may be strong enough to lead to the same
+result. This is doubtful, however, because a peaceful, gain-loving
+nation is not far-sighted, and far-sightedness is needed for adequate
+military preparation, especially in these days.
+
+As a nation, with its unarmed and armed shipping, launches forth from
+its own shores, the need is soon felt of points upon which the ships
+can rely for peaceful trading, for refuge and supplies. In the present
+day friendly, though foreign, ports are to be found all over the
+world; and their shelter is enough while peace prevails. It was not
+always so, nor does peace always endure, though the United States have
+been favored by so long a continuance of it. In earlier times the
+merchant seaman, seeking for trade in new and unexplored regions, made
+his gains at risk of life and liberty from suspicious or hostile
+nations, and was under great delays in collecting a full and
+profitable freight. He therefore intuitively sought at the far end of
+his trade route one or more stations, to be given to him by force or
+favor, where he could fix himself or his agents in reasonable
+security, where his ships could lie in safety, and where the
+merchantable products of the land could be continually collecting,
+awaiting the arrival of the home fleet, which should carry them to the
+mother-country. As there was immense gain, as well as much risk, in
+these early voyages, such establishments naturally multiplied and grew
+until they became colonies; whose ultimate development and success
+depended upon the genius and policy of the nation from which they
+sprang, and form a very great part of the history, and particularly of
+the sea history, of the world. All colonies had not the simple and
+natural birth and growth above described. Many were more formal, and
+purely political, in their conception and founding, the act of the
+rulers of the people rather than of private individuals; but the
+trading-station with its after expansion, the work simply of the
+adventurer seeking gain, was in its reasons and essence the same as
+the elaborately organized and chartered colony. In both cases the
+mother-country had won a foothold in a foreign land, seeking a new
+outlet for what it had to sell, a new sphere for its shipping, more
+employment for its people, more comfort and wealth for itself.
+
+The needs of commerce, however, were not all provided for when safety
+had been secured at the far end of the road. The voyages were long
+and dangerous, the seas often beset with enemies. In the most active
+days of colonizing there prevailed on the sea a lawlessness the very
+memory of which is now almost lost, and the days of settled peace
+between maritime nations were few and far between. Thus arose the
+demand for stations along the road, like the Cape of Good Hope, St.
+Helena, and Mauritius, not primarily for trade, but for defence and
+war; the demand for the possession of posts like Gibraltar, Malta,
+Louisburg, at the entrance of the Gulf of St. Lawrence,--posts whose
+value was chiefly strategic, though not necessarily wholly so.
+Colonies and colonial posts were sometimes commercial, sometimes
+military in their character; and it was exceptional that the same
+position was equally important in both points of view, as New York
+was.
+
+In these three things--production, with the necessity of exchanging
+products, shipping, whereby the exchange is carried on, and colonies,
+which facilitate and enlarge the operations of shipping and tend to
+protect it by multiplying points of safety--is to be found the key to
+much of the history, as well as of the policy, of nations bordering
+upon the sea. The policy has varied both with the spirit of the age
+and with the character and clear-sightedness of the rulers; but the
+history of the seaboard nations has been less determined by the
+shrewdness and foresight of governments than by conditions of
+position, extent, configuration, number and character of their
+people,--by what are called, in a word, natural conditions. It must
+however be admitted, and will be seen, that the wise or unwise action
+of individual men has at certain periods had a great modifying
+influence upon the growth of sea power in the broad sense, which
+includes not only the military strength afloat, that rules the sea or
+any part of it by force of arms, but also the peaceful commerce and
+shipping from which alone a military fleet naturally and healthfully
+springs, and on which it securely rests.
+
+The principal conditions affecting the sea power of nations may be
+enumerated as follows: I. Geographical Position. II. Physical
+Conformation, including, as connected therewith, natural productions
+and climate. III. Extent of Territory. IV. Number of Population. V.
+Character of the People. VI. Character of the Government, including
+therein the national institutions.
+
+
+I. _Geographical Position._--It may be pointed out, in the first
+place, that if a nation be so situated that it is neither forced to
+defend itself by land nor induced to seek extension of its territory
+by way of the land, it has, by the very unity of its aim directed upon
+the sea, an advantage as compared with a people one of whose
+boundaries is continental. This has been a great advantage to England
+over both France and Holland as a sea power. The strength of the
+latter was early exhausted by the necessity of keeping up a large army
+and carrying on expensive wars to preserve her independence; while the
+policy of France was constantly diverted, sometimes wisely and
+sometimes most foolishly, from the sea to projects of continental
+extension. These military efforts expended wealth; whereas a wiser and
+consistent use of her geographical position would have added to it.
+
+The geographical position may be such as of itself to promote a
+concentration, or to necessitate a dispersion, of the naval forces.
+Here again the British Islands have an advantage over France. The
+position of the latter, touching the Mediterranean as well as the
+ocean, while it has its advantages, is on the whole a source of
+military weakness at sea. The eastern and western French fleets have
+only been able to unite after passing through the Straits of
+Gibraltar, in attempting which they have often risked and sometimes
+suffered loss. The position of the United States upon the two oceans
+would be either a source of great weakness or a cause of enormous
+expense, had it a large sea commerce on both coasts.
+
+England, by her immense colonial empire, has sacrificed much of this
+advantage of concentration of force around her own shores; but the
+sacrifice was wisely made, for the gain was greater than the loss, as
+the event proved. With the growth of her colonial system her war
+fleets also grew, but her merchant shipping and wealth grew yet
+faster. Still, in the wars of the American Revolution, and of the
+French Republic and Empire, to use the strong expression of a French
+author, "England, despite the immense development of her navy, seemed
+ever, in the midst of riches, to feel all the embarrassment of
+poverty." The might of England was sufficient to keep alive the heart
+and the members; whereas the equally extensive colonial empire of
+Spain, through her maritime weakness, but offered so many points for
+insult and injury.
+
+The geographical position of a country may not only favor the
+concentration of its forces, but give the further strategic advantage
+of a central position and a good base for hostile operations against
+its probable enemies. This again is the case with England; on the one
+hand she faces Holland and the northern powers, on the other France
+and the Atlantic. When threatened with a coalition between France and
+the naval powers of the North Sea and the Baltic, as she at times was,
+her fleets in the Downs and in the Channel, and even that off Brest,
+occupied interior positions, and thus were readily able to interpose
+their united force against either one of the enemies which should seek
+to pass through the Channel to effect a junction with its ally. On
+either side, also, Nature gave her better ports and a safer coast to
+approach. Formerly this was a very serious element in the passage
+through the Channel; but of late, steam and the improvement of her
+harbors have lessened the disadvantage under which France once
+labored. In the days of sailing-ships, the English fleet operated
+against Brest making its base at Torbay and Plymouth. The plan was
+simply this: in easterly or moderate weather the blockading fleet kept
+its position without difficulty; but in westerly gales, when too
+severe, they bore up for English ports, knowing that the French fleet
+could not get out till the wind shifted, which equally served to bring
+them back to their station.
+
+The advantage of geographical nearness to an enemy, or to the object
+of attack, is nowhere more apparent than in that form of warfare
+which has lately received the name of commerce-destroying, which the
+French call _guerre de course_. This operation of war, being directed
+against peaceful merchant vessels which are usually defenceless, calls
+for ships of small military force. Such ships, having little power to
+defend themselves, need a refuge or point of support near at hand;
+which will be found either in certain parts of the sea controlled by
+the fighting ships of their country, or in friendly harbors. The
+latter give the strongest support, because they are always in the same
+place, and the approaches to them are more familiar to the
+commerce-destroyer than to his enemy. The nearness of France to
+England has thus greatly facilitated her _guerre de course_ directed
+against the latter. Having ports on the North Sea, on the Channel, and
+on the Atlantic, her cruisers started from points near the focus of
+English trade, both coming and going. The distance of these ports from
+each other, disadvantageous for regular military combinations, is an
+advantage for this irregular secondary operation; for the essence of
+the one is concentration of effort, whereas for commerce-destroying
+diffusion of effort is the rule. Commerce-destroyers scatter, that
+they may see and seize more prey. These truths receive illustration
+from the history of the great French privateers, whose bases and
+scenes of action were largely on the Channel and North Sea, or else
+were found in distant colonial regions, where islands like Guadaloupe
+and Martinique afforded similar near refuge. The necessity of renewing
+coal makes the cruiser of the present day even more dependent than of
+old on his port. Public opinion in the United States has great faith
+in war directed against an enemy's commerce; but it must be remembered
+that the Republic has no ports very near the great centres of trade
+abroad. Her geographical position is therefore singularly
+disadvantageous for carrying on successful commerce-destroying, unless
+she find bases in the ports of an ally.
+
+If, in addition to facility for offence, Nature has so placed a
+country that it has easy access to the high sea itself, while at the
+same time it controls one of the great thoroughfares of the world's
+traffic, it is evident that the strategic value of its position is
+very high. Such again is, and to a greater degree was, the position of
+England. The trade of Holland, Sweden, Russia, Denmark, and that which
+went up the great rivers to the interior of Germany, had to pass
+through the Channel close by her doors; for sailing-ships hugged the
+English coast. This northern trade had, moreover, a peculiar bearing
+upon sea power; for naval stores, as they are commonly called, were
+mainly drawn from the Baltic countries.
+
+But for the loss of Gibraltar, the position of Spain would have been
+closely analogous to that of England. Looking at once upon the
+Atlantic and the Mediterranean, with Cadiz on the one side and
+Cartagena on the other, the trade to the Levant must have passed under
+her hands, and that round the Cape of Good Hope not far from her
+doors. But Gibraltar not only deprived her of the control of the
+Straits, it also imposed an obstacle to the easy junction of the two
+divisions of her fleet.
+
+At the present day, looking only at the geographical position of
+Italy, and not at the other conditions affecting her sea power, it
+would seem that with her extensive sea-coast and good ports she is
+very well placed for exerting a decisive influence on the trade route
+to the Levant and by the Isthmus of Suez. This is true in a degree,
+and would be much more so did Italy now hold all the islands naturally
+Italian; but with Malta in the hands of England, and Corsica in those
+of France, the advantages of her geographical position are largely
+neutralized. From race affinities and situation those two islands are
+as legitimately objects of desire to Italy as Gibraltar is to Spain.
+If the Adriatic were a great highway of commerce, Italy's position
+would be still more influential. These defects in her geographical
+completeness, combined with other causes injurious to a full and
+secure development of sea power, make it more than doubtful whether
+Italy can for some time be in the front rank among the sea nations.
+
+As the aim here is not an exhaustive discussion, but merely an
+attempt to show, by illustration, how vitally the situation of a
+country may affect its career upon the sea, this division of the
+subject may be dismissed for the present; the more so as instances
+which will further bring out its importance will continually recur in
+the historical treatment. Two remarks, however, are here appropriate.
+
+Circumstances have caused the Mediterranean Sea to play a greater part
+in the history of the world, both in a commercial and a military point
+of view, than any other sheet of water of the same size. Nation after
+nation has striven to control it, and the strife still goes on.
+Therefore a study of the conditions upon which preponderance in its
+waters has rested, and now rests, and of the relative military values
+of different points upon its coasts, will be more instructive than the
+same amount of effort expended in another field. Furthermore, it has
+at the present time a very marked analogy in many respects to the
+Caribbean Sea,--an analogy which will be still closer if a Panama
+canal-route ever be completed. A study of the strategic conditions of
+the Mediterranean, which have received ample illustration, will be an
+excellent prelude to a similar study of the Caribbean, which has
+comparatively little history.
+
+The second remark bears upon the geographical position of the United
+States relatively to a Central-American canal. If one be made, and
+fulfil the hopes of its builders, the Caribbean will be changed from a
+terminus, and place of local traffic, or at best a broken and
+imperfect line of travel, as it now is, into one of the great highways
+of the world. Along this path a great commerce will travel, bringing
+the interests of the other great nations, the European nations, close
+along our shores, as they have never been before. With this it will
+not be so easy as heretofore to stand aloof from international
+complications. The position of the United States with reference to
+this route will resemble that of England to the Channel, and of the
+Mediterranean countries to the Suez route. As regards influence and
+control over it, depending upon geographical position, it is of course
+plain that the centre of the national power, the permanent base,[7]
+is much nearer than that of other great nations. The positions now or
+hereafter occupied by them on island or mainland, however strong, will
+be but outposts of their power; while in all the raw materials of
+military strength no nation is superior to the United States. She is,
+however, weak in a confessed unpreparedness for war; and her
+geographical nearness to the point of contention loses some of its
+value by the character of the Gulf coast, which is deficient in ports
+combining security from an enemy with facility for repairing war-ships
+of the first class, without which ships no country can pretend to
+control any part of the sea. In case of a contest for supremacy in the
+Caribbean, it seems evident from the depth of the South Pass of the
+Mississippi, the nearness of New Orleans, and the advantages of the
+Mississippi Valley for water transit, that the main effort of the
+country must pour down that valley, and its permanent base of
+operations be found there. The defence of the entrance to the
+Mississippi, however, presents peculiar difficulties; while the only
+two rival ports, Key West and Pensacola, have too little depth of
+water, and are much less advantageously placed with reference to the
+resources of the country. To get the full benefit of superior
+geographical position, these defects must be overcome. Furthermore, as
+her distance from the Isthmus, though relatively less, is still
+considerable, the United States will have to obtain in the Caribbean
+stations fit for contingent, or secondary, bases of operations; which
+by their natural advantages, susceptibility of defence, and nearness
+to the central strategic issue, will enable her fleets to remain as
+near the scene as any opponent. With ingress and egress from the
+Mississippi sufficiently protected, with such outposts in her hands,
+and with the communications between them and the home base secured, in
+short, with proper military preparation, for which she has all
+necessary means, the preponderance of the United States on this field
+follows, from her geographical position and her power, with
+mathematical certainty.
+
+
+II. _Physical Conformation._--The peculiar features of the Gulf coast,
+just alluded to, come properly under the head of Physical Conformation
+of a country, which is placed second for discussion among the
+conditions which affect the development of sea power.
+
+The seaboard of a country is one of its frontiers; and the easier the
+access offered by the frontier to the region beyond, in this case the
+sea, the greater will be the tendency of a people toward intercourse
+with the rest of the world by it. If a country be imagined having a
+long seaboard, but entirely without a harbor, such a country can have
+no sea trade of its own, no shipping, no navy. This was practically
+the case with Belgium when it was a Spanish and an Austrian province.
+The Dutch, in 1648, as a condition of peace after a successful war,
+exacted that the Scheldt should be closed to sea commerce. This closed
+the harbor of Antwerp and transferred the sea trade of Belgium to
+Holland. The Spanish Netherlands ceased to be a sea power.
+
+Numerous and deep harbors are a source of strength and wealth, and
+doubly so if they are the outlets of navigable streams, which
+facilitate the concentration in them of a country's internal trade;
+but by their very accessibility they become a source of weakness in
+war, if not properly defended. The Dutch in 1667 found little
+difficulty in ascending the Thames and burning a large fraction of the
+English navy within sight of London; whereas a few years later the
+combined fleets of England and France, when attempting a landing in
+Holland, were foiled by the difficulties of the coast as much as by
+the valor of the Dutch fleet. In 1778 the harbor of New York, and with
+it undisputed control of the Hudson River, would have been lost to the
+English, who were caught at disadvantage, but for the hesitancy of the
+French admiral. With that control, New England would have been
+restored to close and safe communication with New York, New Jersey,
+and Pennsylvania; and this blow, following so closely on Burgoyne's
+disaster of the year before, would probably have led the English to
+make an earlier peace. The Mississippi is a mighty source of wealth
+and strength to the United States; but the feeble defences of its
+mouth and the number of its subsidiary streams penetrating the country
+made it a weakness and source of disaster to the Southern Confederacy.
+And lastly, in 1814, the occupation of the Chesapeake and the
+destruction of Washington gave a sharp lesson of the dangers incurred
+through the noblest water-ways, if their approaches be undefended; a
+lesson recent enough to be easily recalled, but which, from the
+present appearance of the coast defences, seems to be yet more easily
+forgotten. Nor should it be thought that conditions have changed;
+circumstances and details of offence and defence have been modified,
+in these days as before, but the great conditions remain the same.
+
+Before and during the great Napoleonic wars, France had no port for
+ships-of-the-line east of Brest. How great the advantage to England,
+which in the same stretch has two great arsenals, at Plymouth and at
+Portsmouth, besides other harbors of refuge and supply. This defect of
+conformation has since been remedied by the works at Cherbourg.
+
+Besides the contour of the coast, involving easy access to the sea,
+there are other physical conditions which lead people to the sea or
+turn them from it. Although France was deficient in military ports on
+the Channel, she had both there and on the ocean, as well as in the
+Mediterranean, excellent harbors, favorably situated for trade abroad,
+and at the outlet of large rivers, which would foster internal
+traffic. But when Richelieu had put an end to civil war, Frenchmen did
+not take to the sea with the eagerness and success of the English and
+Dutch. A principal reason for this has been plausibly found in the
+physical conditions which have made France a pleasant land, with a
+delightful climate, producing within itself more than its people
+needed. England, on the other hand, received from Nature but little,
+and, until her manufactures were developed, had little to export.
+Their many wants, combined with their restless activity and other
+conditions that favored maritime enterprise, led her people abroad;
+and they there found lands more pleasant and richer than their own.
+Their needs and genius made them merchants and colonists, then
+manufacturers and producers; and between products and colonies
+shipping is the inevitable link. So their sea power grew. But if
+England was drawn to the sea, Holland was driven to it; without the
+sea England languished, but Holland died. In the height of her
+greatness, when she was one of the chief factors in European politics,
+a competent native authority estimated that the soil of Holland could
+not support more than one eighth of her inhabitants. The manufactures
+of the country were then numerous and important, but they had been
+much later in their growth than the shipping interest. The poverty of
+the soil and the exposed nature of the coast drove the Dutch first to
+fishing. Then the discovery of the process of curing the fish gave
+them material for export as well as home consumption, and so laid the
+corner-stone of their wealth. Thus they had become traders at the time
+that the Italian republics, under the pressure of Turkish power and
+the discovery of the passage round the Cape of Good Hope, were
+beginning to decline, and they fell heirs to the great Italian trade
+of the Levant. Further favored by their geographical position,
+intermediate between the Baltic, France, and the Mediterranean, and at
+the mouth of the German rivers, they quickly absorbed nearly all the
+carrying-trade of Europe. The wheat and naval stores of the Baltic,
+the trade of Spain with her colonies in the New World, the wines of
+France, and the French coasting-trade were, little more than two
+hundred years ago, transported in Dutch shipping. Much of the
+carrying-trade of England, even, was then done in Dutch bottoms. It
+will not be pretended that all this prosperity proceeded only from the
+poverty of Holland's natural resources. Something does not grow from
+nothing. What is true, is, that by the necessitous condition of her
+people they were driven to the sea, and were, from their mastery of
+the shipping business and the size of their fleets, in a position to
+profit by the sudden expansion of commerce and the spirit of
+exploration which followed on the discovery of America and of the
+passage round the Cape. Other causes concurred, but their whole
+prosperity stood on the sea power to which their poverty gave birth.
+Their food, their clothing, the raw material for their manufactures,
+the very timber and hemp with which they built and rigged their ships
+(and they built nearly as many as all Europe besides), were imported;
+and when a disastrous war with England in 1653 and 1654 had lasted
+eighteen months, and their shipping business was stopped, it is said
+"the sources of revenue which had always maintained the riches of the
+State, such as fisheries and commerce, were almost dry. Workshops were
+closed, work was suspended. The Zuyder Zee became a forest of masts;
+the country was full of beggars; grass grew in the streets, and in
+Amsterdam fifteen hundred houses were untenanted." A humiliating peace
+alone saved them from ruin.
+
+This sorrowful result shows the weakness of a country depending wholly
+upon sources external to itself for the part it is playing in the
+world. With large deductions, owing to differences of conditions which
+need not here be spoken of, the case of Holland then has strong points
+of resemblance to that of Great Britain now; and they are true
+prophets, though they seem to be having small honor in their own
+country, who warn her that the continuance of her prosperity at home
+depends primarily upon maintaining her power abroad. Men may be
+discontented at the lack of political privilege; they will be yet more
+uneasy if they come to lack bread. It is of more interest to Americans
+to note that the result to France, regarded as a power of the sea,
+caused by the extent, delightfulness, and richness of the land, has
+been reproduced in the United States. In the beginning, their
+forefathers held a narrow strip of land upon the sea, fertile in parts
+though little developed, abounding in harbors and near rich
+fishing-grounds. These physical conditions combined with an inborn
+love of the sea, the pulse of that English blood which still beat in
+their veins, to keep alive all those tendencies and pursuits upon
+which a healthy sea power depends. Almost every one of the original
+colonies was on the sea or on one of its great tributaries. All export
+and import tended toward one coast. Interest in the sea and an
+intelligent appreciation of the part it played in the public welfare
+were easily and widely spread; and a motive more influential than care
+for the public interest was also active, for the abundance of
+ship-building materials and a relative fewness of other investments
+made shipping a profitable private interest. How changed the present
+condition is, all know. The centre of power is no longer on the
+seaboard. Books and newspapers vie with one another in describing the
+wonderful growth, and the still undeveloped riches, of the interior.
+Capital there finds its best investments, labor its largest
+opportunities. The frontiers are neglected and politically weak; the
+Gulf and Pacific coasts actually so, the Atlantic coast relatively to
+the central Mississippi Valley. When the day comes that shipping again
+pays, when the three sea frontiers find that they are not only
+militarily weak, but poorer for lack of national shipping, their
+united efforts may avail to lay again the foundations of our sea
+power. Till then, those who follow the limitations which lack of sea
+power placed upon the career of France may mourn that their own
+country is being led, by a like redundancy of home wealth, into the
+same neglect of that great instrument.
+
+Among modifying physical conditions may be noted a form like that of
+Italy,--a long peninsula, with a central range of mountains dividing
+it into two narrow strips, along which the roads connecting the
+different ports necessarily run. Only an absolute control of the sea
+can wholly secure such communications, since it is impossible to know
+at what point an enemy coming from beyond the visible horizon may
+strike; but still, with an adequate naval force centrally posted,
+there will be good hope of attacking his fleet, which is at once his
+base and line of communications, before serious damage has been done.
+The long, narrow peninsula of Florida, with Key West at its
+extremity, though flat and thinly populated, presents at first sight
+conditions like those of Italy. The resemblance may be only
+superficial, but it seems probable that if the chief scene of a naval
+war were the Gulf of Mexico, the communications by land to the end of
+the peninsula might be a matter of consequence, and open to attack.
+
+When the sea not only borders, or surrounds, but also separates a
+country into two or more parts, the control of it becomes not only
+desirable, but vitally necessary. Such a physical condition either
+gives birth and strength to sea power, or makes the country powerless.
+Such is the condition of the present kingdom of Italy, with its
+islands of Sardinia and Sicily; and hence in its youth and still
+existing financial weakness it is seen to put forth such vigorous and
+intelligent efforts to create a military navy. It has even been argued
+that, with a navy decidedly superior to her enemy's, Italy could
+better base her power upon her islands than upon her mainland; for the
+insecurity of the lines of communication in the peninsula, already
+pointed out, would most seriously embarrass an invading army
+surrounded by a hostile people and threatened from the sea.
+
+The Irish Sea, separating the British Islands, rather resembles an
+estuary than an actual division; but history has shown the danger
+from it to the United Kingdom. In the days of Louis XIV., when the
+French navy nearly equalled the combined English and Dutch, the
+gravest complications existed in Ireland, which passed almost wholly
+under the control of the natives and the French. Nevertheless, the
+Irish Sea was rather a danger to the English--a weak point in their
+communications--than an advantage to the French. The latter did not
+venture their ships-of-the-line in its narrow waters, and expeditions
+intending to land were directed upon the ocean ports in the south and
+west. At the supreme moment the great French fleet was sent upon the
+south coast of England, where it decisively defeated the allies, and
+at the same time twenty-five frigates were sent to St. George's
+Channel, against the English communications. In the midst of a
+hostile people, the English army in Ireland was seriously imperilled,
+but was saved by the battle of the Boyne and the flight of James II.
+This movement against the enemy's communications was strictly
+strategic, and would be just as dangerous to England now as in 1690.
+
+Spain, in the same century, afforded an impressive lesson of the
+weakness caused by such separation when the parts are not knit
+together by a strong sea power. She then still retained, as remnants
+of her past greatness, the Netherlands (now Belgium), Sicily, and
+other Italian possessions, not to speak of her vast colonies in the
+New World. Yet so low had the Spanish sea power fallen, that a
+well-informed and sober-minded Hollander of the day could claim that
+"in Spain all the coast is navigated by a few Dutch ships; and since
+the peace of 1648 their ships and seamen are so few that they have
+publicly begun to hire our ships to sail to the Indies, whereas they
+were formerly careful to exclude all foreigners from there.... It is
+manifest," he goes on, "that the West Indies, being as the stomach to
+Spain (for from it nearly all the revenue is drawn), must be joined to
+the Spanish head by a sea force; and that Naples and the Netherlands,
+being like two arms, they cannot lay out their strength for Spain, nor
+receive anything thence but by shipping,--all which may easily be done
+by our shipping in peace, and by it obstructed in war." Half a century
+before, Sully, the great minister of Henry IV., had characterized
+Spain "as one of those States whose legs and arms are strong and
+powerful, but the heart infinitely weak and feeble." Since his day the
+Spanish navy had suffered not only disaster, but annihilation; not
+only humiliation, but degradation. The consequences briefly were that
+shipping was destroyed; manufactures perished with it. The government
+depended for its support, not upon a wide-spread healthy commerce and
+industry that could survive many a staggering blow, but upon a narrow
+stream of silver trickling through a few treasure-ships from America,
+easily and frequently intercepted by an enemy's cruisers. The loss of
+half a dozen galleons more than once paralyzed its movements for a
+year. While the war in the Netherlands lasted, the Dutch control of
+the sea forced Spain to send her troops by a long and costly journey
+overland instead of by sea; and the same cause reduced her to such
+straits for necessaries that, by a mutual arrangement which seems very
+odd to modern ideas, her wants were supplied by Dutch ships, which
+thus maintained the enemies of their country, but received in return
+specie which was welcome in the Amsterdam exchange. In America, the
+Spanish protected themselves as best they might behind masonry,
+unaided from home; while in the Mediterranean they escaped insult and
+injury mainly through the indifference of the Dutch, for the French
+and English had not yet begun to contend for mastery there. In the
+course of history the Netherlands, Naples, Sicily, Minorca, Havana,
+Manila, and Jamaica were wrenched away, at one time or another, from
+this empire without a shipping. In short, while Spain's maritime
+impotence may have been primarily a symptom of her general decay, it
+became a marked factor in precipitating her into the abyss from which
+she has not yet wholly emerged.
+
+Except Alaska, the United States has no outlying possession,--no foot
+of ground inaccessible by land. Its contour is such as to present few
+points specially weak from their saliency, and all important parts of
+the frontiers can be readily attained,--cheaply by water, rapidly by
+rail. The weakest frontier, the Pacific, is far removed from the most
+dangerous of possible enemies. The internal resources are boundless as
+compared with present needs; we can live off ourselves indefinitely in
+"our little corner," to use the expression of a French officer to the
+author. Yet should that little corner be invaded by a new commercial
+route through the Isthmus, the United States in her turn may have the
+rude awakening of those who have abandoned their share in the common
+birthright of all people, the sea.
+
+
+III. _Extent of Territory._--The last of the conditions affecting the
+development of a nation as a sea power, and touching the country
+itself as distinguished from the people who dwell there, is Extent of
+Territory. This may be dismissed with comparatively few words.
+
+As regards the development of sea power, it is not the total number of
+square miles which a country contains, but the length of its
+coast-line and the character of its harbors that are to be considered.
+As to these it is to be said that, the geographical and physical
+conditions being the same, extent of sea-coast is a source of strength
+or weakness according as the population is large or small. A country
+is in this like a fortress; the garrison must be proportioned to the
+_enceinte_. A recent familiar instance is found in the American War of
+Secession. Had the South had a people as numerous as it was warlike,
+and a navy commensurate to its other resources as a sea power, the
+great extent of its sea-coast and its numerous inlets would have been
+elements of great strength. The people of the United States and the
+Government of that day justly prided themselves on the effectiveness
+of the blockade of the whole Southern coast. It was a great feat, a
+very great feat; but it would have been an impossible feat had the
+Southerners been more numerous, and a nation of seamen. What was there
+shown was not, as has been said, how such a blockade can be
+maintained, but that such a blockade is possible in the face of a
+population not only unused to the sea, but also scanty in numbers.
+Those who recall how the blockade was maintained, and the class of
+ships that blockaded during great part of the war, know that the plan,
+correct under the circumstances, could not have been carried out in
+the face of a real navy. Scattered unsupported along the coast, the
+United States ships kept their places, singly or in small detachments,
+in face of an extensive network of inland water communications which
+favored secret concentration of the enemy. Behind the first line of
+water communications were long estuaries, and here and there strong
+fortresses, upon either of which the enemy's ships could always fall
+back to elude pursuit or to receive protection. Had there been a
+Southern navy to profit by such advantages, or by the scattered
+condition of the United States ships, the latter could not have been
+distributed as they were; and being forced to concentrate for mutual
+support, many small but useful approaches would have been left open to
+commerce. But as the Southern coast, from its extent and many inlets,
+might have been a source of strength, so, from those very
+characteristics, it became a fruitful source of injury. The great
+story of the opening of the Mississippi is but the most striking
+illustration of an action that was going on incessantly all over the
+South. At every breach of the sea frontier, war-ships were entering.
+The streams that had carried the wealth and supported the trade of the
+seceding States turned against them, and admitted their enemies to
+their hearts. Dismay, insecurity, paralysis, prevailed in regions that
+might, under happier auspices, have kept a nation alive through the
+most exhausting war. Never did sea power play a greater or a more
+decisive part than in the contest which determined that the course of
+the world's history would be modified by the existence of one great
+nation, instead of several rival States, in the North American
+continent. But while just pride is felt in the well-earned glory of
+those days, and the greatness of the results due to naval
+preponderance is admitted, Americans who understand the facts should
+never fail to remind the over-confidence of their countrymen that the
+South not only had no navy, not only was not a seafaring people, but
+that also its population was not proportioned to the extent of the
+sea-coast which it had to defend.
+
+
+IV. _Number of Population._--After the consideration of the natural
+conditions of a country should follow an examination of the
+characteristics of its population as affecting the development of sea
+power; and first among these will be taken, because of its relations
+to the extent of the territory, which has just been discussed, the
+number of the people who live in it. It has been said that in respect
+of dimensions it is not merely the number of square miles, but the
+extent and character of the sea-coast that is to be considered with
+reference to sea power; and so, in point of population, it is not only
+the grand total, but the number following the sea, or at least readily
+available for employment on ship-board and for the creation of naval
+material, that must be counted.
+
+For example, formerly and up to the end of the great wars following
+the French Revolution, the population of France was much greater than
+that of England; but in respect of sea power in general, peaceful
+commerce as well as military efficiency, France was much inferior to
+England. In the matter of military efficiency this fact is the more
+remarkable because at times, in point of military preparation at the
+outbreak of war, France had the advantage; but she was not able to
+keep it. Thus in 1778, when war broke out, France, through her
+maritime inscription, was able to man at once fifty ships-of-the-line.
+England, on the contrary, by reason of the dispersal over the globe of
+that very shipping on which her naval strength so securely rested, had
+much trouble in manning forty at home; but in 1782 she had one hundred
+and twenty in commission or ready for commission, while France had
+never been able to exceed seventy-one. Again, as late as 1840, when
+the two nations were on the verge of war in the Levant, a most
+accomplished French officer of the day, while extolling the high state
+of efficiency of the French fleet and the eminent qualities of its
+admiral, and expressing confidence in the results of an encounter with
+an equal enemy, goes on to say: "Behind the squadron of twenty-one
+ships-of-the-line which we could then assemble, there was no reserve;
+not another ship could have been commissioned within six months." And
+this was due not only to lack of ships and of proper equipments,
+though both were wanting. "Our maritime inscription," he continues,
+"was so exhausted by what we had done [in manning twenty-one ships],
+that the permanent levy established in all quarters did not supply
+reliefs for the men, who were already more than three years on
+cruise."
+
+A contrast such as this shows a difference in what is called staying
+power, or reserve force, which is even greater than appears on the
+surface; for a great shipping afloat necessarily employs, besides the
+crews, a large number of people engaged in the various handicrafts
+which facilitate the making and repairing of naval material, or
+following other callings more or less closely connected with the water
+and with craft of all kinds. Such kindred callings give an undoubted
+aptitude for the sea from the outset. There is an anecdote showing
+curious insight into this matter on the part of one of England's
+distinguished seamen, Sir Edward Pellew. When the war broke out in
+1793, the usual scarceness of seamen was met. Eager to get to sea and
+unable to fill his complement otherwise than with landsmen, he
+instructed his officers to seek for Cornish miners; reasoning from the
+conditions and dangers of their calling, of which he had personal
+knowledge, that they would quickly fit into the demands of sea life.
+The result showed his sagacity, for, thus escaping an otherwise
+unavoidable delay, he was fortunate enough to capture the first
+frigate taken in the war in single combat; and what is especially
+instructive is, that although but a few weeks in commission, while his
+opponent had been over a year, the losses, heavy on both sides, were
+nearly equal.
+
+It may be urged that such reserve strength has now nearly lost the
+importance it once had, because modern ships and weapons take so long
+to make, and because modern States aim at developing the whole power
+of their armed force, on the outbreak of war, with such rapidity as to
+strike a disabling blow before the enemy can organize an equal effort.
+To use a familiar phrase, there will not be time for the whole
+resistance of the national fabric to come into play; the blow will
+fall on the organized military fleet, and if that yield, the solidity
+of the rest of the structure will avail nothing. To a certain extent
+this is true; but then it has always been true, though to a less
+extent formerly than now. Granted the meeting of two fleets which
+represent practically the whole present strength of their two nations,
+if one of them be destroyed, while the other remains fit for action,
+there will be much less hope now than formerly that the vanquished
+can restore his navy for that war; and the result will be disastrous
+just in proportion to the dependence of the nation upon her sea power.
+A Trafalgar would have been a much more fatal blow to England than it
+was to France, had the English fleet then represented, as the allied
+fleet did, the bulk of the nation's power. Trafalgar in such a case
+would have been to England what Austerlitz was to Austria, and Jena to
+Prussia; an empire would have been laid prostrate by the destruction
+or disorganization of its military forces, which, it is said, were the
+favorite objective of Napoleon.
+
+But does the consideration of such exceptional disasters in the past
+justify the putting a low value upon that reserve strength, based upon
+the number of inhabitants fitted for a certain kind of military life,
+which is here being considered? The blows just mentioned were dealt by
+men of exceptional genius, at the head of armed bodies of exceptional
+training, _esprit-de-corps_, and prestige, and were, besides,
+inflicted upon opponents more or less demoralized by conscious
+inferiority and previous defeat. Austerlitz had been closely preceded
+by Ulm, where thirty thousand Austrians laid down their arms without a
+battle; and the history of the previous years had been one long record
+of Austrian reverse and French success. Trafalgar followed closely
+upon a cruise, justly called a campaign, of almost constant failure;
+and farther back, but still recent, were the memories of St. Vincent
+for the Spaniards, and of the Nile for the French, in the allied
+fleet. Except the case of Jena, these crushing overthrows were not
+single disasters, but final blows; and in the Jena campaign there was
+a disparity in numbers, equipment, and general preparation for war,
+which makes it less applicable in considering what may result from a
+single victory.
+
+England is at the present time the greatest maritime nation in the
+world; in steam and iron she has kept the superiority she had in the
+days of sail and wood. France and England are the two powers that have
+the largest military navies; and it is so far an open question which
+of the two is the more powerful, that they may be regarded as
+practically of equal strength in material for a sea war. In the case
+of a collision can there be assumed such a difference of _personnel_,
+or of preparation, as to make it probable that a decisive inequality
+will result from one battle or one campaign? If not, the reserve
+strength will begin to tell; organized reserve first, then reserve of
+seafaring population, reserve of mechanical skill, reserve of wealth.
+It seems to have been somewhat forgotten that England's leadership in
+mechanical arts gives her a reserve of mechanics, who can easily
+familiarize themselves with the appliances of modern iron-clads; and
+as her commerce and industries feel the burden of the war, the surplus
+of seamen and mechanics will go to the armed shipping.
+
+The whole question of the value of a reserve, developed or
+undeveloped, amounts now to this: Have modern conditions of warfare
+made it probable that, of two nearly equal adversaries, one will be so
+prostrated in a single campaign that a decisive result will be reached
+in that time? Sea warfare has given no answer. The crushing successes
+of Prussia against Austria, and of Germany against France, appear to
+have been those of a stronger over a much weaker nation, whether the
+weakness were due to natural causes, or to official incompetency. How
+would a delay like that of Plevna have affected the fortune of war,
+had Turkey had any reserve of national power upon which to call?
+
+If time be, as is everywhere admitted, a supreme factor in war, it
+behooves countries whose genius is essentially not military, whose
+people, like all free people, object to pay for large military
+establishments, to see to it that they are at least strong enough to
+gain the time necessary to turn the spirit and capacity of their
+subjects into the new activities which war calls for. If the existing
+force by land or sea is strong enough so to hold out, even though at a
+disadvantage, the country may rely upon its natural resources and
+strength coming into play for whatever they are worth,--its numbers,
+its wealth, its capacities of every kind. If, on the other hand, what
+force it has can be overthrown and crushed quickly, the most
+magnificent possibilities of natural power will not save it from
+humiliating conditions, nor, if its foe be wise, from guarantees which
+will postpone revenge to a distant future. The story is constantly
+repeated on the smaller fields of war: "If so-and-so can hold out a
+little longer, this can be saved or that can be done;" as in sickness
+it is often said: "If the patient can only hold out so long, the
+strength of his constitution may pull him through."
+
+England to some extent is now such a country. Holland was such a
+country; she would not pay, and if she escaped, it was but by the skin
+of her teeth. "Never in time of peace and from fear of a rupture,"
+wrote their great statesman, De Witt, "will they take resolutions
+strong enough to lead them to pecuniary sacrifices beforehand. The
+character of the Dutch is such that, unless danger stares them in the
+face, they are indisposed to lay out money for their own defence. I
+have to do with a people who, liberal to profusion where they ought to
+economize, are often sparing to avarice where they ought to spend."
+
+That our own country is open to the same reproach, is patent to all
+the world. The United States has not that shield of defensive power
+behind which time can be gained to develop its reserve of strength. As
+for a seafaring population adequate to her possible needs, where is
+it? Such a resource, proportionate to her coast-line and population,
+is to be found only in a national merchant shipping and its related
+industries, which at present scarcely exist. It will matter little
+whether the crews of such ships are native or foreign born, provided
+they are attached to the flag, and her power at sea is sufficient to
+enable the most of them to get back in case of war. When foreigners by
+thousands are admitted to the ballot, it is of little moment that they
+are given fighting-room on board ship.
+
+Though the treatment of the subject has been somewhat discursive, it
+may be admitted that a great population following callings related to
+the sea is, now as formerly, a great element of sea power; that the
+United States is deficient in that element; and that its foundations
+can be laid only in a large commerce under her own flag.
+
+
+V. _National Character._--The effect of national character and
+aptitudes upon the development of sea power will next be considered.
+
+If sea power be really based upon a peaceful and extensive commerce,
+aptitude for commercial pursuits must be a distinguishing feature of
+the nations that have at one time or another been great upon the sea.
+History almost without exception affirms that this is true. Save the
+Romans, there is no marked instance to the contrary.
+
+All men seek gain and, more or less, love money; but the way in which
+gain is sought will have a marked effect upon the commercial fortunes
+and the history of the people inhabiting a country.
+
+If history may be believed, the way in which the Spaniards and their
+kindred nation, the Portuguese, sought wealth, not only brought a blot
+upon the national character, but was also fatal to the growth of a
+healthy commerce; and so to the industries upon which commerce lives,
+and ultimately to that national wealth which was sought by mistaken
+paths. The desire for gain rose in them to fierce avarice; so they
+sought in the new-found worlds which gave such an impetus to the
+commercial and maritime development of the countries of Europe, not
+new fields of industry, not even the healthy excitement of exploration
+and adventure, but gold and silver. They had many great qualities;
+they were bold, enterprising, temperate, patient of suffering,
+enthusiastic, and gifted with intense national feeling. When to these
+qualities are added the advantages of Spain's position and
+well-situated ports, the fact that she was first to occupy large and
+rich portions of the new worlds and long remained without a
+competitor, and that for a hundred years after the discovery of
+America she was the leading State in Europe, she might have been
+expected to take the foremost place among the sea powers. Exactly the
+contrary was the result, as all know. Since the battle of Lepanto in
+1571, though engaged in many wars, no sea victory of any consequence
+shines on the pages of Spanish history; and the decay of her commerce
+sufficiently accounts for the painful and sometimes ludicrous
+inaptness shown on the decks of her ships of war. Doubtless such a
+result is not to be attributed to one cause only. Doubtless the
+government of Spain was in many ways such as to cramp and blight a
+free and healthy development of private enterprise; but the character
+of a great people breaks through or shapes the character of its
+government, and it can hardly be doubted that had the bent of the
+people been toward trade, the action of government would have been
+drawn into the same current. The great field of the colonies, also,
+was remote from the centre of that despotism which blighted the growth
+of old Spain. As it was, thousands of Spaniards, of the working as
+well as the upper classes, left Spain; and the occupations in which
+they engaged abroad sent home little but specie, or merchandise of
+small bulk, requiring but small tonnage. The mother-country herself
+produced little but wool, fruit, and iron; her manufactures were
+naught; her industries suffered; her population steadily decreased.
+Both she and her colonies depended upon the Dutch for so many of the
+necessaries of life, that the products of their scanty industries
+could not suffice to pay for them. "So that Holland merchants," writes
+a contemporary, "who carry money to most parts of the world to buy
+commodities, must out of this single country of Europe carry home
+money, which they receive in payment of their goods." Thus their
+eagerly sought emblem of wealth passed quickly from their hands. It
+has already been pointed out how weak, from a military point of view,
+Spain was from this decay of her shipping. Her wealth being in small
+bulk on a few ships, following more or less regular routes, was easily
+seized by an enemy, and the sinews of war paralyzed; whereas the
+wealth of England and Holland, scattered over thousands of ships in
+all parts of the world, received many bitter blows in many exhausting
+wars, without checking a growth which, though painful, was steady. The
+fortunes of Portugal, united to Spain during a most critical period of
+her history, followed the same downward path: although foremost in
+the beginning of the race for development by sea, she fell utterly
+behind. "The mines of Brazil were the ruin of Portugal, as those of
+Mexico and Peru had been of Spain; all manufactures fell into insane
+contempt; ere long the English supplied the Portuguese not only with
+clothes, but with all merchandise, all commodities, even to salt-fish
+and grain. After their gold, the Portuguese abandoned their very soil;
+the vineyards of Oporto were finally bought by the English with
+Brazilian gold, which had only passed through Portugal to be spread
+throughout England." We are assured that in fifty years, five hundred
+millions of dollars were extracted from "the mines of Brazil, and that
+at the end of the time Portugal had but twenty-five millions in
+specie,"--a striking example of the difference between real and
+fictitious wealth.
+
+The English and Dutch were no less desirous of gain than the southern
+nations. Each in turn has been called "a nation of shopkeepers;" but
+the jeer, in so far as it is just, is to the credit of their wisdom
+and uprightness. They were no less bold, no less enterprising, no less
+patient. Indeed, they were more patient, in that they sought riches
+not by the sword but by labor, which is the reproach meant to be
+implied by the epithet; for thus they took the longest, instead of
+what seemed the shortest, road to wealth. But these two peoples,
+radically of the same race, had other qualities, no less important
+than those just named, which combined with their surroundings to favor
+their development by sea. They were by nature business-men, traders,
+producers, negotiators. Therefore both in their native country and
+abroad, whether settled in the ports of civilized nations, or of
+barbarous eastern rulers, or in colonies of their own foundation, they
+everywhere strove to draw out all the resources of the land, to
+develop and increase them. The quick instinct of the born trader,
+shopkeeper if you will, sought continually new articles to exchange;
+and this search, combined with the industrious character evolved
+through generations of labor, made them necessarily producers. At home
+they became great as manufacturers; abroad, where they controlled, the
+land grew richer continually, products multiplied, and the necessary
+exchange between home and the settlements called for more ships. Their
+shipping therefore increased with these demands of trade, and nations
+with less aptitude for maritime enterprise, even France herself, great
+as she has been, called for their products and for the service of
+their ships. Thus in many ways they advanced to power at sea. This
+natural tendency and growth were indeed modified and seriously checked
+at times by the interference of other governments, jealous of a
+prosperity which their own people could invade only by the aid of
+artificial support,--a support which will be considered under the head
+of governmental action as affecting sea power.
+
+The tendency to trade, involving of necessity the production of
+something to trade with, is the national characteristic most important
+to the development of sea power. Granting it and a good seaboard, it
+is not likely that the dangers of the sea, or any aversion to it, will
+deter a people from seeking wealth by the paths of ocean commerce.
+Where wealth is sought by other means, it may be found; but it will
+not necessarily lead to sea power. Take France. France has a fine
+country, an industrious people, an admirable position. The French navy
+has known periods of great glory, and in its lowest estate has never
+dishonored the military reputation so dear to the nation. Yet as a
+maritime State, securely resting upon a broad basis of sea commerce,
+France, as compared with other historical sea-peoples, has never held
+more than a respectable position. The chief reason for this, so far as
+national character goes, is the way in which wealth is sought. As
+Spain and Portugal sought it by digging gold out of the ground, the
+temper of the French people leads them to seek it by thrift, economy,
+hoarding. It is said to be harder to keep than to make a fortune.
+Possibly; but the adventurous temper, which risks what it has to gain
+more, has much in common with the adventurous spirit that conquers
+worlds for commerce. The tendency to save and put aside, to venture
+timidly and on a small scale, may lead to a general diffusion of
+wealth on a like small scale, but not to the risks and development of
+external trade and shipping interests. To illustrate,--and the
+incident is given only for what it is worth,--a French officer,
+speaking to the author about the Panama Canal, said: "I have two
+shares in it. In France we don't do as you, where a few people take a
+great many shares each. With us a large number of people take one
+share or a very few. When these were in the market my wife said to me,
+'You take two shares, one for you and one for me.'" As regards the
+stability of a man's personal fortunes this kind of prudence is
+doubtless wise; but when excessive prudence or financial timidity
+becomes a national trait, it must tend to hamper the expansion of
+commerce and of the nation's shipping. The same caution in money
+matters, appearing in another relation of life, has checked the
+production of children, and keeps the population of France nearly
+stationary.
+
+The noble classes of Europe inherited from the Middle Ages a
+supercilious contempt for peaceful trade, which has exercised a
+modifying influence upon its growth, according to the national
+character of different countries. The pride of the Spaniards fell
+easily in with this spirit of contempt, and co-operated with that
+disastrous unwillingness to work and wait for wealth which turned them
+away from commerce. In France, the vanity which is conceded even by
+Frenchmen to be a national trait led in the same direction. The
+numbers and brilliancy of the nobility, and the consideration enjoyed
+by them, set a seal of inferiority upon an occupation which they
+despised. Rich merchants and manufacturers sighed for the honors of
+nobility, and upon obtaining them, abandoned their lucrative
+professions. Therefore, while the industry of the people and the
+fruitfulness of the soil saved commerce from total decay, it was
+pursued under a sense of humiliation which caused its best
+representatives to escape from it as soon as they could. Louis XIV.,
+under the influence of Colbert, put forth an ordinance "authorizing
+all noblemen to take an interest in merchant ships, goods and
+merchandise, without being considered as having derogated from
+nobility, provided they did not sell at retail;" and the reason given
+for this action was, "that it imports the good of our subjects and our
+own satisfaction, to efface the relic of a public opinion, universally
+prevalent, that maritime commerce is incompatible with nobility." But
+a prejudice involving conscious and open superiority is not readily
+effaced by ordinances, especially when vanity is a conspicuous trait
+in national character; and many years later Montesquieu taught that it
+is contrary to the spirit of monarchy that the nobility should engage
+in trade.
+
+In Holland there was a nobility; but the State was republican in name,
+allowed large scope to personal freedom and enterprise, and the
+centres of power were in the great cities. The foundation of the
+national greatness was money--or rather wealth. Wealth, as a source of
+civic distinction, carried with it also power in the State; and with
+power there went social position and consideration. In England the
+same result obtained. The nobility were proud; but in a representative
+government the power of wealth could be neither put down nor
+overshadowed. It was patent to the eyes of all; it was honored by all;
+and in England, as well as Holland, the occupations which were the
+source of wealth shared in the honor given to wealth itself. Thus, in
+all the countries named, social sentiment, the outcome of national
+characteristics, had a marked influence upon the national attitude
+toward trade.
+
+In yet another way does the national genius affect the growth of sea
+power in its broadest sense; and that is in so far as it possesses the
+capacity for planting healthy colonies. Of colonization, as of all
+other growths, it is true that it is most healthy when it is most
+natural. Therefore colonies that spring from the felt wants and
+natural impulses of a whole people will have the most solid
+foundations; and their subsequent growth will be surest when they are
+least trammelled from home, if the people have the genius for
+independent action. Men of the past three centuries have keenly felt
+the value to the mother-country of colonies as outlets for the home
+products and as a nursery for commerce and shipping; but efforts at
+colonization have not had the same general origin, nor have different
+systems all had the same success. The efforts of statesmen, however
+far-seeing and careful, have not been able to supply the lack of
+strong natural impulse; nor can the most minute regulation from home
+produce as good results as a happier neglect, when the germ of
+self-development is found in the national character. There has been no
+greater display of wisdom in the national administration of successful
+colonies than in that of unsuccessful. Perhaps there has been even
+less. If elaborate system and supervision, careful adaptation of means
+to ends, diligent nursing, could avail for colonial growth, the genius
+of England has less of this systematizing faculty than the genius of
+France; but England, not France, has been the great colonizer of the
+world. Successful colonization, with its consequent effect upon
+commerce and sea power, depends essentially upon national character;
+because colonies grow best when they grow of themselves, naturally.
+The character of the colonist, not the care of the home government, is
+the principle of the colony's growth.
+
+This truth stands out the clearer because the general attitude of all
+the home governments toward their colonies was entirely selfish.
+However founded, as soon as it was recognized to be of consequence,
+the colony became to the home country a cow to be milked; to be cared
+for, of course, but chiefly as a piece of property valued for the
+returns it gave. Legislation was directed toward a monopoly of its
+external trade; the places in its government afforded posts of value
+for occupants from the mother-country; and the colony was looked upon,
+as the sea still so often is, as a fit place for those who were
+ungovernable or useless at home. The military administration, however,
+so long as it remains a colony, is the proper and necessary attribute
+of the home government.
+
+The fact of England's unique and wonderful success as a great
+colonizing nation is too evident to be dwelt upon; and the reason for
+it appears to lie chiefly in two traits of the national character.
+The English colonist naturally and readily settles down in his new
+country, identifies his interest with it, and though keeping an
+affectionate remembrance of the home from which he came, has no
+restless eagerness to return. In the second place, the Englishman at
+once and instinctively seeks to develop the resources of the new
+country in the broadest sense. In the former particular he differs
+from the French, who were ever longingly looking back to the delights
+of their pleasant land; in the latter, from the Spaniards, whose range
+of interest and ambition was too narrow for the full evolution of the
+possibilities of a new country.
+
+The character and the necessities of the Dutch led them naturally to
+plant colonies; and by the year 1650 they had in the East Indies, in
+Africa, and in America a large number, only to name which would be
+tedious. They were then far ahead of England in this matter. But
+though the origin of these colonies, purely commercial in its
+character, was natural, there seems to have been lacking to them a
+principle of growth. "In planting them they never sought an extension
+of empire, but merely an acquisition of trade and commerce. They
+attempted conquest only when forced by the pressure of circumstances.
+Generally they were content to trade under the protection of the
+sovereign of the country." This placid satisfaction with gain alone,
+unaccompanied by political ambition, tended, like the despotism of
+France and Spain, to keep the colonies mere commercial dependencies
+upon the mother-country, and so killed the natural principle of
+growth.
+
+Before quitting this head of the inquiry, it is well to ask how far
+the national character of Americans is fitted to develop a great sea
+power, should other circumstances become favorable.
+
+It seems scarcely necessary, however, to do more than appeal to a not
+very distant past to prove that, if legislative hindrances be removed,
+and more remunerative fields of enterprise filled up, the sea power
+will not long delay its appearance. The instinct for commerce, bold
+enterprise in the pursuit of gain, and a keen scent for the trails
+that lead to it, all exist; and if there be in the future any fields
+calling for colonization, it cannot be doubted that Americans will
+carry to them all their inherited aptitude for self-government and
+independent growth.
+
+
+VI. _Character of the Government._--In discussing the effects upon the
+development of a nation's sea power exerted by its government and
+institutions, it will be necessary to avoid a tendency to
+over-philosophizing, to confine attention to obvious and immediate
+causes and their plain results, without prying too far beneath the
+surface for remote and ultimate influences.
+
+Nevertheless, it must be noted that particular forms of government
+with their accompanying institutions, and the character of rulers at
+one time or another, have exercised a very marked influence upon the
+development of sea power. The various traits of a country and its
+people which have so far been considered constitute the natural
+characteristics with which a nation, like a man, begins its career;
+the conduct of the government in turn corresponds to the exercise of
+the intelligent will-power, which, according as it is wise, energetic
+and persevering, or the reverse, causes success or failure in a man's
+life or a nation's history.
+
+It would seem probable that a government in full accord with the
+natural bias of its people would most successfully advance its growth
+in every respect; and, in the matter of sea power, the most brilliant
+successes have followed where there has been intelligent direction by
+a government fully imbued with the spirit of the people and conscious
+of its true general bent. Such a government is most certainly secured
+when the will of the people, or of their best natural exponents, has
+some large share in making it; but such free governments have
+sometimes fallen short, while on the other hand despotic power,
+wielded with judgment and consistency, has created at times a great
+sea commerce and a brilliant navy with greater directness than can be
+reached by the slower processes of a free people. The difficulty in
+the latter case is to insure perseverance after the death of a
+particular despot.
+
+England having undoubtedly reached the greatest height of sea power of
+any modern nation, the action of her government first claims
+attention. In general direction this action has been consistent,
+though often far from praiseworthy. It has aimed steadily at the
+control of the sea. One of its most arrogant expressions dates back as
+far as the reign of James I., when she had scarce any possessions
+outside her own islands; before Virginia or Massachusetts was settled.
+Here is Richelieu's account of it:--
+
+ "The Duke of Sully, minister of Henry IV. [one of the most
+ chivalrous princes that ever lived], having embarked at Calais
+ in a French ship wearing the French flag at the main, was no
+ sooner in the Channel than, meeting an English despatch-boat
+ which was there to receive him, the commander of the latter
+ ordered the French ship to lower her flag. The Duke, considering
+ that his quality freed him from such an affront, boldly refused;
+ but this refusal was followed by three cannon-shot, which,
+ piercing his ship, pierced the heart likewise of all good
+ Frenchmen. Might forced him to yield what right forbade, and for
+ all the complaints he made he could get no better reply from the
+ English captain than this: 'That just as his duty obliged him to
+ honor the ambassador's rank, it also obliged him to exact the
+ honor due to the flag of his master as sovereign of the sea.' If
+ the words of King James himself were more polite, they
+ nevertheless had no other effect than to compel the Duke to take
+ counsel of his prudence, feigning to be satisfied, while his
+ wound was all the time smarting and incurable. Henry the Great
+ had to practise moderation on this occasion; but with the
+ resolve another time to sustain the rights of his crown by the
+ force that, with the aid of time, he should be able to put upon
+ the sea."
+
+This act of unpardonable insolence, according to modern ideas, was not
+so much out of accord with the spirit of nations in that day. It is
+chiefly noteworthy as the most striking, as well as one of the
+earliest indications of the purpose of England to assert herself at
+all risks upon the sea; and the insult was offered under one of her
+most timid kings to an ambassador immediately representing the
+bravest and ablest of French sovereigns. This empty honor of the flag,
+a claim insignificant except as the outward manifestation of the
+purpose of a government, was as rigidly exacted under Cromwell as
+under the kings. It was one of the conditions of peace yielded by the
+Dutch after their disastrous war of 1654. Cromwell, a despot in
+everything but name, was keenly alive to all that concerned England's
+honor and strength, and did not stop at barren salutes to promote
+them. Hardly yet possessed of power, the English navy sprang rapidly
+into a new life and vigor under his stern rule. England's rights, or
+reparation for her wrongs, were demanded by her fleets throughout the
+world,--in the Baltic, in the Mediterranean, against the Barbary
+States, in the West Indies; and under him the conquest of Jamaica
+began that extension of her empire, by force of arms, which has gone
+on to our own days. Nor were equally strong peaceful measures for the
+growth of English trade and shipping forgotten. Cromwell's celebrated
+Navigation Act declared that all imports into England or her colonies
+must be conveyed exclusively in vessels belonging to England herself,
+or to the country in which the products carried were grown or
+manufactured. This decree, aimed specially at the Dutch, the common
+carriers of Europe, was resented throughout the commercial world; but
+the benefit to England, in those days of national strife and
+animosity, was so apparent that it lasted long under the monarchy. A
+century and a quarter later we find Nelson, before his famous career
+had begun, showing his zeal for the welfare of England's shipping by
+enforcing this same act in the West Indies against American
+merchant-ships. When Cromwell was dead, and Charles II. sat on the
+throne of his father, this king, false to the English people, was yet
+true to England's greatness and to the traditional policy of her
+government on the sea. In his treacherous intrigues with Louis XIV.,
+by which he aimed to make himself independent of Parliament and
+people, he wrote to Louis: "There are two impediments to a perfect
+union. The first is the great care France is now taking to create a
+commerce and to be an imposing maritime power. This is so great a
+cause of suspicion with us, who can possess importance only by our
+commerce and our naval force, that every step which France takes in
+this direction will perpetuate the jealousy between the two nations."
+In the midst of the negotiations which preceded the detestable attack
+of the two kings upon the Dutch republic, a warm dispute arose as to
+who should command the united fleets of France and England. Charles
+was inflexible on this point. "It is the custom of the English," said
+he, "to command at sea;" and he told the French ambassador plainly
+that, were he to yield, his subjects would not obey him. In the
+projected partition of the United Provinces he reserved for England
+the maritime plunder in positions that controlled the mouths of the
+rivers Scheldt and Meuse. The navy under Charles preserved for some
+time the spirit and discipline impressed on it by Cromwell's iron
+rule; though later it shared in the general decay of _morale_ which
+marked this evil reign. Monk, having by a great strategic blunder sent
+off a fourth of his fleet, found himself in 1666 in presence of a
+greatly superior Dutch force. Disregarding the odds, he attacked
+without hesitation, and for three days maintained the fight with
+honor, though with loss. Such conduct is not war; but in the single
+eye that looked to England's naval prestige and dictated his action,
+common as it was to England's people as well as to her government, has
+lain the secret of final success following many blunders through the
+centuries. Charles's successor, James II., was himself a seaman, and
+had commanded in two great sea-fights. When William III. came to the
+throne, the governments of England and Holland were under one hand,
+and continued united in one purpose against Louis XIV. until the Peace
+of Utrecht in 1713; that is, for a quarter of a century. The English
+government more and more steadily, and with conscious purpose, pushed
+on the extension of her sea dominion and fostered the growth of her
+sea power. While as an open enemy she struck at France upon the sea,
+so as an artful friend, many at least believed, she sapped the power
+of Holland afloat. The treaty between the two countries provided that
+of the sea forces Holland should furnish three eighths, England five
+eighths, or nearly double. Such a provision, coupled with a further
+one which made Holland keep up an army of 102,000 against England's
+40,000, virtually threw the land war on one and the sea war on the
+other. The tendency, whether designed or not, is evident; and at the
+peace, while Holland received compensation by land, England obtained,
+besides commercial privileges in France, Spain, and the Spanish West
+Indies, the important maritime concessions of Gibraltar and Port Mahon
+in the Mediterranean; of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Hudson's Bay
+in North America. The naval power of France and Spain had disappeared;
+that of Holland thenceforth steadily declined. Posted thus in America,
+the West Indies, and the Mediterranean, the English government
+thenceforth moved firmly forward on the path which made of the English
+kingdom the British Empire. For the twenty-five years following the
+Peace of Utrecht, peace was the chief aim of the ministers who
+directed the policy of the two great seaboard nations, France and
+England; but amid all the fluctuations of continental politics in a
+most unsettled period, abounding in petty wars and shifty treaties,
+the eye of England was steadily fixed on the maintenance of her sea
+power. In the Baltic, her fleets checked the attempts of Peter the
+Great upon Sweden, and so maintained a balance of power in that sea,
+from which she drew not only a great trade but the chief part of her
+naval stores, and which the Czar aimed to make a Russian lake. Denmark
+endeavored to establish an East India company aided by foreign
+capital; England and Holland not only forbade their subjects to join
+it, but threatened Denmark, and thus stopped an enterprise they
+thought adverse to their sea interests. In the Netherlands, which by
+the Utrecht Treaty had passed to Austria, a similar East India
+company, having Ostend for its port, was formed, with the emperor's
+sanction. This step, meant to restore to the Low Countries the trade
+lost to them through their natural outlet of the Scheldt, was opposed
+by the sea powers England and Holland; and their greediness for the
+monopoly of trade, helped in this instance by France, stifled this
+company also after a few years of struggling life. In the
+Mediterranean, the Utrecht settlement was disturbed by the emperor of
+Austria, England's natural ally in the then existing state of European
+politics. Backed by England, he, having already Naples, claimed also
+Sicily in exchange for Sardinia. Spain resisted; and her navy, just
+beginning to revive under a vigorous minister, Alberoni, was crushed
+and annihilated by the English fleet off Cape Passaro in 1718; while
+the following year a French army, at the bidding of England, crossed
+the Pyrenees and completed the work by destroying the Spanish
+dock-yards. Thus England, in addition to Gibraltar and Mahon in her
+own hands, saw Naples and Sicily in those of a friend, while an enemy
+was struck down. In Spanish America, the limited privileges to English
+trade, wrung from the necessities of Spain, were abused by an
+extensive and scarcely disguised smuggling system; and when the
+exasperated Spanish government gave way to excesses in the mode of
+suppression, both the minister who counselled peace and the opposition
+which urged war defended their opinions by alleging the effects of
+either upon England's sea power and honor. While England's policy thus
+steadily aimed at widening and strengthening the bases of her sway
+upon the ocean, the other governments of Europe seemed blind to the
+dangers to be feared from her sea growth. The miseries resulting from
+the overweening power of Spain in days long gone by seemed to be
+forgotten; forgotten also the more recent lesson of the bloody and
+costly wars provoked by the ambition and exaggerated power of Louis
+XIV. Under the eyes of the statesmen of Europe there was steadily and
+visibly being built up a third overwhelming power, destined to be used
+as selfishly, as aggressively, though not as cruelly, and much more
+successfully than any that had preceded it. This was the power of the
+sea, whose workings, because more silent than the clash of arms, are
+less often noted, though lying clearly enough on the surface. It can
+scarcely be denied that England's uncontrolled dominion of the seas,
+during almost the whole period chosen for our subject, was by long
+odds the chief among the military factors that determined the final
+issue.[8] So far, however, was this influence from being foreseen
+after Utrecht, that France for twelve years, moved by personal
+exigencies of her rulers, sided with England against Spain; and when
+Fleuri came into power in 1726, though this policy was reversed, the
+navy of France received no attention, and the only blow at England was
+the establishment of a Bourbon prince, a natural enemy to her, upon
+the throne of the two Sicilies in 1736. When war broke out with Spain
+in 1739, the navy of England was in numbers more than equal to the
+combined navies of Spain and France; and during the quarter of a
+century of nearly uninterrupted war that followed, this numerical
+disproportion increased. In these wars England, at first
+instinctively, afterward with conscious purpose under a government
+that recognized her opportunity and the possibilities of her great sea
+power, rapidly built up that mighty colonial empire whose foundations
+were already securely laid in the characteristics of her colonists and
+the strength of her fleets. In strictly European affairs her wealth,
+the outcome of her sea power, made her play a conspicuous part during
+the same period. The system of subsidies, which began half a century
+before in the wars of Marlborough and received its most extensive
+development half a century later in the Napoleonic wars, maintained
+the efforts of her allies, which would have been crippled, if not
+paralyzed, without them. Who can deny that the government which with
+one hand strengthened its fainting allies on the continent with the
+life-blood of money, and with the other drove its own enemies off the
+sea and out of their chief possessions, Canada, Martinique,
+Guadeloupe, Havana, Manila, gave to its country the foremost rôle in
+European politics; and who can fail to see that the power which dwelt
+in that government, with a land narrow in extent and poor in
+resources, sprang directly from the sea? The policy in which the
+English government carried on the war is shown by a speech of Pitt,
+the master-spirit during its course, though he lost office before
+bringing it to an end. Condemning the Peace of 1763, made by his
+political opponent, he said: "France is chiefly, if not exclusively,
+formidable to us as a maritime and commercial power. What we gain in
+this respect is valuable to us, above all, through the injury to her
+which results from it. You have left to France the possibility of
+reviving her navy." Yet England's gains were enormous; her rule in
+India was assured, and all North America east of the Mississippi in
+her hands. By this time the onward path of her government was clearly
+marked out, had assumed the force of a tradition, and was consistently
+followed. The war of the American Revolution was, it is true, a great
+mistake, looked at from the point of view of sea power; but the
+government was led into it insensibly by a series of natural blunders.
+Putting aside political and constitutional considerations, and looking
+at the question as purely military or naval, the case was this: The
+American colonies were large and growing communities at a great
+distance from England. So long as they remained attached to the
+mother-country, as they then were enthusiastically, they formed a
+solid base for her sea power in that part of the world; but their
+extent and population were too great, when coupled with the distance
+from England, to afford any hope of holding them by force, _if_ any
+powerful nations were willing to help them. This "if," however,
+involved a notorious probability; the humiliation of France and Spain
+was so bitter and so recent that they were sure to seek revenge, and
+it was well known that France in particular had been carefully and
+rapidly building up her navy. Had the colonies been thirteen islands,
+the sea power of England would quickly have settled the question; but
+instead of such a physical barrier they were separated only by local
+jealousies which a common danger sufficiently overcame. To enter
+deliberately on such a contest, to try to hold by force so extensive a
+territory, with a large hostile population, so far from home, was to
+renew the Seven Years' War with France and Spain, and with the
+Americans, against, instead of for, England. The Seven Years' War had
+been so heavy a burden that a wise government would have known that
+the added weight could not be borne, and have seen it was necessary to
+conciliate the colonists. The government of the day was not wise, and
+a large element of England's sea power was sacrificed; but by mistake,
+not wilfully; through arrogance, not through weakness.
+
+This steady keeping to a general line of policy was doubtless made
+specially easy for successive English governments by the clear
+indications of the country's conditions. Singleness of purpose was to
+some extent imposed. The firm maintenance of her sea power, the
+haughty determination to make it felt, the wise state of preparation
+in which its military element was kept, were yet more due to that
+feature of her political institutions which practically gave the
+government, during the period in question, into the hands of a
+class,--a landed aristocracy. Such a class, whatever its defects
+otherwise, readily takes up and carries on a sound political
+tradition, is naturally proud of its country's glory, and
+comparatively insensible to the sufferings of the community by which
+that glory is maintained. It readily lays on the pecuniary burden
+necessary for preparation and for endurance of war. Being as a body
+rich, it feels those burdens less. Not being commercial, the sources
+of its own wealth are not so immediately endangered, and it does not
+share that political timidity which characterizes those whose property
+is exposed and business threatened,--the proverbial timidity of
+capital. Yet in England this class was not insensible to anything that
+touched her trade for good or ill. Both houses of Parliament vied in
+careful watchfulness over its extension and protection, and to the
+frequency of their inquiries a naval historian attributes the
+increased efficiency of the executive power in its management of the
+navy. Such a class also naturally imbibes and keeps up a spirit of
+military honor, which is of the first importance in ages when military
+institutions have not yet provided the sufficient substitute in what
+is called _esprit-de-corps_. But although full of class feeling and
+class prejudice, which made themselves felt in the navy as well as
+elsewhere, their practical sense left open the way of promotion to its
+highest honors to the more humbly born; and every age saw admirals who
+had sprung from the lowest of the people. In this the temper of the
+English upper class differed markedly from that of the French. As late
+as 1789, at the outbreak of the Revolution, the French Navy List still
+bore the name of an official whose duty was to verify the proofs of
+noble birth on the part of those intending to enter the naval school.
+
+Since 1815, and especially in our own day, the government of England
+has passed very much more into the hands of the people at large.
+Whether her sea power will suffer therefrom remains to be seen. Its
+broad basis still remains in a great trade, large mechanical
+industries, and an extensive colonial system. Whether a democratic
+government will have the foresight, the keen sensitiveness to national
+position and credit, the willingness to insure its prosperity by
+adequate outpouring of money in times of peace, all which are
+necessary for military preparation, is yet an open question. Popular
+governments are not generally favorable to military expenditure,
+however necessary, and there are signs that England tends to drop
+behind.
+
+It has already been seen that the Dutch Republic, even more than the
+English nation, drew its prosperity and its very life from the sea.
+The character and policy of its government were far less favorable to
+a consistent support of sea power. Composed of seven provinces, with
+the political name of the United Provinces, the actual distribution of
+power may be roughly described to Americans as an exaggerated example
+of States Rights. Each of the maritime provinces had its own fleet and
+its own admiralty, with consequent jealousies. This disorganizing
+tendency was partly counteracted by the great preponderance of the
+Province of Holland, which alone contributed five sixths of the fleet
+and fifty-eight per cent of the taxes, and consequently had a
+proportionate share in directing the national policy. Although
+intensely patriotic, and capable of making the last sacrifices for
+freedom, the commercial spirit of the people penetrated the
+government, which indeed might be called a commercial aristocracy, and
+made it averse to war, and to the expenditures which are necessary in
+preparing for war. As has before been said, it was not until danger
+stared them in the face that the burgomasters were willing to pay for
+their defences. While the republican government lasted, however, this
+economy was practised least of all upon the fleet; and until the death
+of John De Witt, in 1672, and the peace with England in 1674, the
+Dutch navy was in point of numbers and equipment able to make a fair
+show against the combined navies of England and France. Its efficiency
+at this time undoubtedly saved the country from the destruction
+planned by the two kings. With De Witt's death the republic passed
+away, and was followed by the practically monarchical government of
+William of Orange. The life-long policy of this prince, then only
+eighteen, was resistance to Louis XIV. and to the extension of French
+power. This resistance took shape upon the land rather than the
+sea,--a tendency promoted by England's withdrawal from the war. As
+early as 1676, Admiral De Ruyter found the force given him unequal to
+cope with the French alone. With the eyes of the government fixed on
+the land frontier, the navy rapidly declined. In 1688, when William of
+Orange needed a fleet to convoy him to England, the burgomasters of
+Amsterdam objected that the navy was incalculably decreased in
+strength, as well as deprived of its ablest commanders. When king of
+England, William still kept his position as stadtholder, and with it
+his general European policy. He found in England the sea power he
+needed, and used the resources of Holland for the land war. This Dutch
+prince consented that in the allied fleets, in councils of war, the
+Dutch admirals should sit below the junior English captain; and Dutch
+interests at sea were sacrificed as readily as Dutch pride to the
+demands of England. When William died, his policy was still followed
+by the government which succeeded him. Its aims were wholly centred
+upon the land, and at the Peace of Utrecht, which closed a series of
+wars extending over forty years, Holland, having established no sea
+claim, gained nothing in the way of sea resources, of colonial
+extension, or of commerce.
+
+Of the last of these wars an English historian says: "The economy of
+the Dutch greatly hurt their reputation and their trade. Their
+men-of-war in the Mediterranean were always victualled short, and
+their convoys were so weak and ill-provided that for one ship that we
+lost, they lost five, which begat a general notion that we were the
+safer carriers, which certainly had a good effect. Hence it was that
+our trade rather increased than diminished in this war."
+
+From that time Holland ceased to have a great sea power, and rapidly
+lost the leading position among the nations which that power had built
+up. It is only just to say that no policy could have saved from
+decline this small, though determined, nation, in face of the
+persistent enmity of Louis XIV. The friendship of France, insuring
+peace on her landward frontier, would have enabled her, at least for a
+longer time, to dispute with England the dominion of the seas; and as
+allies the navies of the two continental States might have checked the
+growth of the enormous sea power which has just been considered. Sea
+peace between England and Holland was only possible by the virtual
+subjection of one or the other, for both aimed at the same object.
+Between France and Holland it was otherwise; and the fall of Holland
+proceeded, not necessarily from her inferior size and numbers, but
+from faulty policy on the part of the two governments. It does not
+concern us to decide which was the more to blame.
+
+France, admirably situated for the possession of sea power, received a
+definite policy for the guidance of her government from two great
+rulers, Henry IV. and Richelieu. With certain well-defined projects of
+extension eastward upon the land were combined a steady resistance to
+the House of Austria, which then ruled in both Austria and Spain, and
+an equal purpose of resistance to England upon the sea. To further
+this latter end, as well as for other reasons, Holland was to be
+courted as an ally. Commerce and fisheries as the basis of sea power
+were to be encouraged, and a military navy was to be built up.
+Richelieu left what he called his political will, in which he pointed
+out the opportunities of France for achieving sea power, based upon
+her position and resources; and French writers consider him the
+virtual founder of the navy, not merely because he equipped ships, but
+from the breadth of his views and his measures to insure sound
+institutions and steady growth. After his death, Mazarin inherited his
+views and general policy, but not his lofty and martial spirit, and
+during his rule the newly formed navy disappeared. When Louis XIV.
+took the government into his own hands, in 1661, there were but thirty
+ships of war, of which only three had as many as sixty guns. Then
+began a most astonishing manifestation of the work which can be done
+by absolute government ably and systematically wielded. That part of
+the administration which dealt with trade, manufactures, shipping, and
+colonies, was given to a man of great practical genius, Colbert, who
+had served with Richelieu and had drunk in fully his ideas and policy.
+He pursued his aims in a spirit thoroughly French. Everything was to
+be organized, the spring of everything was in the minister's cabinet.
+"To organize producers and merchants as a powerful army, subjected to
+an active and intelligent guidance, so as to secure an industrial
+victory for France by order and unity of efforts, and to obtain the
+best products by imposing on all workmen the processes recognized as
+best by competent men.... To organize seamen and distant commerce in
+large bodies like the manufactures and internal commerce, and to give
+as a support to the commercial power of France a navy established on a
+firm basis and of dimensions hitherto unknown,"--such, we are told,
+were the aims of Colbert as regards two of the three links in the
+chain of sea power. For the third, the colonies at the far end of the
+line, the same governmental direction and organization were evidently
+purposed; for the government began by buying back Canada,
+Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the French West India Islands from the
+parties who then owned them. Here, then, is seen pure, absolute,
+uncontrolled power gathering up into its hands all the reins for the
+guidance of a nation's course, and proposing so to direct it as to
+make, among other things, a great sea power.
+
+To enter into the details of Colbert's action is beyond our purpose.
+It is enough to note the chief part played by the government in
+building up the sea power of the State, and that this very great man
+looked not to any one of the bases on which it rests to the exclusion
+of the others, but embraced them all in his wise and provident
+administration. Agriculture, which increases the products of the
+earth, and manufactures, which multiply the products of man's
+industry; internal trade routes and regulations, by which the exchange
+of products from the interior to the exterior is made easier; shipping
+and customs regulations tending to throw the carrying-trade into
+French hands, and so to encourage the building of French shipping, by
+which the home and colonial products should be carried back and forth;
+colonial administration and development, by which a far-off market
+might be continually growing up to be monopolized by the home trade;
+treaties with foreign States favoring French trade, and imposts on
+foreign ships and products tending to break down that of rival
+nations,--all these means, embracing countless details, were employed
+to build up for France (1) Production; (2) Shipping; (3) Colonies and
+Markets,--in a word, sea power. The study of such a work is simpler
+and easier when thus done by one man, sketched out by a kind of
+logical process, than when slowly wrought by conflicting interests in
+a more complex government. In the few years of Colbert's
+administration is seen the whole theory of sea power put into practice
+in the systematic, centralizing French way; while the illustration of
+the same theory in English and Dutch history is spread over
+generations. Such growth, however, was forced, and depended upon the
+endurance of the absolute power which watched over it; and as Colbert
+was not king, his control lasted only till he lost the king's favor.
+It is, however, most interesting to note the results of his labors in
+the proper field for governmental action--in the navy. It has been
+said that in 1661, when he took office, there were but thirty armed
+ships, of which three only had over sixty guns. In 1666 there were
+seventy, of which fifty were ships of the line and twenty were
+fire-ships; in 1671, from seventy the number had increased to one
+hundred and ninety-six. In 1683 there were one hundred and seven ships
+of from twenty-four to one hundred and twenty guns, twelve of which
+carried over seventy-six guns, besides many smaller vessels. The order
+and system introduced into the dock-yards made them vastly more
+efficient than the English. An English captain, a prisoner in France
+while the effect of Colbert's work still lasted in the hands of his
+son, writes:--
+
+ "When I was first brought prisoner thither, I lay four months in
+ a hospital at Brest for care of my wounds. While there I was
+ astonished at the expedition used in manning and fitting out
+ their ships, which till then I thought could be done nowhere
+ sooner than in England, where we have ten times the shipping,
+ and consequently ten times the seamen, they have in France; but
+ there I saw twenty sail of ships, of about sixty guns each, got
+ ready in twenty days' time; they were brought in and the men
+ were discharged; and upon an order from Paris they were
+ careened, keeled up, rigged, victualled, manned, and out again
+ in the said time with the greatest ease imaginable. I likewise
+ saw a ship of one hundred guns that had all her guns taken out
+ in four or five hours' time; which I never saw done in England
+ in twenty-four hours, and this with the greatest ease and less
+ hazard than at home. This I saw under my hospital window."
+
+A French naval historian cites certain performances which are simply
+incredible, such as that the keel of a galley was laid at four
+o'clock, and that at nine she left port, fully armed. These traditions
+may be accepted as pointing, with the more serious statements of the
+English officer, to a remarkable degree of system and order, and
+abundant facilities for work.
+
+Yet all this wonderful growth, forced by the action of the government,
+withered away like Jonah's gourd when the government's favor was
+withdrawn. Time was not allowed for its roots to strike down deep into
+the life of the nation. Colbert's work was in the direct line of
+Richelieu's policy, and for a time it seemed there would continue the
+course of action which would make France great upon the sea as well as
+predominant upon the land. For reasons which it is not yet necessary
+to give, Louis came to have feelings of bitter enmity against Holland;
+and as these feelings were shared by Charles II., the two kings
+determined on the destruction of the United Provinces. This war, which
+broke out in 1672, though more contrary to natural feeling on the part
+of England, was less of a political mistake for her than for France,
+and especially as regards sea power. France was helping to destroy a
+probable, and certainly an indispensable, ally; England was assisting
+in the ruin of her greatest rival on the sea, at this time, indeed,
+still her commercial superior. France, staggering under debt and utter
+confusion in her finances when Louis mounted the throne, was just
+seeing her way clear in 1672, under Colbert's reforms and their happy
+results. The war, lasting six years, undid the greater part of his
+work. The agricultural classes, manufactures, commerce, and the
+colonies, all were smitten by it; the establishments of Colbert
+languished, and the order he had established in the finances was
+overthrown. Thus the action of Louis--and he alone was the directing
+government of France--struck at the roots of her sea power, and
+alienated her best sea ally. The territory and the military power of
+France were increased, but the springs of commerce and of a peaceful
+shipping had been exhausted in the process; and although the military
+navy was for some years kept up with splendor and efficiency, it soon
+began to dwindle, and by the end of the reign had practically
+disappeared. The same false policy, as regards the sea, marked the
+rest of this reign of fifty-four years. Louis steadily turned his back
+upon the sea interests of France, except the fighting-ships, and
+either could not or would not see that the latter were of little use
+and uncertain life, if the peaceful shipping and the industries, by
+which they were supported, perished. His policy, aiming at supreme
+power in Europe by military strength and territorial extension, forced
+England and Holland into an alliance, which, as has before been said,
+directly drove France off the sea, and indirectly swamped Holland's
+power thereon. Colbert's navy perished, and for the last ten years of
+Louis' life no great French fleet put to sea, though there was
+constant war. The simplicity of form in an absolute monarchy thus
+brought out strongly how great the influence of government can be upon
+both the growth and the decay of sea power.
+
+The latter part of Louis' life thus witnessed that power failing by
+the weakening of its foundations, of commerce, and of the wealth that
+commerce brings. The government that followed, likewise absolute, of
+set purpose and at the demand of England, gave up all pretence of
+maintaining an effective navy. The reason for this was that the new
+king was a minor; and the regent, being bitterly at enmity with the
+king of Spain, to injure him and preserve his own power, entered into
+alliance with England. He aided her to establish Austria, the
+hereditary enemy of France, in Naples and Sicily to the detriment of
+Spain, and in union with her destroyed the Spanish navy and
+dock-yards. Here again is found a personal ruler disregarding the sea
+interests of France, ruining a natural ally, and directly aiding, as
+Louis XIV. indirectly and unintentionally aided, the growth of a
+mistress of the seas. This transient phase of policy passed away with
+the death of the regent in 1726; but from that time until 1760 the
+government of France continued to disregard her maritime interests. It
+is said, indeed, that owing to some wise modifications of her fiscal
+regulations, mainly in the direction of free trade (and due to Law, a
+minister of Scotch birth), commerce with the East and West Indies
+wonderfully increased, and that the islands of Guadeloupe and
+Martinique became very rich and thriving; but both commerce and
+colonies lay at the mercy of England when war came, for the navy fell
+into decay. In 1756, when things were no longer at their worst, France
+had but forty-five ships-of-the-line, England nearly one hundred and
+thirty; and when the forty-five were to be armed and equipped, there
+was found to be neither material nor rigging nor supplies; not even
+enough artillery. Nor was this all.
+
+ "Lack of system in the government," says a French writer,
+ "brought about indifference, and opened the door to disorder and
+ lack of discipline. Never had unjust promotions been so
+ frequent; so also never had more universal discontent been seen.
+ Money and intrigue took the place of all else, and brought in
+ their train commands and power. Nobles and upstarts, with
+ influence at the capital and self-sufficiency in the seaports,
+ thought themselves dispensed with merit. Waste of the revenues
+ of the State and of the dock-yards knew no bounds. Honor and
+ modesty were turned into ridicule. As if the evils were not thus
+ great enough, the ministry took pains to efface the heroic
+ traditions of the past which had escaped the general wreck. To
+ the energetic fights of the great reign succeeded, by order of
+ the court, 'affairs of circumspection.' To preserve to the
+ wasted material a few armed ships, increased opportunity was
+ given to the enemy. From this unhappy principle we were bound to
+ a defensive as advantageous to the enemy as it was foreign to
+ the genius of our people. This circumspection before the enemy,
+ laid down for us by orders, betrayed in the long run the
+ national temper; and the abuse of the system led to acts of
+ indiscipline and defection under fire, of which a single
+ instance would vainly be sought in the previous century."
+
+A false policy of continental extension swallowed up the resources of
+the country, and was doubly injurious because, by leaving defenceless
+its colonies and commerce, it exposed the greatest source of wealth to
+be cut off, as in fact happened. The small squadrons that got to sea
+were destroyed by vastly superior force; the merchant shipping was
+swept away, and the colonies, Canada, Martinique, Guadeloupe, India,
+fell into England's hands. If it did not take too much space,
+interesting extracts might be made, showing the woful misery of
+France, the country that had abandoned the sea, and the growing wealth
+of England amid all her sacrifices and exertions. A contemporary
+writer has thus expressed his view of the policy of France at this
+period:--
+
+ "France, by engaging so heartily as she has done in the German
+ war, has drawn away so much of her attention and her revenue
+ from her navy that it enabled us to give such a blow to her
+ maritime strength as possibly she may never be able to recover.
+ Her engagement in the German war has likewise drawn her from the
+ defence of her colonies, by which means we have conquered some
+ of the most considerable she possessed. It has withdrawn her
+ from the protection of her trade, by which it is entirely
+ destroyed, while that of England has never, in the profoundest
+ peace, been in so flourishing a condition. So that, by embarking
+ in this German war, France has suffered herself to be undone, so
+ far as regards her particular and immediate quarrel with
+ England."
+
+In the Seven Years' War France lost thirty-seven ships-of-the-line and
+fifty-six frigates,--a force three times as numerous as the whole navy
+of the United States at any time in the days of sailing-ships. "For
+the first time since the Middle Ages," says a French historian,
+speaking of the same war, "England had conquered France single-handed,
+almost without allies, France having powerful auxiliaries. She had
+conquered solely by the superiority of her government." Yes; but it
+was by the superiority of her government using the tremendous weapon
+of her sea power,--the reward of a consistent policy perseveringly
+directed to one aim.
+
+The profound humiliation of France, which reached its depths between
+1760 and 1763, at which latter date she made peace, has an instructive
+lesson for the United States in this our period of commercial and
+naval decadence. We have been spared her humiliation; let us hope to
+profit by her subsequent example. Between the same years (1760 and
+1763) the French people rose, as afterward in 1793, and declared they
+would have a navy. "Popular feeling, skilfully directed by the
+government, took up the cry from one end of France to the other, 'The
+navy must be restored.' Gifts of ships were made by cities, by
+corporations, and by private subscriptions. A prodigious activity
+sprang up in the lately silent ports; everywhere ships were building
+or repairing." This activity was sustained; the arsenals were
+replenished, the material of every kind was put on a satisfactory
+footing, the artillery reorganized, and ten thousand trained gunners
+drilled and maintained.
+
+The tone and action of the naval officers of the day instantly felt
+the popular impulse, for which indeed some loftier spirits among them
+had been not only waiting but working. At no time was greater mental
+and professional activity found among French naval officers than just
+then, when their ships had been suffered to rot away by governmental
+inaction. Thus a prominent French officer of our own day writes:--
+
+ "The sad condition of the navy in the reign of Louis XV., by
+ closing to officers the brilliant career of bold enterprises and
+ successful battles, forced them to fall back upon themselves.
+ They drew from study the knowledge they were to put to the proof
+ some years later, thus putting into practice that fine saying of
+ Montesquieu, 'Adversity is our mother, Prosperity our
+ step-mother.'... By the year 1769 was seen in all its splendor
+ that brilliant galaxy of officers whose activity stretched to
+ the ends of the earth, and who embraced in their works and in
+ their investigations all the branches of human knowledge. The
+ Académie de Marine, founded in 1752, was reorganized."[9]
+
+The Académie's first director, a post-captain named Bigot de Morogues,
+wrote an elaborate treatise on naval tactics, the first original work
+on the subject since Paul Hoste's, which it was designed to supersede.
+Morogues must have been studying and formulating his problems in
+tactics in days when France had no fleet, and was unable so much as to
+raise her head at sea under the blows of her enemy. At the same time
+England had no similar book; and an English lieutenant, in 1762, was
+just translating a part of Hoste's great work, omitting by far the
+larger part. It was not until nearly twenty years later that Clerk, a
+Scotch private gentleman, published an ingenious study of naval
+tactics, in which he pointed out to English admirals the system by
+which the French had thwarted their thoughtless and ill-combined
+attacks.[10] "The researches of the Académie de Marine, and the
+energetic impulse which it gave to the labors of officers, were not,
+as we hope to show later, without influence upon the relatively
+prosperous condition in which the navy was at the beginning of the
+American war."
+
+It has already been pointed out that the American War of Independence
+involved a departure from England's traditional and true policy, by
+committing her to a distant land war, while powerful enemies were
+waiting for an opportunity to attack her at sea. Like France in the
+then recent German wars, like Napoleon later in the Spanish war,
+England, through undue self-confidence, was about to turn a friend
+into an enemy, and so expose the real basis of her power to a rude
+proof. The French government, on the other hand, avoided the snare
+into which it had so often fallen. Turning her back on the European
+continent, having the probability of neutrality there, and the
+certainty of alliance with Spain by her side, France advanced to the
+contest with a fine navy and a brilliant, though perhaps relatively
+inexperienced, body of officers. On the other side of the Atlantic she
+had the support of a friendly people, and of her own or allied ports,
+both in the West Indies and on the continent. The wisdom of this
+policy, the happy influence of this action of the government upon her
+sea power, is evident; but the details of the war do not belong to
+this part of the subject. To Americans, the chief interest of that war
+is found upon the land; but to naval officers upon the sea, for it was
+essentially a sea war. The intelligent and systematic efforts of
+twenty years bore their due fruit; for though the warfare afloat ended
+with a great disaster, the combined efforts of the French and Spanish
+fleets undoubtedly bore down England's strength and robbed her of her
+colonies. In the various naval undertakings and battles the honor of
+France was upon the whole maintained; though it is difficult, upon
+consideration of the general subject, to avoid the conclusion that
+the inexperience of French seamen as compared with English, the narrow
+spirit of jealousy shown by the noble corps of officers toward those
+of different antecedents, and above all, the miserable traditions of
+three quarters of a century already alluded to, the miserable policy
+of a government which taught them first to save their ships, to
+economize the material, prevented French admirals from reaping, not
+the mere glory, but the positive advantages that more than once were
+within their grasp. When Monk said the nation that would rule upon the
+sea must always attack, he set the key-note to England's naval policy;
+and had the instructions of the French government consistently
+breathed the same spirit, the war of 1778 might have ended sooner and
+better than it did. It seems ungracious to criticise the conduct of a
+service to which, under God, our nation owes that its birth was not a
+miscarriage; but writers of its own country abundantly reflect the
+spirit of the remark. A French officer who served afloat during this
+war, in a work of calm and judicial tone, says:--
+
+ "What must the young officers have thought who were at Sandy
+ Hook with D'Estaing, at St. Christopher with De Grasse, even
+ those who arrived at Rhode Island with De Ternay, when they saw
+ that these officers were not tried at their return?"[11]
+
+Again, another French officer, of much later date, justifies the
+opinion expressed, when speaking of the war of the American Revolution
+in the following terms:--
+
+ "It was necessary to get rid of the unhappy prejudices of the
+ days of the regency and of Louis XV.; but the mishaps of which
+ they were full were too recent to be forgotten by our ministers.
+ Thanks to a wretched hesitation, fleets, which had rightly
+ alarmed England, became reduced to ordinary proportions.
+ Intrenching themselves in a false economy, the ministry claimed
+ that, by reason of the excessive expenses necessary to maintain
+ the fleet, the admirals must be ordered to maintain the
+ '_greatest circumspection_,' as though in war half measures have
+ not always led to disasters. So, too, the orders given to our
+ squadron chiefs were to keep the sea as long as possible,
+ without engaging in actions which might cause the loss of
+ vessels difficult to replace; so that more than once complete
+ victories, which would have crowned the skill of our admirals
+ and the courage of our captains, were changed into successes of
+ little importance. A system which laid down as a principle that
+ an admiral should not use the force in his hands, which sent him
+ against the enemy with the foreordained purpose of receiving
+ rather than making the attack, a system which sapped moral power
+ to save material resources, must have unhappy results.... It is
+ certain that this deplorable system was one of the causes of the
+ lack of discipline and startling defections which marked the
+ periods of Louis XVI., of the [first] Republic, and of the
+ [first] Empire."[12]
+
+Within ten years of the peace of 1783 came the French Revolution; but
+that great upheaval which shook the foundations of States, loosed the
+ties of social order, and drove out of the navy nearly all the trained
+officers of the monarchy who were attached to the old state of things,
+did not free the French navy from a false system. It was easier to
+overturn the form of government than to uproot a deep-seated
+tradition. Hear again a third French officer, of the highest rank and
+literary accomplishments, speaking of the inaction of Villeneuve, the
+admiral who commanded the French rear at the battle of the Nile, and
+who did not leave his anchors while the head of the column was being
+destroyed:--
+
+ "A day was to come [Trafalgar] in which Villeneuve in his turn,
+ like De Grasse before him, and like Duchayla, would complain of
+ being abandoned by part of his fleet. We have come to suspect
+ some secret reason for this fatal coincidence. It is not natural
+ that among so many honorable men there should so often be found
+ admirals and captains incurring such a reproach. If the name of
+ some of them is to this very day sadly associated with the
+ memory of our disasters, we may be sure the fault is not wholly
+ their own. We must rather blame the nature of the operations in
+ which they were engaged, and that system of defensive war
+ prescribed by the French government, which Pitt, in the English
+ Parliament, proclaimed to be the forerunner of certain ruin.
+ That system, when we wished to renounce it, had already
+ penetrated our habits; it had, so to say, weakened our arms and
+ paralyzed our self-reliance. Too often did our squadrons leave
+ port with a special mission to fulfil, and with the intention of
+ avoiding the enemy; to fall in with him was at once a piece of
+ bad luck. It was thus that our ships went into action; they
+ submitted to it instead of forcing it.... Fortune would have
+ hesitated longer between the two fleets, and not have borne in
+ the end so heavily against ours, if Brueys, meeting Nelson half
+ way, could have gone out to fight him. This fettered and timid
+ war, which Villaret and Martin had carried on, had lasted long,
+ thanks to the circumspection of some English admirals and the
+ traditions of the old tactics. It was with these traditions that
+ the battle of the Nile had broken; the hour for decisive action
+ had come."[13]
+
+Some years later came Trafalgar, and again the government of France
+took up a new policy with the navy. The author last quoted speaks
+again:--
+
+ "The emperor, whose eagle glance traced plans of campaign for
+ his fleets as for his armies, was wearied by these unexpected
+ reverses. He turned his eyes from the one field of battle in
+ which fortune was faithless to him, and decided to pursue
+ England elsewhere than upon the seas; he undertook to rebuild
+ his navy, but without giving it any part in the struggle which
+ became more furious than ever.... Nevertheless, far from
+ slackening, the activity of our dock-yards redoubled. Every year
+ ships-of-the-line were either laid down or added to the fleet.
+ Venice and Genoa, under his control, saw their old splendors
+ rise again, and from the shores of the Elbe to the head of the
+ Adriatic all the ports of the continent emulously seconded the
+ creative thought of the emperor. Numerous squadrons were
+ assembled in the Scheldt, in Brest Roads, and in Toulon.... But
+ to the end the emperor refused to give this navy, full of ardor
+ and self-reliance, an opportunity to measure its strength with
+ the enemy.... Cast down by constant reverses, he had kept up our
+ armed ships only to oblige our enemies to blockades whose
+ enormous cost must end by exhausting their finances."
+
+When the empire fell, France had one hundred and three
+ships-of-the-line and fifty-five frigates.
+
+To turn now from the particular lessons drawn from the history of the
+past to the general question of the influence of government upon the
+sea career of its people, it is seen that that influence can work in
+two distinct but closely related ways.
+
+First, in peace: The government by its policy can favor the natural
+growth of a people's industries and its tendencies to seek adventure
+and gain by way of the sea; or it can try to develop such industries
+and such sea-going bent, when they do not naturally exist; or, on the
+other hand, the government may by mistaken action check and fetter the
+progress which the people left to themselves would make. In any one of
+these ways the influence of the government will be felt, making or
+marring the sea power of the country in the matter of peaceful
+commerce; upon which alone, it cannot be too often insisted, a
+thoroughly strong navy can be based.
+
+Secondly, for war: The influence of the government will be felt in its
+most legitimate manner in maintaining an armed navy, of a size
+commensurate with the growth of its shipping and the importance of the
+interests connected with it. More important even than the size of the
+navy is the question of its institutions, favoring a healthful spirit
+and activity, and providing for rapid development in time of war by an
+adequate reserve of men and of ships and by measures for drawing out
+that general reserve power which has before been pointed to, when
+considering the character and pursuits of the people. Undoubtedly
+under this second head of warlike preparation must come the
+maintenance of suitable naval stations, in those distant parts of the
+world to which the armed shipping must follow the peaceful vessels of
+commerce. The protection of such stations must depend either upon
+direct military force, as do Gibraltar and Malta, or upon a
+surrounding friendly population, such as the American colonists once
+were to England, and, it may be presumed, the Australian colonists now
+are. Such friendly surroundings and backing, joined to a reasonable
+military provision, are the best of defences, and when combined with
+decided preponderance at sea, make a scattered and extensive empire,
+like that of England, secure; for while it is true that an unexpected
+attack may cause disaster in some one quarter, the actual superiority
+of naval power prevents such disaster from being general or
+irremediable. History has sufficiently proved this. England's naval
+bases have been in all parts of the world; and her fleets have at once
+protected them, kept open the communications between them, and relied
+upon them for shelter.
+
+Colonies attached to the mother-country afford, therefore, the surest
+means of supporting abroad the sea power of a country. In peace, the
+influence of the government should be felt in promoting by all means a
+warmth of attachment and a unity of interest which will make the
+welfare of one the welfare of all, and the quarrel of one the quarrel
+of all; and in war, or rather for war, by inducing such measures of
+organization and defence as shall be felt by all to be a fair
+distribution of a burden of which each reaps the benefit.
+
+Such colonies the United States has not and is not likely to have. As
+regards purely military naval stations, the feeling of her people was
+probably accurately expressed by an historian of the English navy a
+hundred years ago, speaking then of Gibraltar and Port Mahon.
+"Military governments," said he, "agree so little with the industry of
+a trading people, and are in themselves so repugnant to the genius of
+the British people, that I do not wonder that men of good sense and of
+all parties have inclined to give up these, as Tangiers was given up."
+Having therefore no foreign establishments, either colonial or
+military, the ships of war of the United States, in war, will be like
+land birds, unable to fly far from their own shores. To provide
+resting-places for them, where they can coal and repair, would be one
+of the first duties of a government proposing to itself the
+development of the power of the nation at sea.
+
+As the practical object of this inquiry is to draw from the lessons of
+history inferences applicable to one's own country and service, it is
+proper now to ask how far the conditions of the United States involve
+serious danger, and call for action on the part of the government, in
+order to build again her sea power. It will not be too much to say
+that the action of the government since the Civil War, and up to this
+day, has been effectively directed solely to what has been called the
+first link in the chain which makes sea power. Internal development,
+great production, with the accompanying aim and boast of
+self-sufficingness, such has been the object, such to some extent the
+result. In this the government has faithfully reflected the bent of
+the controlling elements of the country, though it is not always easy
+to feel that such controlling elements are truly representative, even
+in a free country. However that may be, there is no doubt that,
+besides having no colonies, the intermediate link of a peaceful
+shipping, and the interests involved in it, are now likewise lacking.
+In short, the United States has only one link of the three.
+
+The circumstances of naval war have changed so much within the last
+hundred years, that it may be doubted whether such disastrous effects
+on the one hand, or such brilliant prosperity on the other, as were
+seen in the wars between England and France, could now recur. In her
+secure and haughty sway of the seas England imposed a yoke on neutrals
+which will never again be borne; and the principle that the flag
+covers the goods is forever secured. The commerce of a belligerent can
+therefore now be safely carried on in neutral ships, except when
+contraband of war or to blockaded ports; and as regards the latter, it
+is also certain that there will be no more paper blockades. Putting
+aside therefore the question of defending her seaports from capture or
+contribution, as to which there is practical unanimity in theory and
+entire indifference in practice, what need has the United States of
+sea power? Her commerce is even now carried on by others; why should
+her people desire that which, if possessed, must be defended at great
+cost? So far as this question is economical, it is outside the scope
+of this work; but conditions which may entail suffering and loss on
+the country by war are directly pertinent to it. Granting therefore
+that the foreign trade of the United States, going and coming, is on
+board ships which an enemy cannot touch except when bound to a
+blockaded port, what will constitute an efficient blockade? The
+present definition is, that it is such as to constitute a manifest
+danger to a vessel seeking to enter or leave the port. This is
+evidently very elastic. Many can remember that during the Civil War,
+after a night attack on the United States fleet off Charleston, the
+Confederates next morning sent out a steamer with some foreign consuls
+on board, who so far satisfied themselves that no blockading vessel
+was in sight that they issued a declaration to that effect. On the
+strength of this declaration some Southern authorities claimed that
+the blockade was technically broken, and could not be technically
+re-established without a new notification. Is it necessary, to
+constitute a real danger to blockade-runners, that the blockading
+fleet should be in sight? Half a dozen fast steamers, cruising twenty
+miles off-shore between the New Jersey and Long Island coast, would be
+a very real danger to ships seeking to go in or out by the principal
+entrance to New York; and similar positions might effectively blockade
+Boston, the Delaware, and the Chesapeake. The main body of the
+blockading fleet, prepared not only to capture merchant-ships but to
+resist military attempts to break the blockade, need not be within
+sight, nor in a position known to the shore. The bulk of Nelson's
+fleet was fifty miles from Cadiz two days before Trafalgar, with a
+small detachment watching close to the harbor. The allied fleet began
+to get under way at 7 A.M., and Nelson, even under the conditions of
+those days, knew it by 9.30. The English fleet at that distance was a
+very real danger to its enemy. It seems possible, in these days of
+submarine telegraphs, that the blockading forces in-shore and
+off-shore, and from one port to another, might be in telegraphic
+communication with one another along the whole coast of the United
+States, readily giving mutual support; and if, by some fortunate
+military combination, one detachment were attacked in force, it could
+warn the others and retreat upon them. Granting that such a blockade
+off one port were broken on one day, by fairly driving away the ships
+maintaining it, the notification of its being re-established could be
+cabled all over the world the next. To avoid such blockades there must
+be a military force afloat that will at all times so endanger a
+blockading fleet that it can by no means keep its place. Then neutral
+ships, except those laden with contraband of war, can come and go
+freely, and maintain the commercial relations of the country with the
+world outside.
+
+It may be urged that, with the extensive sea-coast of the United
+States, a blockade of the whole line cannot be effectively kept up. No
+one will more readily concede this than officers who remember how the
+blockade of the Southern coast alone was maintained. But in the
+present condition of the navy, and, it may be added, with any
+additions not exceeding those so far proposed by the government,[14]
+the attempt to blockade Boston, New York, the Delaware, the
+Chesapeake, and the Mississippi, in other words, the great centres of
+export and import, would not entail upon one of the large maritime
+nations efforts greater than have been made before. England has at the
+same time blockaded Brest, the Biscay coast, Toulon, and Cadiz, when
+there were powerful squadrons lying within the harbors. It is true
+that commerce in neutral ships can then enter other ports of the
+United States than those named; but what a dislocation of the carrying
+traffic of the country, what failure of supplies at times, what
+inadequate means of transport by rail or water, of dockage, of
+lighterage, of warehousing, will be involved in such an enforced
+change of the ports of entry! Will there be no money loss, no
+suffering, consequent upon this? And when with much pain and expense
+these evils have been partially remedied, the enemy may be led to stop
+the new inlets as he did the old. The people of the United States will
+certainly not starve, but they may suffer grievously. As for supplies
+which are contraband of war, is there not reason to fear that the
+United States is not now able to go alone if an emergency should
+arise?
+
+The question is eminently one in which the influence of the government
+should make itself felt, to build up for the nation a navy which, if
+not capable of reaching distant countries, shall at least be able to
+keep clear the chief approaches to its own. The eyes of the country
+have for a quarter of a century been turned from the sea; the results
+of such a policy and of its opposite will be shown in the instance of
+France and of England. Without asserting a narrow parallelism between
+the case of the United States and either of these, it may safely be
+said that it is essential to the welfare of the whole country that the
+conditions of trade and commerce should remain, as far as possible,
+unaffected by an external war. In order to do this, the enemy must be
+kept not only out of our ports, but far away from our coasts.[15]
+
+Can this navy be had without restoring the merchant shipping? It is
+doubtful. History has proved that such a purely military sea power can
+be built up by a despot, as was done by Louis XIV.; but though so fair
+seeming, experience showed that his navy was like a growth which
+having no root soon withers away. But in a representative government
+any military expenditure must have a strongly represented interest
+behind it, convinced of its necessity. Such an interest in sea power
+does not exist, cannot exist here without action by the government.
+How such a merchant shipping should be built up, whether by subsidies
+or by free trade, by constant administration of tonics or by free
+movement in the open air, is not a military but an economical
+question. Even had the United States a great national shipping, it may
+be doubted whether a sufficient navy would follow; the distance which
+separates her from other great powers, in one way a protection, is
+also a snare. The motive, if any there be, which will give the United
+States a navy, is probably now quickening in the Central American
+Isthmus. Let us hope it will not come to the birth too late.
+
+Here concludes the general discussion of the principal elements which
+affect, favorably or unfavorably, the growth of sea power in nations.
+The aim has been, first to consider those elements in their natural
+tendency for or against, and then to illustrate by particular examples
+and by the experience of the past. Such discussions, while undoubtedly
+embracing a wider field, yet fall mainly within the province of
+strategy, as distinguished from tactics. The considerations and
+principles which enter into them belong to the unchangeable, or
+unchanging, order of things, remaining the same, in cause and effect,
+from age to age. They belong, as it were, to the Order of Nature, of
+whose stability so much is heard in our day; whereas tactics, using as
+its instruments the weapons made by man, shares in the change and
+progress of the race from generation to generation. From time to time
+the superstructure of tactics has to be altered or wholly torn down;
+but the old foundations of strategy so far remain, as though laid upon
+a rock. There will next be examined the general history of Europe and
+America, with particular reference to the effect exercised upon that
+history, and upon the welfare of the people, by sea power in its broad
+sense. From time to time, as occasion offers, the aim will be to
+recall and reinforce the general teaching, already elicited, by
+particular illustrations. The general tenor of the study will
+therefore be strategical, in that broad definition of naval strategy
+which has before been quoted and accepted: "Naval strategy has for its
+end to found, support, and increase, as well in peace as in war, the
+sea power of a country." In the matter of particular battles, while
+freely admitting that the change of details has made obsolete much of
+their teaching, the attempt will be made to point out where the
+application or neglect of true general principles has produced
+decisive effects; and, other things being equal, those actions will be
+preferred which, from their association with the names of the most
+distinguished officers, may be presumed to show how far just tactical
+ideas obtained in a particular age or a particular service. It will
+also be desirable, where analogies between ancient and modern weapons
+appear on the surface, to derive such probable lessons as they offer,
+without laying undue stress upon the points of resemblance. Finally,
+it must be remembered that, among all changes, the nature of man
+remains much the same; the personal equation, though uncertain in
+quantity and quality in the particular instance, is sure always to be
+found.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[7] By a base of permanent operations "is understood a country whence
+come all the resources, where are united the great lines of
+communication by land and water, where are the arsenals and armed
+posts."
+
+[8] An interesting proof of the weight attributed to the naval power
+of Great Britain by a great military authority will be found in the
+opening chapter of Jomini's "History of the Wars of the French
+Revolution." He lays down, as a fundamental principle of European
+policy, that an unlimited expansion of naval force should not be
+permitted to any nation which cannot be approached by land,--a
+description which can apply only to Great Britain.
+
+[9] Gougeard: La Marine de Guerre; Richelieu et Colbert.
+
+[10] Whatever may be thought of Clerk's claim to originality in
+constructing a system of naval tactics, and it has been seriously
+impugned, there can be no doubt that his criticisms on the past were
+sound. So far as the author knows, he in this respect deserves credit
+for an originality remarkable in one who had the training neither of a
+seaman nor of a military man.
+
+[11] La Serre: Essais Hist. et Crit. sur la Marine Française.
+
+[12] Lapeyrouse-Bonfils: Hist. de la Marine Française.
+
+[13] Jurien de la Gravière: Guerres Maritimes.
+
+[14] Since the above was written, the secretary of the navy, in his
+report for 1889, has recommended a fleet which would make such a
+blockade as here suggested very hazardous.
+
+[15] The word "defence" in war involves two ideas, which for the sake
+of precision in thought should be kept separated in the mind. There is
+defence pure and simple, which strengthens itself and awaits attack.
+This may be called passive defence. On the other hand, there is a view
+of defence which asserts that safety for one's self, the real object
+of defensive preparation, is best secured by attacking the enemy. In
+the matter of sea-coast defence, the former method is exemplified by
+stationary fortifications, submarine mines, and generally all immobile
+works destined simply to stop an enemy if he tries to enter. The
+second method comprises all those means and weapons which do not wait
+for attack, but go to meet the enemy's fleet, whether it be but for a
+few miles, or whether to his own shores. Such a defence may seem to be
+really offensive war, but it is not; it becomes offensive only when
+its object of attack is changed from the enemy's fleet to the enemy's
+country. England defended her own coasts and colonies by stationing
+her fleets off the French ports, to fight the French fleet if it came
+out. The United States in the Civil War stationed her fleets off the
+Southern ports, not because she feared for her own, but to break down
+the Confederacy by isolation from the rest of the world, and
+ultimately by attacking the ports. The methods were the same; but the
+purpose in one case was defensive, in the other offensive.
+
+The confusion of the two ideas leads to much unnecessary wrangling as
+to the proper sphere of army and navy in coast-defence. Passive
+defences belong to the army; everything that moves in the water to the
+navy, which has the prerogative of the offensive defence. If seamen
+are used to garrison forts, they become part of the land forces, as
+surely as troops, when embarked as part of the complement, become part
+of the sea forces.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ STATE OF EUROPE IN 1660.--SECOND ANGLO-DUTCH WAR, 1665-1667. SEA
+ BATTLES OF LOWESTOFT AND OF THE FOUR DAYS.
+
+
+The period at which our historical survey is to begin has been loosely
+stated as the middle of the seventeenth century. The year 1660 will
+now be taken as the definite date at which to open. In May of that
+year Charles II. was restored to the English throne amid the general
+rejoicing of the people. In March of the following year, upon the
+death of Cardinal Mazarin, Louis XIV. assembled his ministers and said
+to them: "I have summoned you to tell you that it has pleased me
+hitherto to permit my affairs to be governed by the late cardinal; I
+shall in future be my own prime minister. I direct that no decree be
+sealed except by my orders, and I order the secretaries of State and
+the superintendent of the finances to sign nothing without my
+command." The personal government thus assumed was maintained, in fact
+as well as in name, for over half a century.
+
+Within one twelvemonth then are seen, setting forward upon a new stage
+of national life, after a period of confusion more or less prolonged,
+the two States which, amid whatever inequalities, have had the first
+places in the sea history of modern Europe and America, indeed, of the
+world at large. Sea history, however, is but one factor in that
+general advance and decay of nations which is called their history;
+and if sight be lost of the other factors to which it is so closely
+related, a distorted view, either exaggerated or the reverse, of its
+importance will be formed. It is with the belief that that importance
+is vastly underrated, if not practically lost sight of, by people
+unconnected with the sea, and particularly by the people of the United
+States in our own day, that this study has been undertaken.
+
+The date taken, 1660, followed closely another which marked a great
+settlement of European affairs, setting the seal of treaty upon the
+results of a general war, known to history as the Thirty Years' War.
+This other date was that of the Treaty of Westphalia, or Munster, in
+1648. In this the independence of the Dutch United Provinces, long
+before practically assured, was formally acknowledged by Spain; and it
+being followed in 1659 by the Treaty of the Pyrenees between France
+and Spain, the two gave to Europe a state of general external peace,
+destined soon to be followed by a series of almost universal wars,
+which lasted as long as Louis XIV. lived,--wars which were to induce
+profound changes in the map of Europe; during which new States were to
+arise, others to decay, and all to undergo large modifications, either
+in extent of dominion or in political power. In these results maritime
+power, directly or indirectly, had a great share.
+
+We must first look at the general condition of European States at the
+time from which the narrative starts. In the struggles, extending over
+nearly a century, whose end is marked by the Peace of Westphalia, the
+royal family known as the House of Austria had been the great
+overwhelming power which all others feared. During the long reign of
+the Emperor Charles V., who abdicated a century before, the head of
+that house had united in his own person the two crowns of Austria and
+Spain, which carried with them, among other possessions, the countries
+we now know as Holland and Belgium, together with a preponderating
+influence in Italy. After his abdication the two great monarchies of
+Austria and Spain were separated; but though ruled by different
+persons, they were still in the same family, and tended toward that
+unity of aim and sympathy which marked dynastic connections in that
+and the following century. To this bond of union was added that of a
+common religion. During the century before the Peace of Westphalia,
+the extension of family power, and the extension of the religion
+professed, were the two strongest motives of political action. This
+was the period of the great religious wars which arrayed nation
+against nation, principality against principality, and often, in the
+same nation, faction against faction. Religious persecution caused the
+revolt of the Protestant Dutch Provinces against Spain, which issued,
+after eighty years of more or less constant war, in the recognition of
+their independence. Religious discord, amounting to civil war at
+times, distracted France during the greater part of the same period,
+profoundly affecting not only her internal but her external policy.
+These were the days of St. Bartholomew, of the religious murder of
+Henry IV., of the siege of La Rochelle, of constant intriguing between
+Roman Catholic Spain and Roman Catholic Frenchmen. As the religious
+motive, acting in a sphere to which it did not naturally belong, and
+in which it had no rightful place, died away, the political
+necessities and interests of States began to have juster weight; not
+that they had been wholly lost sight of in the mean time, but the
+religious animosities had either blinded the eyes, or fettered the
+action, of statesmen. It was natural that in France, one of the
+greatest sufferers from religious passions, owing to the number and
+character of the Protestant minority, this reaction should first and
+most markedly be seen. Placed between Spain and the German States,
+among which Austria stood foremost without a rival, internal union and
+checks upon the power of the House of Austria were necessities of
+political existence. Happily, Providence raised up to her in close
+succession two great rulers, Henry IV. and Richelieu,--men in whom
+religion fell short of bigotry, and who, when forced to recognize it
+in the sphere of politics, did so as masters and not as slaves. Under
+them French statesmanship received a guidance, which Richelieu
+formulated as a tradition, and which moved on the following general
+lines,--(1) Internal union of the kingdom, appeasing or putting down
+religious strife and centralizing authority in the king; (2)
+Resistance to the power of the House of Austria, which actually and
+necessarily carried with it alliance with Protestant German States and
+with Holland; (3) Extension of the boundaries of France to the
+eastward, at the expense mainly of Spain, which then possessed not
+only the present Belgium, but other provinces long since incorporated
+with France; and (4) The creation and development of a great sea
+power, adding to the wealth of the kingdom, and intended specially to
+make head against France's hereditary enemy, England; for which end
+again the alliance with Holland was to be kept in view. Such were the
+broad outlines of policy laid down by statesmen in the front rank of
+genius for the guidance of that country whose people have, not without
+cause, claimed to be the most complete exponent of European
+civilization, foremost in the march of progress, combining political
+advance with individual development. This tradition, carried on by
+Mazarin, was received from him by Louis XIV.; it will be seen how far
+he was faithful to it, and what were the results to France of his
+action. Meanwhile it may be noted that of these four elements
+necessary to the greatness of France, sea power was one; and as the
+second and third were practically one in the means employed, it may be
+said that sea power was one of the two great means by which France's
+_external_ greatness was to be maintained. England on the sea, Austria
+on the land, indicated the direction that French effort was to take.
+
+As regards the condition of France in 1660, and her readiness to move
+onward in the road marked by Richelieu, it may be said that internal
+peace was secured, the power of the nobles wholly broken, religious
+discords at rest; the tolerant edict of Nantes was still in force,
+while the remaining Protestant discontent had been put down by the
+armed hand. All power was absolutely centred in the throne. In other
+respects, though the kingdom was at peace, the condition was less
+satisfactory. There was practically no navy; commerce, internal and
+external, was not prosperous; the finances were in disorder; the army
+small.
+
+Spain, the nation before which all others had trembled less than a
+century before, was now long in decay and scarcely formidable; the
+central weakness had spread to all parts of the administration. In
+extent of territory, however, she was still great. The Spanish
+Netherlands still belonged to her; she held Naples, Sicily, and
+Sardinia; Gibraltar had not yet fallen into English hands; her vast
+possessions in America--with the exception of Jamaica, conquered by
+England a few years before--were still untouched. The condition of her
+sea power, both for peace and war, has been already alluded to. Many
+years before, Richelieu had contracted a temporary alliance with
+Spain, by virtue of which she placed forty ships at his disposal; but
+the bad condition of the vessels, for the most part ill armed and ill
+commanded, compelled their withdrawal. The navy of Spain was then in
+full decay, and its weakness did not escape the piercing eye of the
+cardinal. An encounter which took place between the Spanish and Dutch
+fleets in 1639 shows most plainly the state of degradation into which
+this once proud navy had fallen.
+
+ "Her navy at this time," says the narrative quoted, "met one of
+ those shocks, a succession of which during this war degraded her
+ from her high station of mistress of the seas in both
+ hemispheres, to a contemptible rank among maritime powers. The
+ king was fitting out a powerful fleet to carry the war to the
+ coasts of Sweden, and for its equipment had commanded a
+ reinforcement of men and provisions to be sent from Dunkirk. A
+ fleet accordingly set sail, but were attacked by Von Tromp, some
+ captured, the remainder forced to retire within the harbor
+ again. Soon after, Tromp seized three English [neutral] ships
+ carrying 1070 Spanish soldiers from Cadiz to Dunkirk; he took
+ the troops out, but let the ships go free. Leaving seventeen
+ vessels to blockade Dunkirk, Tromp with the remaining twelve
+ advanced to meet the enemy's fleet on its arrival. It was soon
+ seen entering the Straits of Dover to the number of sixty-seven
+ sail, and having two thousand troops. Being joined by De Witt
+ with four more ships, Tromp with his small force made a resolute
+ attack upon the enemy. The fight lasted till four P.M., when the
+ Spanish admiral took refuge in the Downs. Tromp determined to
+ engage if they should come out; but Oquendo with his powerful
+ fleet, many of which carried from sixty to a hundred guns,
+ suffered himself to be blockaded; and the English admiral told
+ Tromp he was ordered to join the Spaniards if hostilities began.
+ Tromp sent home for instructions, and the action of England only
+ served to call out the vast maritime powers of the Dutch. Tromp
+ was rapidly reinforced to ninety-six sail and twelve fire-ships,
+ and ordered to attack. Leaving a detached squadron to observe
+ the English, and to attack them if they helped the Spaniards, he
+ began the fight embarrassed by a thick fog, under cover of which
+ the Spaniards cut their cables to escape. Many running too close
+ to shore went aground, and most of the remainder attempting to
+ retreat were sunk, captured, or driven on the French coast.
+ Never was victory more complete."[16]
+
+When a navy submits to such a line of action, all tone and pride must
+have departed; but the navy only shared in the general decline which
+made Spain henceforward have an ever lessening weight in the policy of
+Europe.
+
+ "In the midst of the splendors of her court and language," says
+ Guizot, "the Spanish government felt itself weak, and sought to
+ hide its weakness under its immobility. Philip IV. and his
+ minister, weary of striving only to be conquered, looked but for
+ the security of peace, and only sought to put aside all
+ questions which would call for efforts of which they felt
+ themselves incapable. Divided and enervated, the house of
+ Austria had even less ambition than power, and except when
+ absolutely forced, a pompous inertia became the policy of the
+ successors of Charles V."[17]
+
+Such was the Spain of that day. That part of the Spanish dominions
+which was then known as the Low Countries, or the Roman Catholic
+Netherlands (our modern Belgium), was about to be a fruitful source of
+variance between France and her natural ally, the Dutch Republic. This
+State, whose political name was the United Provinces, had now reached
+the summit of its influence and power,--a power based, as has already
+been explained, wholly upon the sea, and upon the use of that element
+made by the great maritime and commercial genius of the Dutch people.
+A recent French author thus describes the commercial and colonial
+conditions, at the accession of Louis XIV., of this people, which
+beyond any other in modern times, save only England, has shown how the
+harvest of the sea can lift up to wealth and power a country
+intrinsically weak and without resources:--
+
+ "Holland had become the Phoenicia of modern times. Mistresses of
+ the Scheldt, the United Provinces closed the outlets of Antwerp
+ to the sea, and inherited the commercial power of that rich
+ city, which an ambassador of Venice in the fifteenth century had
+ compared to Venice herself. They received besides in their
+ principal cities the workingmen of the Low Countries who fled
+ from Spanish tyranny of conscience. The manufactures of clothes,
+ linen stuffs, etc., which employed six hundred thousand souls,
+ opened new sources of gain to a people previously content with
+ the trade in cheese and fish. Fisheries alone had already
+ enriched them. The herring fishery supported nearly one fifth of
+ the population of Holland, producing three hundred thousand tons
+ of salt-fish, and bringing in more than eight million francs
+ annually.
+
+ "The naval and commercial power of the republic developed
+ rapidly. The merchant fleet of Holland alone numbered 10,000
+ sail, 168,000 seamen, and supported 260,000 inhabitants. She had
+ taken possession of the greater part of the European
+ carrying-trade, and had added thereto, since the peace, all the
+ carriage of merchandise between America and Spain, did the same
+ service for the French ports, and maintained an importation
+ traffic of thirty-six million francs. The north countries,
+ Brandenburg, Denmark, Sweden, Muscovy, Poland, access to which
+ was opened by the Baltic to the Provinces, were for them an
+ inexhaustible market of exchange. They fed it by the produce
+ they sold there, and by purchase of the products of the
+ North,--wheat, timber, copper, hemp, and furs. The total value
+ of merchandise yearly shipped in Dutch bottoms, in all seas,
+ exceeded a thousand million francs. The Dutch had made
+ themselves, to use a contemporary phrase, the wagoners of all
+ seas."[18]
+
+It was through its colonies that the republic had been able thus to
+develop its sea trade. It had the monopoly of all the products of the
+East. Produce and spices from Asia were by her brought to Europe of a
+yearly value of sixteen million francs. The powerful East India
+Company, founded in 1602, had built up in Asia an empire, with
+possessions taken from the Portuguese. Mistress in 1650 of the Cape of
+Good Hope, which guaranteed it a stopping-place for its ships, it
+reigned as a sovereign in Ceylon, and upon the coasts of Malabar and
+Coromandel. It had made Batavia its seat of government, and extended
+its traffic to China and Japan. Meanwhile the West India Company, of
+more rapid rise, but less durable, had manned eight hundred ships of
+war and trade. It had used them to seize the remnants of Portuguese
+power upon the shores of Guinea, as well as in Brazil.
+
+The United Provinces had thus become the warehouse wherein were
+collected the products of all nations.
+
+The colonies of the Dutch at this time were scattered throughout the
+eastern seas, in India, in Malacca, in Java, the Moluccas, and various
+parts of the vast archipelago lying to the northward of Australia.
+They had possessions on the west coast of Africa, and as yet the
+colony of New Amsterdam remained in their hands. In South America the
+Dutch West India Company had owned nearly three hundred leagues of
+coast from Bahia in Brazil northward; but much had recently escaped
+from their hands.
+
+The United Provinces owed their consideration and power to their
+wealth and their fleets. The sea, which beats like an inveterate enemy
+against their shores, had been subdued and made a useful servant; the
+land was to prove their destruction. A long and fierce strife had been
+maintained with an enemy more cruel than the sea,--the Spanish
+kingdom; the successful ending, with its delusive promise of rest and
+peace, but sounded the knell of the Dutch Republic. So long as the
+power of Spain remained unimpaired, or at least great enough to keep
+up the terror that she had long inspired, it was to the interest of
+England and of France, both sufferers from Spanish menace and
+intrigue, that the United Provinces should be strong and independent.
+When Spain fell,--and repeated humiliations showed that her weakness
+was real and not seeming,--other motives took the place of fear.
+England coveted Holland's trade and sea dominion; France desired the
+Spanish Netherlands. The United Provinces had reason to oppose the
+latter as well as the former.
+
+Under the combined assaults of the two rival nations, the intrinsic
+weakness of the United Provinces was soon to be felt and seen. Open to
+attack by the land, few in numbers, and with a government ill adapted
+to put forth the united strength of a people, above all unfitted to
+keep up adequate preparation for war, the decline of the republic and
+the nation was to be more striking and rapid than the rise. As yet,
+however, in 1660, no indications of the coming fall were remarked. The
+republic was still in the front rank of the great powers of Europe.
+If, in 1654, the war with England had shown a state of unreadiness
+wonderful in a navy that had so long humbled the pride of Spain on the
+seas, on the other hand the Provinces, in 1657, had effectually put a
+stop to the insults of France directed against her commerce; and a
+year later, "by their interference in the Baltic between Denmark and
+Sweden, they had hindered Sweden from establishing in the North a
+preponderance disastrous to them. They forced her to leave open the
+entrance to the Baltic, of which they remained masters, no other navy
+being able to dispute its control with them. The superiority of their
+fleet, the valor of their troops, the skill and firmness of their
+diplomacy, had caused the prestige of their government to be
+recognized. Weakened and humiliated by the last English war, they had
+replaced themselves in the rank of great powers. At this moment
+Charles II. was restored."
+
+The general character of the government has been before mentioned, and
+need here only be recalled. It was a loosely knit confederacy,
+administered by what may not inaccurately be called a commercial
+aristocracy, with all the political timidity of that class, which has
+so much to risk in war. The effect of these two factors, sectional
+jealousy and commercial spirit, upon the military navy was disastrous.
+It was not kept up properly in peace, there were necessarily rivalries
+in a fleet which was rather a maritime coalition than a united navy,
+and there was too little of a true military spirit among the officers.
+A more heroic people than the Dutch never existed; the annals of Dutch
+sea-fights give instances of desperate enterprise and endurance
+certainly not excelled, perhaps never equalled, elsewhere; but they
+also exhibit instances of defection and misconduct which show a lack
+of military spirit, due evidently to lack of professional pride and
+training. This professional training scarcely existed in any navy of
+that day, but its place was largely supplied in monarchical countries
+by the feeling of a military caste. It remains to be noted that the
+government, weak enough from the causes named, was yet weaker from the
+division of the people into two great factions bitterly hating each
+other. The one, which was the party of the merchants (burgomasters),
+and now in power, favored the confederate republic as described; the
+other desired a monarchical government under the House of Orange. The
+Republican party wished for a French alliance, if possible, and a
+strong navy; the Orange party favored England, to whose royal house
+the Prince of Orange was closely related, and a powerful army. Under
+these conditions of government, and weak in numbers, the United
+Provinces in 1660, with their vast wealth and external activities,
+resembled a man kept up by stimulants. Factitious strength cannot
+endure indefinitely; but it is wonderful to see this small State,
+weaker by far in numbers than either England or France, endure the
+onslaught of either singly, and for two years of both in alliance, not
+only without being destroyed, but without losing her place in Europe.
+She owed this astonishing result partly to the skill of one or two
+men, but mainly to her sea power.
+
+The conditions of England, with reference to her fitness to enter upon
+the impending strife, differed from those of both Holland and France.
+Although monarchical in government, and with much real power in the
+king's hands, the latter was not able to direct the policy of the
+kingdom wholly at his will. He had to reckon, as Louis had not, with
+the temper and wishes of his people. What Louis gained for France, he
+gained for himself; the glory of France was his glory. Charles aimed
+first at his own advantage, then at that of England; but, with the
+memory of the past ever before him, he was determined above all not to
+incur his father's fate nor a repetition of his own exile. Therefore,
+when danger became imminent, he gave way before the feeling of the
+English nation. Charles himself hated Holland; he hated it as a
+republic; he hated the existing government because opposed in internal
+affairs to his connections, the House of Orange; and he hated it yet
+more because in the days of his exile, the republic, as one of the
+conditions of peace with Cromwell, had driven him from her borders. He
+was drawn to France by the political sympathy of a would-be absolute
+ruler, possibly by his Roman Catholic bias, and very largely by the
+money paid him by Louis, which partially freed him from the control of
+Parliament. In following these tendencies of his own, Charles had to
+take account of certain decided wishes of his people. The English, of
+the same race as the Dutch, and with similar conditions of situation,
+were declared rivals for the control of the sea and of commerce; and
+as the Dutch were now leading in the race, the English were the more
+eager and bitter. A special cause of grievance was found in the action
+of the Dutch East India Company, "which claimed the monopoly of trade
+in the East, and had obliged distant princes with whom it treated to
+close their States to foreign nations, who were thus excluded, not
+only from the Dutch colonies, but from all the territory of the
+Indies." Conscious of greater strength, the English also wished to
+control the action of Dutch politics, and in the days of the English
+Republic had even sought to impose a union of the two governments. At
+the first, therefore, popular rivalry and enmity seconded the king's
+wishes; the more so as France had not for some years been formidable
+on the continent. As soon, however, as the aggressive policy of Louis
+XIV. was generally recognized, the English people, both nobles and
+commons, felt the great danger to be there, as a century before it had
+been in Spain. The transfer of the Spanish Netherlands (Belgium) to
+France would tend toward the subjection of Europe, and especially
+would be a blow to the sea power both of the Dutch and English; for it
+was not to be supposed that Louis would allow the Scheldt and port of
+Antwerp to remain closed, as they then were, under a treaty wrung by
+the Dutch from the weakness of Spain. The reopening to commerce of
+that great city would be a blow alike to Amsterdam and to London. With
+the revival of inherited opposition to France the ties of kindred
+began to tell; the memory of past alliance against the tyranny of
+Spain was recalled; and similarity of religious faith, still a
+powerful motive, drew the two together. At the same time the great and
+systematic efforts of Colbert to build up the commerce and the navy of
+France excited the jealousy of both the sea powers; rivals themselves,
+they instinctively turned against a third party intruding upon their
+domain. Charles was unable to resist the pressure of his people under
+all these motives; wars between England and Holland ceased, and were
+followed, after Charles's death, by close alliance.
+
+Although her commerce was less extensive, the navy of England in 1660
+was superior to that of Holland, particularly in organization and
+efficiency. The stern, enthusiastic religious government of Cromwell,
+grounded on military strength, had made its mark both on the fleet and
+army. The names of several of the superior officers under the
+Protector, among which that of Monk stands foremost, appear in the
+narrative of the first of the Dutch wars under Charles. This
+superiority in tone and discipline gradually disappeared under the
+corrupting influence of court favor in a licentious government; and
+Holland, which upon the whole was worsted by England alone upon the
+sea in 1665, successfully resisted the combined navies of England and
+France in 1672. As regards the material of the three fleets, we are
+told that the French ships had greater displacement than the English
+relatively to the weight of artillery and stores; hence they could
+keep, when fully loaded, a greater height of battery. Their hulls also
+had better lines. These advantages would naturally follow from the
+thoughtful and systematic way in which the French navy at that time
+was restored from a state of decay, and has a lesson of hope for us in
+the present analogous condition of our own navy. The Dutch ships, from
+the character of their coast, were flatter-bottomed and of less
+draught, and thus were able, when pressed, to find a refuge among the
+shoals; but they were in consequence less weatherly and generally of
+lighter scantling than those of either of the other nations.
+
+Thus as briefly as possible have been sketched the conditions, degree
+of power, and aims which shaped and controlled the policy of the four
+principal seaboard States of the day,--Spain, France, England, and
+Holland. From the point of view of this history, these will come most
+prominently and most often into notice; but as other States exercised
+a powerful influence upon the course of events, and our aim is not
+merely naval history but an appreciation of the effect of naval and
+commercial power upon the course of general history, it is necessary
+to state shortly the condition of the rest of Europe. America had not
+yet begun to play a prominent part in the pages of history or in the
+policies of cabinets.
+
+Germany was then divided into many small governments, with the one
+great empire of Austria. The policy of the smaller States shifted, and
+it was the aim of France to combine as many of them as possible under
+her influence, in pursuance of her traditional opposition to Austria.
+With France thus working against her on the one side, Austria was in
+imminent peril on the other from the constant assaults of the Turkish
+Empire, still vigorous though decaying. The policy of France had long
+inclined to friendly relations with Turkey, not only as a check upon
+Austria, but also from her wish to engross the trade with the Levant.
+Colbert, in his extreme eagerness for the sea power of France, favored
+this alliance. It will be remembered that Greece and Egypt were then
+parts of the Turkish Empire.
+
+Prussia as now known did not exist. The foundations of the future
+kingdom were then being prepared by the Elector of Brandenburg, a
+powerful minor State, which was not yet able to stand quite alone, but
+carefully avoided a formally dependent position. The kingdom of Poland
+still existed, a most disturbing and important factor in European
+politics, because of its weak and unsettled government, which kept
+every other State anxious lest some unforeseen turn of events there
+should tend to the advantage of a rival. It was the traditional policy
+of France to keep Poland upright and strong. Russia was still below
+the horizon; coming, but not yet come, within the circle of European
+States and their living interests. She and the other powers bordering
+upon the Baltic were naturally rivals for preponderance in that sea,
+in which the other States, and above all the maritime States, had a
+particular interest as the source from which naval stores of every
+kind were chiefly drawn. Sweden and Denmark were at this time in a
+state of constant enmity, and were to be found on opposite sides in
+the quarrels that prevailed. For many years past, and during the early
+wars of Louis XIV., Sweden was for the most part in alliance with
+France; her bias was that way.
+
+The general state of Europe being as described, the spring that was to
+set the various wheels in motion was in the hands of Louis XIV. The
+weakness of his immediate neighbors, the great resources of his
+kingdom, only waiting for development, the unity of direction
+resulting from his absolute power, his own practical talent and
+untiring industry, aided during the first half of his reign by a
+combination of ministers of singular ability, all united to make every
+government in Europe hang more or less upon his action, and be
+determined by, if not follow, his lead. The greatness of France was
+his object, and he had the choice of advancing it by either of two
+roads,--by the land or by the sea; not that the one wholly forbade the
+other, but that France, overwhelmingly strong as she then was, had not
+power to move with equal steps on both paths.
+
+Louis chose extension by land. He had married the eldest daughter of
+Philip IV., the then reigning king of Spain; and though by the treaty
+of marriage she had renounced all claim to her father's inheritance,
+it was not difficult to find reasons for disregarding this
+stipulation. Technical grounds were found for setting it aside as
+regarded certain portions of the Netherlands and Franche Comté, and
+negotiations were entered into with the court of Spain to annul it
+altogether. The matter was the more important because the male heir to
+the throne was so feeble that it was evident that the Austrian line of
+Spanish kings would end in him. The desire to put a French prince on
+the Spanish throne--either himself, thus uniting the two crowns, or
+else one of his family, thus putting the House of Bourbon in authority
+on both sides of the Pyrenees--was the false light which led Louis
+astray during the rest of his reign, to the final destruction of the
+sea power of France and the impoverishment and misery of his people.
+Louis failed to understand that he had to reckon with all Europe. The
+direct project on the Spanish throne had to wait for a vacancy; but he
+got ready at once to move upon the Spanish possessions to the east of
+France.
+
+In order to do this more effectually, he cut off from Spain every
+possible ally by skilful diplomatic intrigues, the study of which
+would give a useful illustration of strategy in the realm of politics,
+but he made two serious mistakes to the injury of the sea power of
+France. Portugal had until twenty years before been united to the
+crown of Spain, and the claim to it had not been surrendered. Louis
+considered that were Spain to regain that kingdom she would be too
+strong for him easily to carry out his aims. Among other means of
+prevention he promoted a marriage between Charles II. and the Infanta
+of Portugal, in consequence of which Portugal ceded to England, Bombay
+in India, and Tangiers in the Straits of Gibraltar, which was reputed
+an excellent port. We see here a French king, in his eagerness for
+extension by land, inviting England to the Mediterranean, and
+forwarding her alliance with Portugal. The latter was the more
+curious, as Louis already foresaw the failure of the Spanish royal
+house, and should rather have wished the union of the peninsular
+kingdoms. As a matter of fact, Portugal became a dependent and outpost
+of England, by which she readily landed in the Peninsula down to the
+days of Napoleon. Indeed, if independent of Spain, she is too weak not
+to be under the control of the power that rules the sea and so has
+readiest access to her. Louis continued to support her against Spain,
+and secured her independence. He also interfered with the Dutch, and
+compelled them to restore Brazil, which they had taken from the
+Portuguese.
+
+On the other hand, Louis obtained from Charles II. the cession of
+Dunkirk on the Channel, which had been seized and used by Cromwell.
+This surrender was made for money, and was inexcusable from the
+maritime point of view. Dunkirk was for the English a bridge-head into
+France. To France it became a haven for privateers, the bane of
+England's commerce in the Channel and the North Sea. As the French sea
+power waned, England in treaty after treaty exacted the dismantling of
+the works of Dunkirk, which it may be said in passing was the home
+port of the celebrated Jean Bart and other great French privateersmen.
+
+Meanwhile the greatest and wisest of Louis' ministers, Colbert, was
+diligently building up that system of administration, which, by
+increasing and solidly basing the wealth of the State, should bring a
+surer greatness and prosperity than the king's more showy enterprises.
+With those details that concern the internal development of the
+kingdom this history has no concern, beyond the incidental mention
+that production, both agricultural and manufacturing, received his
+careful attention; but upon the sea a policy of skilful aggression
+upon the shipping and commerce of the Dutch and English quickly began,
+and was instantly resented. Great trading companies were formed,
+directing French enterprise to the Baltic, to the Levant, to the East
+and West Indies; customs regulations were amended to encourage French
+manufactures, and to allow goods to be stored in bond in the great
+ports, by which means it was hoped to make France take Holland's place
+as the great warehouse for Europe, a function for which her
+geographical position eminently fitted her; while tonnage duties on
+foreign shipping, direct premiums on home-built ships, and careful,
+rigorous colonial decrees giving French vessels the monopoly of trade
+to and from the colonies, combined to encourage the growth of her
+mercantile marine. England retaliated at once; the Dutch, more
+seriously threatened because their carrying-trade was greater and
+their home resources smaller, only remonstrated for a time; but after
+three years they also made reprisals. Colbert, relying on the great
+superiority of France as an actual, and still more as a possible
+producer, feared not to move steadily on the grasping path marked out;
+which, in building up a great merchant shipping, would lay the broad
+base for the military shipping, which was being yet more rapidly
+forced on by the measures of the State. Prosperity grew apace. At the
+end of twelve years everything was flourishing, everything rich in the
+State, which was in utter confusion when he took charge of the
+finances and marine.
+
+ "Under him," says a French historian, "France grew by peace as
+ she had grown by war.... The warfare of tariffs and premiums
+ skilfully conducted by him tended to reduce within just limits
+ the exorbitant growth of commercial and maritime power which
+ Holland had arrogated at the expense of other nations; and to
+ restrain England, which was burning to wrest this supremacy from
+ Holland in order to use it in a manner much more dangerous to
+ Europe. The interest of France seemed to be peace in Europe and
+ America; a mysterious voice, at once the voice of the past and
+ of the future, called for her warlike activity on other
+ shores."[19]
+
+This voice found expression through the mouth of Leibnitz, one of the
+world's great men, who pointed out to Louis that to turn the arms of
+France against Egypt would give her, in the dominion of the
+Mediterranean and the control of Eastern trade, a victory over Holland
+greater than the most successful campaign on land; and while insuring
+a much needed peace within his kingdom, would build up a power on the
+sea that would insure preponderance in Europe. This memorial called
+Louis from the pursuit of glory on the land to seek the durable
+grandeur of France in the possession of a great sea power, the
+elements of which, thanks to the genius of Colbert, he had in his
+hands. A century later a greater man than Louis sought to exalt
+himself and France by the path pointed out by Leibnitz; but Napoleon
+did not have, as Louis had, a navy equal to the task proposed. This
+project of Leibnitz will be more fully referred to when the narrative
+reaches the momentous date at which it was broached; when Louis, with
+his kingdom and navy in the highest pitch of efficiency, stood at the
+point where the roads parted, and then took the one which settled that
+France should not be the power of the sea. This decision, which killed
+Colbert and ruined the prosperity of France, was felt in its
+consequences from generation to generation afterward, as the great
+navy of England, in war after war, swept the seas, insured the growing
+wealth of the island kingdom through exhausting strifes, while drying
+up the external resources of French trade and inflicting consequent
+misery. The false line of policy that began with Louis XIV. also
+turned France away from a promising career in India, in the days of
+his successor.
+
+ [Illustration: ENGLISH CHANNEL AND NORTH SEA.]
+
+Meanwhile the two maritime States, England and Holland, though eying
+France distrustfully, had greater and growing grudges against each
+other, which under the fostering care of Charles II. led to war. The
+true cause was doubtless commercial jealousy, and the conflict sprang
+immediately from collisions between the trading companies. Hostilities
+began on the west coast of Africa; and an English squadron, in 1664,
+after subduing several Dutch stations there, sailed to New Amsterdam
+(now New York), and seized it. All these affairs took place before the
+formal declaration of war in February, 1665. This war was undoubtedly
+popular in England; the instinct of the people found an expression by
+the lips of Monk, who is reported to have said, "What matters this or
+that reason? What we want is more of the trade which the Dutch now
+have." There is also little room to doubt that, despite the
+pretensions of the trading companies, the government of the United
+Provinces would gladly have avoided the war; the able man who was at
+their head saw too clearly the delicate position in which they stood
+between England and France. They claimed, however, the support of the
+latter in virtue of a defensive treaty made in 1662. Louis allowed the
+claim, but unwillingly; and the still young navy of France gave
+practically no help.
+
+The war between the two sea States was wholly maritime, and had the
+general characteristics of all such wars. Three great battles were
+fought,--the first off Lowestoft, on the Norfolk coast, June 13, 1665;
+the second, known as the Four Days' Battle in the Straits of Dover,
+often spoken of by French writers as that of the Pas de Calais,
+lasting from the 11th to the 14th of June, 1666; and the third, off
+the North Foreland, August 4 of the same year. In the first and last
+of these the English had a decided success; in the second the
+advantage remained with the Dutch. This one only will be described at
+length, because of it alone has been found such a full, coherent
+account as will allow a clear and accurate tactical narrative to be
+given. There are in these fights points of interest more generally
+applicable to the present day than are the details of somewhat
+obsolete tactical movements.
+
+In the first battle off Lowestoft, it appears that the Dutch
+commander, Opdam, who was not a seaman but a cavalry officer, had
+very positive orders to fight; the discretion proper to a
+commander-in-chief on the spot was not intrusted to him. To interfere
+thus with the commander in the field or afloat is one of the most
+common temptations to the government in the cabinet, and is generally
+disastrous. Tourville, the greatest of Louis XIV.'s admirals, was
+forced thus to risk the whole French navy against his own judgment;
+and a century later a great French fleet escaped from the English
+admiral Keith, through his obedience to imperative orders from his
+immediate superior, who was sick in port.
+
+In the Lowestoft fight the Dutch van gave way; and a little later one
+of the junior admirals of the centre, Opdam's own squadron, being
+killed, the crew was seized with a panic, took the command of the
+ship from her officers, and carried her out of action. This movement
+was followed by twelve or thirteen other ships, leaving a great gap in
+the Dutch line. The occurrence shows, what has before been pointed
+out, that the discipline of the Dutch fleet and the tone of the
+officers were not high, despite the fine fighting qualities of the
+nation, and although it is probably true that there were more good
+seamen among the Dutch than among the English captains. The natural
+steadfastness and heroism of the Hollanders could not wholly supply
+that professional pride and sense of military honor which it is the
+object of sound military institutions to encourage. Popular feeling in
+the United States is pretty much at sea in this matter; there is with
+it no intermediate step between personal courage with a gun in its
+hand and entire military efficiency.
+
+Opdam, seeing the battle going against him, seems to have yielded to a
+feeling approaching despair. He sought to grapple the English
+commander-in-chief, who on this day was the Duke of York, the king's
+brother. He failed in this, and in the desperate struggle which
+followed, his ship blew up. Shortly after, three, or as one account
+says four, Dutch ships ran foul of one another, and this group was
+burned by one fire-ship; three or four others singly met the same fate
+a little later. The Dutch fleet was now in disorder, and retreated
+under cover of the squadron of Van Tromp, son of the famous old
+admiral who in the days of the Commonwealth sailed through the Channel
+with a broom at his masthead.
+
+Fire-ships are seen here to have played a very conspicuous part, more
+so certainly than in the war of 1653, though at both periods they
+formed an appendage to the fleet. There is on the surface an evident
+resemblance between the rôle of the fire-ship and the part assigned in
+modern warfare to the torpedo-cruiser. The terrible character of the
+attack, the comparative smallness of the vessel making it, and the
+large demands upon the nerve of the assailant, are the chief points of
+resemblance; the great points of difference are the comparative
+certainty with which the modern vessel can be handled, which is
+partly met by the same advantage in the iron-clad over the old
+ship-of-the-line, and the instantaneousness of the injury by torpedo,
+whose attack fails or succeeds at once, whereas that of the fire-ship
+required time for effecting the object, which in both cases is total
+destruction of the hostile ship, instead of crippling or otherwise
+reducing it. An appreciation of the character of fire-ships, of the
+circumstances under which they attained their greatest usefulness, and
+of the causes which led to their disappearance, may perhaps help in
+the decision to which nations must come as to whether the
+torpedo-cruiser, pure and simple, is a type of weapon destined to
+survive in fleets.
+
+A French officer, who has been examining the records of the French
+navy, states that the fire-ship first appears, incorporated as an arm
+of the fleet, in 1636.
+
+ "Whether specially built for the purpose, or whether altered
+ from other purposes to be fitted for their particular end, they
+ received a special equipment. The command was given to officers
+ not noble, with the grade of captain of fire-ship. Five
+ subordinate officers and twenty-five seamen made up the crew.
+ Easily known by grappling-irons which were always fitted to
+ their yards, the fire-ship saw its rôle growing less in the
+ early years of the eighteenth century. It was finally to
+ disappear from the fleets _whose speed it delayed and whose
+ evolutions were by it complicated_. As the ships-of-war grew
+ larger, their action in concert with fire-ships became daily
+ more difficult. On the other hand, there had already been
+ abandoned the idea of combining them with the fighting-ships to
+ form a few _groups_, _each_ provided with all the means of
+ attack and defence. The formation of the close-hauled
+ line-of-battle, by assigning the fire-ships a place in a second
+ line placed half a league on the side farthest from the enemy,
+ made them more and more unfitted to fulfil their office. The
+ official plan of the battle of Malaga (1704), drawn up
+ immediately after the battle, shows the fire-ship in this
+ position as laid down by Paul Hoste. Finally the use of shells,
+ enabling ships to be set on fire more surely and quickly, and
+ introduced on board at the period of which we are now treating,
+ though the general use did not obtain until much later, was the
+ last blow to the fire-ship."[20]
+
+Those who are familiar with the theories and discussions of our own
+day on the subject of fleet tactics and weapons, will recognize in
+this short notice of a long obsolete type certain ideas which are not
+obsolete. The fire-ship disappeared from fleets "whose speed it
+delayed." In heavy weather small bulk must always mean comparatively
+small speed. In a moderate sea, we are now told, the speed of the
+torpedo-boat falls from twenty knots to fifteen or less, and the
+seventeen to nineteen knot cruiser can either run away from the
+pursuing boats, or else hold them at a distance under fire of machine
+and heavy guns. These boats are sea-going, "and it is thought can keep
+the sea in all weathers; but to be on board a 110-foot torpedo-boat,
+when the sea is lively, is said to be far from agreeable. The heat,
+noise, and rapid vibrations of the engines are intense. Cooking seems
+to be out of the question, and it is said that if food were well
+cooked few would be able to appreciate it. To obtain necessary rest
+under these conditions, added to the rapid motions of the boat, is
+most difficult." Larger boats are to be built; but the factor of loss
+of speed in rough weather will remain, unless the size of the
+torpedo-cruiser is increased to a point that will certainly lead to
+fitting them with something more than torpedoes. Like fire-ships,
+_small_ torpedo-cruisers will delay the speed and complicate the
+evolutions of the fleet with which they are associated.[21] The
+disappearance of the fire-ship was also hastened, we are told, by the
+introduction of shell firing, or incendiary projectiles; and it is not
+improbable that for deep-sea fighting the transfer of the torpedo to a
+class of larger ships will put an end to the mere torpedo-cruiser. The
+fire-ship continued to be used against fleets at anchor down to the
+days of the American Civil War; and the torpedo-boat will always be
+useful within an easy distance of its port.
+
+A third phase of naval practice two hundred years ago, mentioned in
+the extract quoted, involves an idea very familiar to modern
+discussions; namely, the group formation. "The idea of combining
+fire-ships with the fighting-ships to form a few groups, each provided
+with all the means of attack and defence," was for a time embraced;
+for we are told that it was later on abandoned. The combining of the
+ships of a fleet into groups of two, three, or four meant to act
+specially together is now largely favored in England; less so in
+France, where it meets strong opposition. No question of this sort,
+ably advocated on either side, is to be settled by one man's judgment,
+nor until time and experience have applied their infallible tests. It
+may be remarked, however, that in a well-organized fleet there are two
+degrees of command which are in themselves both natural and necessary,
+that can be neither done away nor ignored; these are the command of
+the whole fleet as one unit, and the command of each ship as a unit in
+itself. When a fleet becomes too large to be handled by one man, it
+must be subdivided, and in the heat of action become practically two
+fleets acting to one common end; as Nelson, in his noble order at
+Trafalgar, said, "The second in command will, _after_ my intentions
+are made known to him" (mark the force of the "after," which so well
+protects the functions both of the commander-in-chief and the second),
+"have the entire direction of his line, to make the attack upon the
+enemy, and to follow up the blow until they are captured or
+destroyed."
+
+The size and cost of the individual iron-clad of the present day makes
+it unlikely that fleets will be so numerous as to require subdivision;
+but whether they are or not does not affect the decision of the group
+question. Looking simply to the principle underlying the theory, and
+disregarding the seeming tactical clumsiness of the special groups
+proposed, the question is: Shall there be introduced between the
+natural commands of the admiral and of the captains of individual
+ships a third artificial contrivance, which on the one hand will in
+effect partly supersede the supreme authority, and on the other will
+partly fetter the discretion of commanders of ships? A further
+difficulty springing from the narrow principle of support specially
+due to particular ships, on which the group system rests, is this:
+that when signals can no longer be seen, the duty of the captain to
+his own ship and to the fleet at large will be complicated by his duty
+to observe certain relations to particular ships; which particular
+ships must in time come to have undue prominence in his views. The
+group formation had its day of trial in old times, and disappeared
+before the test of experience; whether in its restored form it will
+survive, time will show. It may be said, before quitting the subject,
+that as an order of sailing, corresponding to the route-step of an
+army in march, a loose group formation has some advantages;
+maintaining some order without requiring that rigid exactness of
+position, to observe which by day and night must be a severe strain on
+captain and deck-officers. Such a route-order should not, however, be
+permitted until a fleet has reached high tactical precision.
+
+To return to the question of fire-ships and torpedo-boats, the rôle of
+the latter, it is often said, is to be found in that _mêlée_ which is
+always to succeed a couple of headlong passes between the opposing
+fleets. In the smoke and confusion of that hour is the opportunity of
+the torpedo-boat. This certainly sounds plausible, and the torpedo
+vessel certainly has a power of movement not possessed by the
+fire-ship. A _mêlée_ of the two fleets, however, was not the condition
+most favorable for the fire-ship. I shall quote here from another
+French officer, whose discussion of these Anglo-Dutch sea-fights, in a
+late periodical, is singularly clear and suggestive. He says:
+
+ "Far from impeding the direct action of the fire-ship, which was
+ naught or nearly so during the confused battles of the war of
+ 1652, the regularity and _ensemble_ newly attained in the
+ movements of squadrons seem rather to favor it. The fire-ships
+ played a very important part at the battles of Lowestoft, Pas de
+ Calais, and the North Foreland. Thanks to the good order
+ preserved by the ships-of-the-line, these incendiary ships can
+ indeed be better protected by the artillery; much more
+ efficiently directed than before toward a distinct and
+ determined end."[22]
+
+In the midst of the confused _mêlées_ of 1652 the fire-ship "acted, so
+to speak, alone, seeking by chance an enemy to grapple, running the
+risk of a mistake, without protection against the guns of the enemy,
+nearly sure to be sunk by him or else burned uselessly. All now, in
+1665, has become different. Its prey is clearly pointed out; it knows
+it, follows it easily into the relatively fixed position had by it in
+the enemy's line. On the other hand, the ships of his own division do
+not lose sight of the fire-ship. They accompany it as far as possible,
+cover it with their artillery to the end of its course, and disengage
+it before burning, if the fruitlessness of the attempt is seen soon
+enough. Evidently under such conditions its action, always uncertain
+(it cannot be otherwise), nevertheless acquires greater chances of
+success." These instructive comments need perhaps the qualifying, or
+additional, remark that confusion in the enemy's order at the time
+that your own remains good gives the best opening for a desperate
+attack. The writer goes on to trace the disappearance of the
+fire-ship:--
+
+ "Here then we see the fire-ship at the point of its highest
+ importance. That importance will decrease, the fire-ship itself
+ will end by disappearing from engagements in _the open sea_,
+ when naval artillery becoming more perfect shall have greater
+ range, be more accurate and more rapid;[23] when ships receiving
+ better forms, greater steering power, more extensive and better
+ balanced sail power, shall be able, thanks to quicker speed and
+ handling, to avoid almost certainly the fire-ships sent against
+ them; when, finally, fleets led on principles of tactics as
+ skilful as they were timid, a tactics which will predominate a
+ century later during the whole war of American Independence,
+ when these fleets, in order not to jeopardize the perfect
+ regularity of their order of battle, will avoid coming to close
+ quarters, and will leave to the cannon alone to decide the fate
+ of an action."
+
+In this discussion the writer has in view the leading feature which,
+while aiding the action of the fire-ship, also gives this war of 1665
+its peculiar interest in the history of naval tactics. In it is found
+for the first time the close-hauled line-of-battle undeniably adopted
+as the fighting order of the fleets. It is plain enough that when
+those fleets numbered, as they often did, from eighty to a hundred
+ships, such lines would be very imperfectly formed in every essential,
+both of line and interval; but the general aim is evident, amid
+whatever imperfections of execution. The credit for this development
+is generally given to the Duke of York, afterward James II.; but the
+question to whom the improvement is due is of little importance to
+sea-officers of the present day when compared with the instructive
+fact that so long a time elapsed between the appearance of the large
+sailing-ship, with its broadside battery, and the systematic adoption
+of the order which was best adapted to develop the full power of the
+fleet for mutual support. To us, having the elements of the problem in
+our hands, together with the result finally reached, that result seems
+simple enough, almost self-evident. Why did it take so long for the
+capable men of that day to reach it? The reason--and herein lies the
+lesson for the officer of to-day--was doubtless the same that leaves
+the order of battle so uncertain now; namely, that the necessity of
+war did not force men to make up their minds, until the Dutch at last
+met in the English their equals on the sea. The sequence of ideas
+which resulted in the line-of-battle is clear and logical. Though
+familiar enough to seamen, it will be here stated in the words of the
+writer last quoted, because they have a neatness and precision
+entirely French:--
+
+ "With the increase of power of the ship-of-war, and with the
+ perfecting of its sea and warlike qualities, there has come an
+ equal progress in the art of utilizing them.... As naval
+ evolutions become more skilful, their importance grows from day
+ to day. To these evolutions there is needed a base, a point from
+ which they depart and to which they return. A fleet of war-ships
+ must be always ready to meet an enemy; logically, therefore,
+ this point of departure for naval evolutions must be the order
+ of battle. Now, since the disappearance of galleys, almost all
+ the artillery is found upon the sides of a ship of war. Hence
+ it is the beam that must necessarily and always be turned toward
+ the enemy. On the other hand, it is necessary that the sight of
+ the latter must never be interrupted by a friendly ship. Only
+ one formation allows the ships of the same fleet to satisfy
+ fully these conditions. That formation is the line ahead
+ [column]. This line, therefore, is imposed as the only order of
+ battle, and consequently as the basis of all fleet tactics. In
+ order that this order of battle, this long thin line of guns,
+ may not be injured or broken at some point weaker than the rest,
+ there is at the same time felt the necessity of putting in it
+ only ships which, if not of equal force, have at least equally
+ strong sides. Logically it follows, at the same moment in which
+ the line ahead became definitively the order for battle, there
+ was established the distinction between the ships 'of the line,'
+ alone destined for a place therein, and the lighter ships meant
+ for other uses."
+
+If to these we add the considerations which led to making the
+line-of-battle a close-hauled line, we have the problem fully worked
+out. But the chain of reasoning was as clear two hundred and fifty
+years ago as it is now; why then was it so long in being worked out?
+Partly, no doubt, because old traditions--in those days traditions of
+galley-fighting--had hold of and confused men's minds; chiefly because
+men are too indolent to seek out the foundation truths of the
+situation in their day, and develop the true theory of action from its
+base up. As a rare instance of clear-sightedness, recognizing such a
+fundamental change in conditions and predicting results, words of
+Admiral Labrousse of the French navy, written in 1840, are most
+instructive. "Thanks to steam," he wrote, "ships will be able to move
+in any direction with such speed that the effects of collision may,
+and indeed must, as they formerly did, take the place of projectile
+weapons and annul the calculations of the skilful manoeuvrer. The ram
+will be favorable to speed, without destroying the nautical qualities
+of a ship. As soon as one power shall have adopted this terrible
+weapon, all others must accept it, under pain of evident inferiority,
+and thus combats will become combats of ram against ram." While
+forbearing the unconditional adhesion to the ram as the controlling
+weapon of the day, which the French navy has yielded, the above brief
+argument may well be taken as an instance of the way in which
+researches into the order of battle of the future should be worked
+out. A French writer, commenting on Labrousse's paper, says:--
+
+ "Twenty-seven years were scarce enough for our fathers, counting
+ from 1638, the date of building the 'Couronne,' to 1665, to pass
+ from the tactical order of the line abreast, the order for
+ galleys, to that of the line ahead. We ourselves needed
+ twenty-nine years from 1830, when the first steamship was
+ brought into our fleet, to 1859, when the application of the
+ principle of ram-fighting was affirmed by laying down the
+ 'Solferino' and the 'Magenta' to work a revolution in the
+ contrary direction; so true it is that truth is always slow in
+ getting to the light.... This transformation was not sudden, not
+ only because the new material required time to be built and
+ armed, but above all, it is sad to say, because the necessary
+ consequences of the new motive power escaped most minds."[24]
+
+We come now to the justly celebrated Four Days' Battle of June, 1666,
+which claims special notice, not only on account of the great number
+of ships engaged on either side, nor yet only for the extraordinary
+physical endurance of the men who kept up a hot naval action for so
+many successive days, but also because the commanders-in-chief on
+either side, Monk and De Ruyter, were the most distinguished seamen,
+or rather sea-commanders, brought forth by their respective countries
+in the seventeenth century. Monk was possibly inferior to Blake in the
+annals of the English navy; but there is a general agreement that De
+Ruyter is the foremost figure, not only in the Dutch service, but
+among all the naval officers of that age. The account about to be
+given is mainly taken from a recent number of the "Revue Maritime et
+Coloniale,"[25] and is there published as a letter, recently
+discovered, from a Dutch gentleman serving as volunteer on board De
+Ruyter's ship, to a friend in France. The narrative is delightfully
+clear and probable,--qualities not generally found in the description
+of those long-ago fights; and the satisfaction it gave was increased
+by finding in the Memoirs of the Count de Guiche, who also served as
+volunteer in the fleet, and was taken to De Ruyter after his own
+vessel had been destroyed by a fire-ship, an account confirming the
+former in its principal details.[26] This additional pleasure was
+unhappily marred by recognizing certain phrases as common to both
+stories; and a comparison showed that the two could not be accepted as
+independent narratives. There are, however, points of internal
+difference which make it possible that the two accounts are by
+different eye-witnesses, who compared and corrected their versions
+before sending them out to their friends or writing them in their
+journals.
+
+The numbers of the two fleets were: English about eighty ships, the
+Dutch about one hundred; but the inequality in numbers was largely
+compensated by the greater size of many of the English. A great
+strategic blunder by the government in London immediately preceded the
+fight. The king was informed that a French squadron was on its way
+from the Atlantic to join the Dutch. He at once divided his fleet,
+sending twenty ships under Prince Rupert to the westward to meet the
+French, while the remainder under Monk were to go east and oppose the
+Dutch.
+
+A position like that of the English fleet, threatened with an attack
+from two quarters, presents one of the subtlest temptations to a
+commander. The impulse is very strong to meet both by dividing his own
+numbers as Charles did; but unless in possession of overwhelming force
+it is an error, exposing both divisions to be beaten separately,
+which, as we are about to see, actually happened in this case. The
+result of the first two days was disastrous to the larger English
+division under Monk, which was then obliged to retreat toward Rupert;
+and probably the opportune return of the latter alone saved the
+English fleet from a very serious loss, or at the least from being
+shut up in their own ports. A hundred and forty years later, in the
+exciting game of strategy that was played in the Bay of Biscay before
+Trafalgar, the English admiral Cornwallis made precisely the same
+blunder, dividing his fleet into two equal parts out of supporting
+distance, which Napoleon at the time characterized as a glaring piece
+of stupidity. The lesson is the same in all ages.
+
+ [Illustration: Pl. I.]
+
+The Dutch had sailed for the English coast with a fair easterly wind,
+but it changed later to southwest with thick weather, and freshened,
+so that De Ruyter, to avoid being driven too far, came to anchor
+between Dunkirk and the Downs.[27] The fleet then rode with its head
+to the south-southwest and the van on the right; while Tromp, who
+commanded the rear division in the natural order, was on the left. For
+some cause this left was most to windward, the centre squadron under
+Ruyter being to leeward, and the right, or van, to leeward again of
+the centre.[28] This was the position of the Dutch fleet at daylight
+of June 11, 1666; and although not expressly so stated, it is likely,
+from the whole tenor of the narratives, that it was not in good order.
+
+The same morning Monk, who was also at anchor, made out the Dutch
+fleet to leeward, and although so inferior in numbers determined to
+attack at once, hoping that by keeping the advantage of the wind he
+would be able to commit himself only so far as might seem best. He
+therefore stood along the Dutch line on the starboard tack, leaving
+the right and centre out of cannon-shot, until he came abreast of the
+left, Tromp's squadron. Monk then had thirty-five ships well in hand;
+but the rear had opened and was straggling, as is apt to be the case
+with long columns. With the thirty-five he then put his helm up and
+ran down for Tromp, whose squadron cut their cables and made sail on
+the same tack (V'); the two engaged lines thus standing over toward
+the French coast, and the breeze heeling the ships so that the English
+could not use their lower-deck guns (Fig. 2, V''). The Dutch centre
+and rear also cut (Fig. 1, C'), and followed the movement, but being
+so far to leeward, could not for some time come into action. It was
+during this time that a large Dutch ship, becoming separated from her
+own fleet, was set on fire and burned, doubtless the ship in which was
+Count de Guiche.
+
+As they drew near Dunkirk the English went about, probably all
+together; for in the return to the northward and westward the proper
+English van fell in with and was roughly handled by the Dutch centre
+under Ruyter himself (Fig. 2, C''). This fate would be more likely to
+befall the rear, and indicates that a simultaneous movement had
+reversed the order. The engaged ships had naturally lost to leeward,
+thus enabling Ruyter to fetch up with them. Two English flag-ships
+were here disabled and cut off; one, the "Swiftsure," hauled down her
+colors after the admiral, a young man of only twenty-seven, was
+killed. "Highly to be admired," says a contemporary writer, "was the
+resolution of Vice-Admiral Berkeley, who, though cut off from the
+line, surrounded by enemies, great numbers of his men killed, his ship
+disabled and boarded on all sides, yet continued fighting almost
+alone, killed several with his own hand, and would accept no quarter;
+till at length, being shot in the throat with a musket-ball, he
+retired into the captain's cabin, where he was found dead, extended at
+his full length upon a table, and almost covered with his own blood."
+Quite as heroic, but more fortunate in its issue, was the conduct of
+the other English admiral thus cut off; and the incidents of his
+struggle, though not specially instructive otherwise, are worth
+quoting, as giving a lively picture of the scenes which passed in the
+heat of the contests of those days, and afford coloring to otherwise
+dry details.
+
+ "Being in a short time completely disabled, one of the enemy's
+ fire-ships grappled him on the starboard quarter; he was,
+ however, freed by the almost incredible exertions of his
+ lieutenant, who, having in the midst of the flames loosed the
+ grappling-irons, swung back on board his own ship unhurt. The
+ Dutch, bent on the destruction of this unfortunate ship, sent a
+ second which grappled her on the larboard side, and with greater
+ success than the former; for the sails instantly taking fire,
+ the crew were so terrified that nearly fifty of them jumped
+ overboard. The admiral, Sir John Harman, seeing this confusion,
+ ran with his sword drawn among those who remained, and
+ threatened with instant death the first man who should attempt
+ to quit the ship, or should not exert himself to quench the
+ flames. The crew then returned to their duty and got the fire
+ under; but the rigging being a good deal burned, one of the
+ topsail yards fell and broke Sir John's leg. In the midst of
+ this accumulated distress, a third fire-ship prepared to grapple
+ him, but was sunk by the guns before she could effect her
+ purpose. The Dutch vice-admiral, Evertzen, now bore down to him
+ and offered quarter; but Sir John replied, 'No, no, it is not
+ come to that yet,' and giving him a broadside, killed the Dutch
+ commander; after which the other enemies sheered off."[29]
+
+It is therefore not surprising that the account we have been following
+reported two English flag-ships lost, one by a fire-ship. "The English
+chief still continued on the port tack, and," says the writer, "as
+night fell we could see him proudly leading his line past the squadron
+of North Holland and Zealand [the actual rear, but proper van], which
+from noon up to that time had not been able to reach the enemy [Fig.
+2, R''] from their leewardly position." The merit of Monk's attack as
+a piece of grand tactics is evident, and bears a strong resemblance to
+that of Nelson at the Nile. Discerning quickly the weakness of the
+Dutch order, he had attacked a vastly superior force in such a way
+that only part of it could come into action; and though the English
+actually lost more heavily, they carried off a brilliant prestige and
+must have left considerable depression and heart-burning among the
+Dutch. The eye-witness goes on: "The affair continued until ten P.M.,
+friends and foes mixed together and as likely to receive injury from
+one as from the other. It will be remarked that the success of the day
+and the misfortunes of the English came from their being too much
+scattered, too extended in their line; but for which we could never
+have cut off a corner of them, as we did. The mistake of Monk was in
+not keeping his ships better together;" that is, closed up. The remark
+is just, the criticism scarcely so; the opening out of the line was
+almost unavoidable in so long a column of sailing-ships, and was one
+of the chances taken by Monk when he offered battle.
+
+The English stood off on the port tack to the west or west-northwest,
+and next day returned to the fight. The Dutch were now on the port
+tack in natural order, the right leading, and were to windward; but
+the enemy, being more weatherly and better disciplined, soon gained
+the advantage of the wind. The English this day had forty-four ships
+in action, the Dutch about eighty; many of the English, as before
+said, larger. The two fleets passed on opposite tacks, the English to
+windward;[30] but Tromp, in the rear, seeing that the Dutch order of
+battle was badly formed, the ships in two or three lines, overlapping
+and so masking each other's fire, went about and gained to windward of
+the enemy's van (R'); which he was able to do from the length of the
+line, and because the English, running parallel to the Dutch order,
+were off the wind. "At this moment two flag-officers of the Dutch van
+kept broad off, presenting their sterns to the English (V'). Ruyter,
+greatly astonished, tried to stop them, but in vain, and therefore
+felt obliged to imitate the manoeuvre in order to keep his squadron
+together; but he did so with some order, keeping some ships around
+him, and was joined by one of the van ships, disgusted with the
+conduct of his immediate superior. Tromp was now in great danger,
+separated [by his own act first and then by the conduct of the van]
+from his own fleet by the English, and would have been destroyed but
+for Ruyter, who, seeing the urgency of the case, hauled up for him,"
+the van and centre thus standing back for the rear on the opposite
+tack to that on which they entered action. This prevented the English
+from keeping up the attack on Tromp, lest Ruyter should gain the wind
+of them, which they could not afford to yield because of their very
+inferior numbers. Both the action of Tromp and that of the junior
+flag-officers in the van, though showing very different degrees of
+warlike ardor, bring out strongly the lack of subordination and of
+military feeling which has been charged against the Dutch officers as
+a body; no signs of which appear among the English at this time.
+
+How keenly Ruyter felt the conduct of his lieutenants was manifested
+when "Tromp, immediately after this partial action, went on board his
+flagship. The seamen cheered him; but Ruyter said, 'This is no time
+for rejoicing, but rather for tears.' Indeed, our position was bad,
+each squadron acting differently, in no line, and all the ships
+huddled together like a flock of sheep, so packed that the English
+might have surrounded all of them with their forty ships [June 12,
+Fig. 2]. The English were in admirable order, but did not push their
+advantage as they should, whatever the reason." The reason no doubt
+was the same that often prevented sailing-ships from pressing an
+advantage,--disability from crippled spars and rigging, added to the
+inexpediency of such inferior numbers risking a decisive action.
+
+Ruyter was thus able to draw his fleet out into line again, although
+much maltreated by the English, and the two fleets passed again on
+opposite tacks, the Dutch to leeward, and Ruyter's ship the last in
+his column. As he passed the English rear, he lost his maintopmast and
+mainyard. After another partial rencounter the English drew away to
+the northwest toward their own shores, the Dutch following them; the
+wind being still from southwest, but light. The English were now
+fairly in retreat, and the pursuit continued all night, Ruyter's own
+ship dropping out of sight in the rear from her crippled state.
+
+The third day Monk continued retreating to the westward. He burned, by
+the English accounts, three disabled ships, sent ahead those that were
+most crippled, and himself brought up the rear with those that were in
+fighting condition, which are variously stated, again by the English,
+at twenty-eight and sixteen in number (Plate II., June 13). One of the
+largest and finest of the English fleet, the "Royal Prince," of ninety
+guns, ran aground on the Galloper Shoal and was taken by Tromp (Plate
+II. a); but Monk's retreat was so steady and orderly that he was
+otherwise unmolested. This shows that the Dutch had suffered very
+severely. Toward evening Rupert's squadron was seen; and all the ships
+of the English fleet, except those crippled in action, were at last
+united.
+
+The next day the wind came out again very fresh from the southwest,
+giving the Dutch the weather-gage. The English, instead of attempting
+to pass upon opposite tacks, came up from astern relying upon the
+speed and handiness of their ships. So doing, the battle engaged all
+along the line on the port tack, the English to leeward.[31] The Dutch
+fire-ships were badly handled and did no harm, whereas the English
+burned two of their enemies. The two fleets ran on thus, exchanging
+broadsides for two hours, at the end of which time the bulk of the
+English fleet had passed through the Dutch line.[32] All regularity of
+order was henceforward lost. "At this moment," says the eye-witness,
+"the lookout was extraordinary, for all were separated, the English as
+well as we. But luck would have it that the largest of our fractions
+surrounding the admiral remained to windward, and the largest fraction
+of the English, also with their admiral, remained to leeward [Figs. 1
+and 2, C and C']. This was the cause of our victory and their ruin.
+Our admiral had with him thirty-five or forty ships of his own and of
+other squadrons, for the squadrons were scattered and order much lost.
+The rest of the Dutch ships had left him. The leader of the van, Van
+Ness, had gone off with fourteen ships in chase of three or four
+English ships, which under a press of sail had gained to windward of
+the Dutch van [Fig. 1, V]. Van Tromp with the rear squadron had
+fallen to leeward, and so had to keep on [to leeward of Ruyter and the
+English main body, Fig. 1, R] after Van Ness, in order to rejoin the
+admiral by passing round the English centre." De Ruyter and the
+English main body kept up a sharp action, beating to windward all the
+time. Tromp, having carried sail, overtook Van Ness, and returned
+bringing the van back with him (V', R'); but owing to the constant
+plying to windward of the English main body he came up to leeward of
+it and could not rejoin Ruyter, who was to windward (Fig. 3, V'',
+R''). Ruyter, seeing this, made signal to the ships around him, and
+the main body of the Dutch kept away before the wind (Fig 3, C''),
+which was then very strong. "Thus in less than no time we found
+ourselves in the midst of the English; who, being attacked on both
+sides, were thrown into confusion and saw their whole order destroyed,
+as well by dint of the action, as by the strong wind that was then
+blowing. This was the hottest of the fight [Fig. 3]. We saw the high
+admiral of England separated from his fleet, followed only by one
+fire-ship. With that he gained to windward, and passing through the
+North Holland squadron, placed himself again at the head of fifteen or
+twenty ships that rallied to him."
+
+ [Illustration: Pl. II.]
+
+Thus ended this great sea-fight, the most remarkable, in some of its
+aspects, that has ever been fought upon the ocean. Amid conflicting
+reports it is not possible to do more than estimate the results. A
+fairly impartial account says: "The States lost in these actions three
+vice-admirals, two thousand men, and four ships. The loss of the
+English was five thousand killed and three thousand prisoners; and
+they lost besides seventeen ships, of which nine remained in the hands
+of the victors."[33] There is no doubt that the English had much the
+worst of it, and that this was owing wholly to the original blunder of
+weakening the fleet by a great detachment sent in another direction.
+Great detachments are sometimes necessary evils, but in this case no
+necessity existed. Granting the approach of the French, the proper
+course for the English was to fall with their whole fleet upon the
+Dutch before their allies could come up. This lesson is as applicable
+to-day as it ever was. A second lesson, likewise of present
+application, is the necessity of sound military institutions for
+implanting correct military feeling, pride, and discipline. Great as
+was the first blunder of the English, and serious as was the disaster,
+there can be no doubt that the consequences would have been much worse
+but for the high spirit and skill with which the plans of Monk were
+carried out by his subordinates, and the lack of similar support to
+Ruyter on the part of the Dutch subalterns. In the movements of the
+English, we hear nothing of two juniors turning tail at a critical
+moment, nor of a third, with misdirected ardor, getting on the wrong
+side of the enemy's fleet. Their drill also, their tactical precision,
+was remarked even then. The Frenchman De Guiche, after witnessing this
+Four Days' Fight, wrote:--
+
+ "Nothing equals the beautiful order of the English at sea. Never
+ was a line drawn straighter than that formed by their ships;
+ thus they bring all their fire to bear upon those who draw near
+ them.... They fight like a line of cavalry which is handled
+ according to rule, and applies itself solely to force back those
+ who oppose; whereas the Dutch advance like cavalry whose
+ squadrons leave their ranks and come separately to the
+ charge."[34]
+
+The Dutch government, averse to expense, unmilitary in its tone, and
+incautious from long and easy victory over the degenerate navy of
+Spain, had allowed its fleet to sink into a mere assembly of armed
+merchantmen. Things were at their worst in the days of Cromwell.
+Taught by the severe lessons of that war, the United Provinces, under
+an able ruler, had done much to mend matters, but full efficiency had
+not yet been gained.
+
+ "In 1666 as in 1653," says a French naval writer, "the fortune
+ of war seemed to lean to the side of the English. Of the three
+ great battles fought two were decided victories; and the third,
+ though adverse, had but increased the glory of her seamen. This
+ was due to the intelligent boldness of Monk and Rupert, the
+ talents of part of the admirals and captains, and the skill of
+ the seamen and soldiers under them. The wise and vigorous
+ efforts made by the government of the United Provinces, and the
+ undeniable superiority of Ruyter in experience and genius over
+ any one of his opponents, could not compensate for the weakness
+ or incapacity of part of the Dutch officers, and the manifest
+ inferiority of the men under their orders."[35]
+
+England, as has been said before, still felt the impress of Cromwell's
+iron hand upon her military institutions; but that impress was growing
+weaker. Before the next Dutch war Monk was dead, and was poorly
+replaced by the cavalier Rupert. Court extravagance cut down the
+equipment of the navy as did the burgomaster's parsimony, and court
+corruption undermined discipline as surely as commercial indifference.
+The effect was evident when the fleets of the two countries met again,
+six years later.
+
+There was one well-known feature of all the military navies of that
+day which calls for a passing comment; for its correct bearing and
+value is not always, perhaps not generally, seen. The command of
+fleets and of single vessels was often given to soldiers, to military
+men unaccustomed to the sea, and ignorant how to handle the ship, that
+duty being intrusted to another class of officer. Looking closely into
+the facts, it is seen that this made a clean division between the
+direction of the fighting and of the motive power of the ship. This is
+the essence of the matter; and the principle is the same whatever the
+motive power may be. The inconvenience and inefficiency of such a
+system was obvious then as it is now, and the logic of facts gradually
+threw the two functions into the hands of one corps of officers, the
+result being the modern naval officer, as that term is generally
+understood.[36] Unfortunately, in this process of blending, the less
+important function was allowed to get the upper hand; the naval
+officer came to feel more proud of his dexterity in managing the
+motive power of his ship than of his skill in developing her military
+efficiency. The bad effects of this lack of interest in military
+science became most evident when the point of handling fleets was
+reached, because for that military skill told most, and previous study
+was most necessary; but it was felt in the single ship as well. Hence
+it came to pass, and especially in the English navy, that the pride of
+the seaman took the place of the pride of the military man. The
+English naval officer thought more of that which likened him to the
+merchant captain than of that which made him akin to the soldier. In
+the French navy this result was less general, owing probably to the
+more military spirit of the government, and especially of the
+nobility, to whom the rank of officer was reserved. It was not
+possible that men whose whole association was military, all of whose
+friends looked upon arms as the one career for a gentleman, could
+think more of the sails and rigging than of the guns or the fleet. The
+English corps of officers was of different origin. There was more than
+the writer thought in Macaulay's well-known saying: "There were seamen
+and there were gentlemen in the navy of Charles II.; but the seamen
+were not gentlemen, and the gentlemen were not seamen." The trouble
+was not in the absence or presence of gentlemen as such, but in the
+fact that under the conditions of that day the gentleman was
+pre-eminently the military element of society; and that the seaman,
+after the Dutch wars, gradually edged the gentleman, and with him the
+military tone and spirit as distinguished from simple courage, out of
+the service. Even "such men of family as Herbert and Russell, William
+III.'s admirals," says the biographer of Lord Hawke, "were sailors
+indeed, but only able to hold their own by adopting the boisterous
+manners of the hardy tarpaulin." The same national traits which made
+the French inferior as seamen made them superior as military men; not
+in courage, but in skill. To this day the same tendency obtains; the
+direction of the motive power has no such consideration as the
+military functions in the navies of the Latin nations. The studious
+and systematic side of the French character also inclined the French
+officer, when not a trifler, to consider and develop tactical
+questions in a logical manner; to prepare himself to handle fleets,
+not merely as a seaman but as a military man. The result showed, in
+the American Revolutionary War, that despite a mournful history of
+governmental neglect, men who were first of all military men, inferior
+though they were in opportunities as seamen to their enemies, could
+meet them on more than equal terms as to tactical skill, and were
+practically their superiors in handling fleets. The false theory has
+already been pointed out, which directed the action of the French
+fleet not to crushing its enemy, but to some ulterior aim; but this
+does not affect the fact that in tactical skill the military men were
+superior to the mere seamen, though their tactical skill was applied
+to mistaken strategic ends. The source whence the Dutch mainly drew
+their officers does not certainly appear; for while the English naval
+historian in 1666 says that most of the captains of their fleet were
+sons of rich burgomasters, placed there for political reasons by the
+Grand Pensionary, and without experience, Duquesne, the ablest French
+admiral of the day, comments in 1676 on the precision and skill of the
+Dutch captains in terms very disparaging to his own. It is likely,
+from many indications, that they were generally merchant seamen, with
+little original military feeling; but the severity with which the
+delinquents were punished both by the State and by popular frenzy,
+seems to have driven these officers, who were far from lacking the
+highest personal courage, into a sense of what military loyalty and
+subordination required. They made a very different record in 1672 from
+that of 1666.
+
+Before finally leaving the Four Days' Fight, the conclusions of
+another writer may well be quoted:--
+
+ "Such was that bloody Battle of the Four Days, or Straits of
+ Calais, the most memorable sea-fight of modern days; not,
+ indeed, by its results, but by the aspect of its different
+ phases; by the fury of the combatants; by the boldness and skill
+ of the leaders; and by the new character which it gave to sea
+ warfare. More than any other this fight marks clearly the
+ passage from former methods to the tactics of the end of the
+ seventeenth century. For the first time we can follow, as though
+ traced upon a plan, the principal movements of the contending
+ fleets. It seems quite clear that to the Dutch as well as to the
+ British have been given a tactical book and a code of signals;
+ or, at the least, written instructions, extensive and precise,
+ to serve instead of such a code. We feel that each admiral now
+ has his squadron in hand, and that even the commander-in-chief
+ disposes at his will, during the fight, of the various
+ subdivisions of his fleet. Compare this action with those of
+ 1652, and one plain fact stares you in the face,--that between
+ the two dates naval tactics have undergone a revolution.
+
+ "Such were the changes that distinguish the war of 1665 from
+ that of 1652. As in the latter epoch, the admiral still thinks
+ the weather-gage an advantage for his fleet; but it is no
+ longer, from the tactical point of view, the principal, we might
+ almost say the sole, preoccupation. Now he wishes above all to
+ keep his fleet in good order and compact as long as possible, so
+ as to keep the power of _combining_, during the action, the
+ movements of the different squadrons. Look at Ruyter, at the end
+ of the Four Days' Fight; with great difficulty he has kept to
+ windward of the English fleet, yet he does not hesitate to
+ sacrifice this advantage in order to unite the two parts of his
+ fleet, which are separated by the enemy. If at the later fight
+ off the North Foreland great intervals exist between the Dutch
+ squadrons, if the rear afterward continues to withdraw from the
+ centre, Ruyter deplores such a fault as the chief cause of his
+ defeat. He so deplores it in his official report; he even
+ accuses Tromp [who was his personal enemy] of treason or
+ cowardice,--an unjust accusation, but which none the less shows
+ the enormous importance thenceforth attached, during action, to
+ the reunion of the fleet into a whole strictly and regularly
+ maintained."[37]
+
+This commentary is justified in so far as it points out general aims
+and tendencies; but the results were not as complete as might be
+inferred from it.
+
+The English, notwithstanding their heavy loss in the Four Days'
+Battle, were at sea again within two months, much to the surprise of
+the Dutch; and on the 4th of August another severe fight was fought
+off the North Foreland, ending in the complete defeat of the latter,
+who retired to their own coasts. The English followed, and effected an
+entrance into one of the Dutch harbors, where they destroyed a large
+fleet of merchantmen as well as a town of some importance. Toward the
+end of 1666 both sides were tired of the war, which was doing great
+harm to trade, and weakening both navies to the advantage of the
+growing sea power of France. Negotiations looking toward peace were
+opened; but Charles II., ill disposed to the United Provinces,
+confident that the growing pretensions of Louis XIV. to the Spanish
+Netherlands would break up the existing alliance between Holland and
+France, and relying also upon the severe reverses suffered at sea by
+the Dutch, was exacting and haughty in his demands. To justify and
+maintain this line of conduct he should have kept up his fleet, the
+prestige of which had been so advanced by its victories. Instead of
+that, poverty, the result of extravagance and of his home policy, led
+him to permit it to decline; ships in large numbers were laid up; and
+he readily adopted an opinion which chimed in with his penury, and
+which, as it has had advocates at all periods of sea history, should
+be noted and condemned here. This opinion, warmly opposed by Monk,
+was:--
+
+ "That as the Dutch were chiefly supported by trade, as the
+ supply of their navy depended upon trade, and, as experience
+ showed, nothing provoked the people so much as injuring their
+ trade, his Majesty should therefore apply himself to this, which
+ would effectually humble them, at the same time that it would
+ less exhaust the English than fitting out such mighty fleets as
+ had hitherto kept the sea every summer.... Upon these motives
+ the king took a fatal resolution of laying up his great ships
+ and keeping only a few frigates on the cruise."[38]
+
+In consequence of this economical theory of carrying on a war, the
+Grand Pensionary of Holland, De Witt, who had the year before caused
+soundings of the Thames to be made, sent into the river, under De
+Ruyter, a force of sixty or seventy ships-of-the-line, which on the
+14th of June, 1667, went up as high as Gravesend, destroying ships at
+Chatham and in the Medway, and taking possession of Sheerness. The
+light of the fires could be seen from London, and the Dutch fleet
+remained in possession of the mouth of the river until the end of the
+month. Under this blow, following as it did upon the great plague and
+the great fire of London, Charles consented to peace, which was signed
+July 31, 1667, and is known as the Peace of Breda. The most lasting
+result of the war was the transfer of New York and New Jersey to
+England, thus joining her northern and southern colonies in North
+America.
+
+Before going on again with the general course of the history of the
+times, it will be well to consider for a moment the theory which
+worked so disastrously for England in 1667; that, namely, of
+maintaining a sea-war mainly by preying upon the enemy's commerce.
+This plan, which involves only the maintenance of a few swift cruisers
+and can be backed by the spirit of greed in a nation, fitting out
+privateers without direct expense to the State, possesses the specious
+attractions which economy always presents. The great injury done to
+the wealth and prosperity of the enemy is also undeniable; and
+although to some extent his merchant-ships can shelter themselves
+ignobly under a foreign flag while the war lasts, this _guerre de
+course_, as the French call it, this commerce-destroying, to use our
+own phrase, must, if in itself successful, greatly embarrass the
+foreign government and distress its people. Such a war, however,
+cannot stand alone; it must be _supported_, to use the military
+phrase; unsubstantial and evanescent in itself, it cannot reach far
+from its base. That base must be either home ports, or else some solid
+outpost of the national power, on the shore or the sea; a distant
+dependency or a powerful fleet. Failing such support, the cruiser can
+only dash out hurriedly a short distance from home, and its blows,
+though painful, cannot be fatal. It was not the policy of 1667, but
+Cromwell's powerful fleets of ships-of-the-line in 1652, that shut
+the Dutch merchantmen in their ports and caused the grass to grow in
+the streets of Amsterdam. When, instructed by the suffering of that
+time, the Dutch kept large fleets afloat through two exhausting wars,
+though their commerce suffered greatly, they bore up the burden of the
+strife against England and France united. Forty years later, Louis
+XIV. was driven, by exhaustion, to the policy adopted by Charles II.
+through parsimony. Then were the days of the great French privateers,
+Jean Bart, Forbin, Duguay-Trouin, Du Casse, and others. The regular
+fleets of the French navy were practically withdrawn from the ocean
+during the great War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1712). The French
+naval historian says:--
+
+ "Unable to renew the naval armaments, Louis XIV. increased the
+ number of cruisers upon the more frequented seas, especially the
+ Channel and the German Ocean [not far from home, it will be
+ noticed]. In these different spots the cruisers were always in a
+ position to intercept or hinder the movements of transports
+ laden with troops, and of the numerous convoys carrying supplies
+ of all kinds. In these seas, in the centre of the commercial and
+ political world, there is always work for cruisers.
+ Notwithstanding the difficulties they met, owing to the absence
+ of large friendly fleets, they served advantageously the cause
+ of the two peoples [French and Spanish]. These cruisers, in the
+ face of the Anglo-Dutch power, needed good luck, boldness, and
+ skill. These three conditions were not lacking to our seamen;
+ but then, what chiefs and what captains they had!"[39]
+
+The English historian, on the other hand, while admitting how severely
+the people and commerce of England suffered from the cruisers,
+bitterly reflecting at times upon the administration, yet refers over
+and over again to the increasing prosperity of the whole country, and
+especially of its commercial part. In the preceding war, on the
+contrary, from 1689 to 1697, when France sent great fleets to sea and
+disputed the supremacy of the ocean, how different the result! The
+same English writer says of that time:--
+
+ "With respect to our trade it is certain that we suffered
+ infinitely more, not merely than the French, for that was to be
+ expected from the greater number of our merchant-ships, but than
+ we ever did in any former war.... This proceeded in great
+ measure from the vigilance of the French, who carried on the war
+ in a piratical way. It is out of all doubt that, taking all
+ together, our traffic suffered excessively; our merchants were
+ many of them ruined."[40]
+
+Macaulay says of this period: "During many months of 1693 the English
+trade with the Mediterranean had been interrupted almost entirely.
+There was no chance that a merchantman from London or Amsterdam would,
+if unprotected, reach the Pillars of Hercules without being boarded by
+a French privateer; and the protection of armed vessels was not easily
+obtained." Why? Because the vessels of England's navy were occupied
+watching the French navy, and this diversion of them from the cruisers
+and privateers constituted the support which a commerce-destroying war
+must have. A French historian, speaking of the same period in England
+(1696), says: "The state of the finances was deplorable; money was
+scarce, maritime insurance thirty per cent, the Navigation Act was
+virtually suspended, and the English shipping reduced to the necessity
+of sailing under the Swedish and Danish flags."[41] Half a century
+later the French government was again reduced, by long neglect of the
+navy, to a cruising warfare. With what results? First, the French
+historian says: "From June, 1756, to June, 1760, French privateers
+captured from the English more than twenty-five hundred merchantmen.
+In 1761, though France had not, so to speak, a single ship-of-the-line
+at sea, and though the English had taken two hundred and forty of our
+privateers, their comrades still took eight hundred and twelve
+vessels. But," he goes on to say, "the prodigious growth of the
+English shipping explains the number of these prizes."[42] In other
+words, the suffering involved to England in such numerous captures,
+which must have caused great individual injury and discontent, did not
+really prevent the growing prosperity of the State and of the
+community at large. The English naval historian, speaking of the same
+period, says: "While the commerce of France was nearly destroyed, the
+trading-fleet of England covered the seas. Every year her commerce was
+increasing; the money which the war carried out was returned by the
+produce of her industry. Eight thousand merchant vessels were employed
+by the English merchants." And again, summing up the results of the
+war, after stating the immense amount of specie brought into the
+kingdom by foreign conquests, he says: "The trade of England increased
+gradually every year, and such a scene of national prosperity, while
+waging a long, bloody, and costly war, was never before shown by any
+people in the world." On the other hand, the historian of the French
+navy, speaking of an earlier phase of the same wars, says: "The
+English fleets, having nothing to resist them, swept the seas. Our
+privateers and single cruisers, having no fleet to keep down the
+abundance of their enemies, ran short careers. Twenty thousand French
+seamen lay in English prisons."[43] When, on the other hand, in the
+War of the American Revolution France resumed the policy of Colbert
+and of the early reign of Louis XIV., and kept large battle-fleets
+afloat, the same result again followed as in the days of Tourville.
+"For the first time," says the Annual Register, forgetting or ignorant
+of the experience of 1693, and remembering only the glories of the
+later wars, "English merchant-ships were driven to take refuge under
+foreign flags."[44] Finally, in quitting this part of the subject, it
+may be remarked that in the island of Martinique the French had a
+powerful distant dependency upon which to base a cruising warfare; and
+during the Seven Years' War, as afterward during the First Empire, it,
+with Guadeloupe, was the refuge of numerous privateers. "The records
+of the English admiralty raise the losses of the English in the West
+Indies during the first years of the Seven Years' War to fourteen
+hundred merchantmen taken or destroyed." The English fleet was
+therefore directed against the islands, both of which fell, involving
+a loss to the trade of France greater than all the depredations of her
+cruisers on the English commerce, besides breaking up the system; but
+in the war of 1778 the great fleets protected the islands, which were
+not even threatened at any time.
+
+So far we have been viewing the effect of a purely cruising warfare,
+not based upon powerful squadrons, only upon that particular part of
+the enemy's strength against which it is theoretically directed,--upon
+his commerce and general wealth; upon the sinews of war. The evidence
+seems to show that even for its own special ends such a mode of war is
+inconclusive, worrying but not deadly; it might almost be said that it
+causes needless suffering. What, however, is the effect of this policy
+upon the general ends of the war, to which it is one of the means, and
+to which it is subsidiary? How, again, does it react upon the people
+that practise it? As the historical evidences will come up in detail
+from time to time, it need here only be summarized. The result to
+England in the days of Charles II. has been seen,--her coast insulted,
+her shipping burned almost within sight of her capital. In the War of
+the Spanish Succession, when the control of Spain was the military
+object, while the French depended upon a cruising war against
+commerce, the navies of England and Holland, unopposed, guarded the
+coasts of the peninsula, blocked the port of Toulon, forced the French
+succors to cross the Pyrenees, and by keeping open the sea highway,
+neutralized the geographical nearness of France to the seat of war.
+Their fleets seized Gibraltar, Barcelona, and Minorca, and
+co-operating with the Austrian army failed by little of reducing
+Toulon. In the Seven Years' War the English fleets seized, or aided in
+seizing, all the most valuable colonies of France and Spain, and made
+frequent descents on the French coast. The War of the American
+Revolution affords no lesson, the fleets being nearly equal. The next
+most striking instance to Americans is the War of 1812. Everybody
+knows how our privateers swarmed over the seas, and that from the
+smallness of our navy the war was essentially, indeed solely, a
+cruising war. Except upon the lakes, it is doubtful if more than two
+of our ships at any time acted together. The injury done to English
+commerce, thus unexpectedly attacked by a distant foe which had been
+undervalued, may be fully conceded; but on the one hand, the American
+cruisers were powerfully supported by the French fleet, which being
+assembled in larger or smaller bodies in the many ports under the
+emperor's control from Antwerp to Venice, tied the fleets of England
+to blockade duty; and on the other hand, when the fall of the emperor
+released them, our coasts were insulted in every direction, the
+Chesapeake entered and controlled, its shores wasted, the Potomac
+ascended, and Washington burned. The Northern frontier was kept in a
+state of alarm, though there squadrons, absolutely weak but relatively
+strong, sustained the general defence; while in the South the
+Mississippi was entered unopposed, and New Orleans barely saved. When
+negotiations for peace were opened, the bearing of the English toward
+the American envoys was not that of men who felt their country to be
+threatened with an unbearable evil. The late Civil War, with the
+cruises of the "Alabama" and "Sumter" and their consorts, revived the
+tradition of commerce-destroying. In so far as this is one means to a
+general end, and is based upon a navy otherwise powerful, it is well;
+but we need not expect to see the feats of those ships repeated in the
+face of a great sea power. In the first place, those cruises were
+powerfully supported by the determination of the United States to
+blockade, not only the chief centres of Southern trade, but every
+inlet of the coast, thus leaving few ships available for pursuit; in
+the second place, had there been ten of those cruisers where there was
+one, they would not have stopped the incursion in Southern waters of
+the Union fleet, which penetrated to every point accessible from the
+sea; and in the third place, the undeniable injury, direct and
+indirect, inflicted upon individuals and upon one branch of the
+nation's industry (and how high that shipping industry stands in the
+writer's estimation need not be repeated), did not in the least
+influence or retard the event of the war. Such injuries, unaccompanied
+by others, are more irritating than weakening. On the other hand, will
+any refuse to admit that the work of the great Union fleets powerfully
+modified and hastened an end which was probably inevitable in any
+case? As a sea power the South then occupied the place of France in
+the wars we have been considering, while the situation of the North
+resembled that of England; and, as in France, the sufferers in the
+Confederacy were not a class, but the government and the nation at
+large. It is not the taking of individual ships or convoys, be they
+few or many, that strikes down the money power of a nation; it is the
+possession of that overbearing power on the sea which drives the
+enemy's flag from it, or allows it to appear only as a fugitive; and
+which, by controlling the great common, closes the highways by which
+commerce moves to and from the enemy's shores. This overbearing power
+can only be exercised by great navies, and by them (on the broad sea)
+less efficiently now than in the days when the neutral flag had not
+its present immunity. It is not unlikely that, in the event of a war
+between maritime nations, an attempt may be made by the one having a
+great sea power and wishing to break down its enemy's commerce, to
+interpret the phrase "effective blockade" in the manner that best
+suits its interests at the time; to assert that the speed and disposal
+of its ships make the blockade effective at much greater distances and
+with fewer ships than formerly. The determination of such a question
+will depend, not upon the weaker belligerent, but upon neutral powers;
+it will raise the issue between belligerent and neutral rights; and if
+the belligerent have a vastly overpowering navy he may carry his
+point, just as England, when possessing the mastery of the seas, long
+refused to admit the doctrine of the neutral flag covering the goods.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[16] Davies: History of Holland.
+
+[17] République d'Angleterre.
+
+[18] Lefèvre-Pontalis: Jean de Witt.
+
+[19] Martin: History of France.
+
+[20] Gougeard: Marine de Guerre.
+
+[21] Since the above was written, the experience of the English autumn
+manoeuvres of 1888 has verified this statement; not indeed that any
+such experiment was needed to establish a self-evident fact.
+
+[22] Chabaud-Arnault: Revue Mar. et Col. 1885.
+
+[23] The recent development of rapid-firing and machine guns, with the
+great increase of their calibre and consequent range and penetration,
+reproduces this same step in the cycle of progress.
+
+[24] Gougeard: Marine de Guerre.
+
+[25] Vol. lxxxii. p. 137.
+
+[26] Mémoires du Cte. de Guiche. À Londres, chez P. Changuion. 1743
+pp. 234-264.
+
+[27] See Map of English Channel and North Sea, page 107.
+
+[28] Plate I., June 11, 1666, Fig. 1. V, van; C, centre; R, rear: in
+this part of the action the Dutch order was inverted, so that the
+actual van was the proper rear. The great number of ships engaged in
+the fleet actions of these Anglo-Dutch wars make it impossible to
+represent each ship and at the same time preserve clearness in the
+plans. Each figure of a ship therefore represents a group more or less
+numerous.
+
+[29] Campbell: Lives of the Admirals.
+
+[30] Plate I., June 12, Fig. 1, V, C, R.
+
+[31] Plate II., June 14, Fig. 1, E, D.
+
+[32] Fig. 1, V, C, R. This result was probably due simply to the
+greater weatherliness of the English ships. It would perhaps be more
+accurate to say that the Dutch had sagged to leeward so that they
+drifted through the English line.
+
+[33] Lefèvre-Pontalis. Jean de Witt.
+
+[34] Mémoires, pp. 249, 251, 266, 267.
+
+[35] Chabaud-Arnault: Revue Mar. et Col. 1885.
+
+[36] The true significance of this change has often been
+misunderstood, and hence erroneous inferences as to the future have
+been drawn. It was not a case of the new displacing the old, but of
+the military element in a military organization asserting its
+necessary and inevitable control over all other functions.
+
+[37] Chabaud-Arnault: Revue Mar. et Col. 1885.
+
+[38] Campbell: Lives of the Admirals.
+
+[39] Lapeyrouse-Bonfils: Hist. de la Marine Française.
+
+[40] Campbell: Lives of the Admirals.
+
+[41] Martin: History of France.
+
+[42] Martin: History of France.
+
+[43] Lapeyrouse-Bonfils.
+
+[44] Annual Reg., vol. xxvii. p. 10.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+ WAR OF ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN ALLIANCE AGAINST THE UNITED
+ PROVINCES, 1672-1674.--FINALLY, OF FRANCE AGAINST COMBINED
+ EUROPE, 1674-1678.--SEA BATTLES OF SOLEBAY, THE TEXEL, AND
+ STROMBOLI.
+
+
+Shortly before the conclusion of the Peace of Breda, Louis XIV. made
+his first step toward seizing parts of the Spanish Netherlands and
+Franche Comté. At the same time that his armies moved forward, he sent
+out a State paper setting forth his claims upon the territories in
+question. This paper showed unmistakably the ambitious character of
+the young king, roused the anxiety of Europe, and doubtless increased
+the strength of the peace party in England. Under the leadership of
+Holland, but with the hearty co-operation of the English minister, an
+alliance was formed between the two countries and Sweden, hitherto the
+friend of France, to check Louis' advance before his power became too
+great. The attack first on the Netherlands in 1667, and then on
+Franche Comté in 1668, showed the hopeless weakness of Spain to defend
+her possessions; they fell almost without a blow.
+
+The policy of the United Provinces, relative to the claims of Louis at
+this time, was summed up in the phrase that "France was good as a
+friend, but not as a neighbor." They were unwilling to break their
+traditional alliance, but still more unwilling to have her on their
+border. The policy of the English people, though not of their king,
+turned toward the Dutch. In the increased greatness of Louis they saw
+danger to all Europe; to themselves more especially if, by a settled
+preponderance on the continent, his hands were free to develop his sea
+power. "Flanders once in the power of Louis XIV.," wrote the English
+ambassador Temple, "the Dutch feel that their country will be only a
+maritime province of France;" and sharing that opinion, "he advocated
+the policy of resistance to the latter country, whose domination in
+the Low Countries he considered as a threatened subjection of all
+Europe. He never ceased to represent to his government how dangerous
+to England would be the conquest of the sea provinces by France, and
+he urgently pointed out the need of a prompt understanding with the
+Dutch. 'This would be the best revenge,' said he, 'for the trick
+France has played us in involving us in the last war with the United
+Provinces.'" These considerations brought the two countries together
+in that Triple Alliance with Sweden which has been mentioned, and
+which for a time checked the onward movement of Louis. But the wars
+between the two sea nations were too recent, the humiliation of
+England in the Thames too bitter, and the rivalries that still existed
+too real, too deeply seated in the nature of things, to make that
+alliance durable. It needed the dangerous power of Louis, and his
+persistence in a course threatening to both, to weld the union of
+these natural antagonists. This was not to be done without another
+bloody encounter.
+
+Louis was deeply angered at the Triple Alliance, and his wrath was
+turned mainly upon Holland, in which from the necessities of her
+position he recognized his most steadfast opponent. For the time,
+however, he seemed to yield; the more readily because of the probable
+approaching failure of the Spanish royal line, and the ambition he had
+of getting more than merely the territory lying to the east of France,
+when the throne became vacant. But, though he dissembled and yielded,
+from that time he set his mind upon the destruction of the republic.
+This policy was directly contrary to that laid down by Richelieu, and
+to the true welfare of France. It was to England's interest, at least
+just then, that the United Provinces should not be trodden down by
+France; but it was much more to the interest of France that they
+should not be subjected to England. England, free from the continent,
+might stand alone upon the seas contending with France; but France,
+hampered by her continental politics, could not hope to wrest the
+control of the seas from England without an ally. This ally Louis
+proposed to destroy, and he asked England to help him. The final
+result is already known, but the outlines of the contest must now be
+followed.
+
+Before the royal purpose had passed into action, and while there was
+still time to turn the energies of France into another channel, a
+different course was proposed to the king. This was the project of
+Leibnitz, before spoken of, which has special interest for our subject
+because, in proposing to reverse the lines which Louis then laid down,
+to make continental expansion secondary and growth beyond the sea the
+primary object of France, the tendency avowedly and necessarily was to
+base the greatness of the country upon the control of the sea and of
+commerce. The immediate object offered to the France of that day, with
+the attainment of which, however, she could not have stopped short,
+was the conquest of Egypt; that country which, facing both the
+Mediterranean and Eastern seas, gave control of the great commercial
+route which in our own day has been completed by the Suez Canal. That
+route had lost much of its value by the discovery of the way round the
+Cape of Good Hope, and yet more by the unsettled and piratical
+conditions of the seas through which it lay; but with a really strong
+naval power occupying the key of the position it might have been
+largely restored. Such a power posted in Egypt would, in the already
+decaying condition of the Ottoman Empire, have controlled the trade
+not only of India and the far East, but also of the Levant; but the
+enterprise could not have stopped there. The necessity of mastering
+the Mediterranean and opening the Red Sea, closed to Christian vessels
+by Mohammedan bigotry, would have compelled the occupation of stations
+on either side of Egypt; and France would have been led step by step,
+as England has been led by the possession of India, to the seizure of
+points like Malta, Cyprus, Aden, in short, to a great sea power. That
+is clear now; but it will be interesting to hear the arguments by
+which Leibnitz sought to convince the French king two hundred years
+ago.
+
+After pointing out the weakness of the Turkish Empire, and the
+readiness with which it might be further embarrassed by stirring up
+Austria and Poland, the latter the traditional ally of France; after
+showing that France had no armed enemy in the Mediterranean, and that
+on the other side of Egypt she would meet the Portuguese colonies,
+longing to obtain protection against the Dutch in India, the memorial
+proceeds:--
+
+ "The conquest of Egypt, that Holland of the East, is infinitely
+ easier than that of the United Provinces. France needs peace in
+ the west, war at a distance. War with Holland will probably ruin
+ the new Indian companies as well as the colonies and commerce
+ lately revived by France, and will increase the burdens of the
+ people while diminishing their resources. The Dutch will retire
+ into their maritime towns, stand there on the defensive in
+ perfect safety, and assume the offensive on the sea with great
+ chance of success. If France does not obtain a complete victory
+ over them, she loses all her influence in Europe, and by victory
+ she endangers that influence. In Egypt, on the contrary, a
+ repulse, almost impossible, will be of no great consequence, and
+ victory will give the dominion of the seas, the commerce of the
+ East and of India, the preponderance in Christendom, and even
+ the empire of the East on the ruins of the Ottoman power. The
+ possession of Egypt opens the way to conquests worthy of
+ Alexander; the extreme weakness of the Orientals is no longer a
+ secret. Whoever has Egypt will have all the coasts and islands
+ of the Indian Ocean. It is in Egypt that Holland will be
+ conquered; it is there she will be despoiled of what alone
+ renders her prosperous, the treasures of the East. She will be
+ struck without being able to ward off the blow. Should she wish
+ to oppose the designs of France upon Egypt, she would be
+ overwhelmed with the universal hatred of Christians; attacked at
+ home, on the contrary, not only could she ward off the
+ aggression, but she could avenge herself sustained by universal
+ public opinion, which suspects the views of France of
+ ambition."[45]
+
+The memorial had no effect. "All that the efforts of ambition and
+human prudence could do to lay the foundations for the destruction of
+a nation, Louis XIV. now did. Diplomatic strategy on a vast scale was
+displayed in order to isolate and hem in Holland. Louis, who had been
+unable to make Europe accept the conquest of Belgium by France, now
+hoped to induce it to see without trembling the fall of Holland." His
+efforts were in the main successful. The Triple Alliance was broken;
+the King of England, though contrary to the wishes of his people, made
+an offensive alliance with Louis; and Holland, when the war began,
+found herself without an ally in Europe, except the worn-out kingdom
+of Spain and the Elector of Brandenburg, then by no means a
+first-class State. But in order to obtain the help of Charles II.,
+Louis not only engaged to pay him large sums of money, but also to
+give to England, from the spoils of Holland and Belgium, Walcheren,
+Sluys, and Cadsand, and even the islands of Goree and Voorn; the
+control, that is, of the mouths of the great commercial rivers the
+Scheldt and the Meuse. With regard to the united fleets of the two
+nations, it was agreed that the officer bearing the admiral's flag of
+England should command in chief. The question of naval precedence was
+reserved, by not sending the admiral of France afloat; but it was
+practically yielded. It is evident that in his eagerness for the ruin
+of Holland and his own continental aggrandizement Louis was playing
+directly into England's hand, as to power on the sea. A French
+historian is justified in saying: "These negotiations have been
+wrongly judged. It has been often repeated that Charles sold England
+to Louis XIV. This is true only of internal policy. Charles indeed
+plotted the political and religious subjugation of England with the
+help of a foreign power; but as to external interests, he did not sell
+them, for the greater share in the profit from the ruin of the Dutch
+was to go to England."[46]
+
+During the years preceding the war the Dutch made every diplomatic
+effort to avert it, but the hatred of Charles and Louis prevented any
+concession being accepted as final. An English royal yacht was ordered
+to pass through the Dutch ships-of-war in the Channel, and to fire on
+them if they did not strike their flags. In January, 1672, England
+sent an ultimatum, summoning Holland to acknowledge the right of the
+English crown to the sovereignty of the British seas, and to order its
+fleets to lower their flags to the smallest English man-of-war; and
+demands such as these received the support of a French king. The Dutch
+continued to yield, but seeing at length that all concessions were
+useless, they in February ordered into commission seventy-five
+ships-of-the-line, besides smaller vessels. On the 23d of March the
+English, without declaration of war, attacked a fleet of Dutch
+merchantmen; and on the 29th the king declared war. This was followed,
+April 6th, by the declaration of Louis XIV.; and on the 28th of the
+same month he set out to take command in person of his army.
+
+The war which now began, including the third and last of the great
+contests between the English and Dutch upon the ocean, was not, like
+those before it, purely a sea war; and it will be necessary to mention
+its leading outlines on the land also, not only in order to clearness
+of impression, but also to bring out the desperate straits to which
+the republic was reduced, and the final deliverance through its sea
+power in the hands of the great seaman De Ruyter.
+
+The naval war differs from those that preceded it in more than one
+respect; but its most distinctive feature is that the Dutch, except on
+one occasion at the very beginning, did not send out their fleet to
+meet the enemy, but made what may properly be called a strategic use
+of their dangerous coast and shoals, upon which were based their sea
+operations. To this course they were forced by the desperate odds
+under which they were fighting; but they did not use their shoals as a
+mere shelter,--the warfare they waged was the defensive-offensive.
+When the wind was fair for the allies to attack, Ruyter kept under
+cover of his islands, or at least on ground where the enemy dared not
+follow; but when the wind served so that he might attack in his own
+way, he turned and fell upon them. There are also apparent indications
+of tactical combinations, on his part, of a higher order than have
+yet been met; though it is possible that the particular acts referred
+to, consisting in partial attacks amounting to little more than
+demonstrations against the French contingent, may have sprung from
+political motives. This solution for the undoubted fact that the Dutch
+attacked the French lightly has not been met with elsewhere by the
+writer; but it seems possible that the rulers of the United Provinces
+may have wished not to increase the exasperation of their most
+dangerous enemy by humiliating his fleet, and so making it less easy
+to his pride to accept their offers. There is, however, an equally
+satisfactory military explanation in the supposition that, the French
+being yet inexperienced, Ruyter thought it only necessary to contain
+them while falling in force upon the English. The latter fought
+throughout with their old gallantry, but less than their old
+discipline; whereas the attacks of the Dutch were made with a
+sustained and unanimous vigor that showed a great military advance.
+The action of the French was at times suspicious; it has been alleged
+that Louis ordered his admiral to economize his fleet, and there is
+good reason to believe that toward the end of the two years that
+England remained in his alliance he did do so.
+
+The authorities of the United Provinces, knowing that the French fleet
+at Brest was to join the English in the Thames, made great exertions
+to fit out their squadron so as to attack the latter before the
+junction was made; but the wretched lack of centralization in their
+naval administration caused this project to fail. The province of
+Zealand was so backward that its contingent, a large fraction of the
+whole, was not ready in time; and it has been charged that the delay
+was due, not merely to mismanagement, but to disaffection to the party
+in control of the government. A blow at the English fleet in its own
+waters, by a superior force, before its ally arrived, was a correct
+military conception; judging from the after-history of this war, it
+might well have produced a profound effect upon the whole course of
+the struggle. Ruyter finally got to sea and fell in with the allied
+fleets, but though fully intending to fight, fell back before them to
+his own coast. The allies did not follow him there, but retired,
+apparently in full security, to Southwold Bay, on the east coast of
+England, some ninety miles north of the mouth of the Thames. There
+they anchored in three divisions,--two English, the rear and centre of
+the allied line, to the northward, and the van, composed of French
+ships, to the southward. Ruyter followed them, and on the early
+morning of June 7, 1672, the Dutch fleet was signalled by a French
+lookout frigate in the northward and eastward; standing down before a
+northeast wind for the allied fleet, from which a large number of
+boats and men were ashore in watering parties. The Dutch order of
+battle was in two lines, the advanced one containing eighteen ships
+with fire-ships (Plate III., A). Their total force was ninety-one
+ships-of-the-line; that of the allies one hundred and one.
+
+The wind was blowing toward the coast, which here trends nearly north
+and south, and the allies were in an awkward position. They had first
+to get under way, and they could not fall back to gain time or room to
+establish their order. Most of the ships cut their cables, and the
+English made sail on the starboard tack, heading about north-northwest,
+a course which forced them soon to go about; whereas the French took
+the other tack (Plate III., B). The battle began therefore by the
+separation of the allied fleet. Ruyter sent one division to attack the
+French, or rather to contain them; for these opponents exchanged only a
+distant cannonade, although the Dutch, being to windward, had the
+choice of closer action if they wished it. As their commander, Bankert,
+was not censured, it may be supposed he acted under orders; and he was
+certainly in command a year later, and acting with great judgment and
+gallantry at the battle of the Texel. Meanwhile Ruyter fell furiously
+upon the two English divisions, and apparently with superior forces;
+for the English naval historians claim that the Dutch were in the
+proportion of three to two.[47] If this can be accepted, it gives a
+marked evidence of Ruyter's high qualities as a general officer, in
+advance of any other who appears in this century.
+
+ [Illustration: Pl. III.]
+
+The results of the battle, considered simply as an engagement, were
+indecisive; both sides lost heavily, but the honors and the substantial
+advantages all belonged to the Dutch, or rather to De Ruyter. He had
+outgeneralled the allies by his apparent retreat, and then returning
+had surprised them wholly unprepared. The false move by which the
+English, two thirds of the whole, stood to the northward and westward,
+while the other third, the French, went off to the east and south,
+separated the allied fleet; Ruyter threw his whole force into the gap,
+showing front to the French with a division probably smaller in
+numbers, but which, from its position to windward, had the choice of
+coming to close action or not, while with the remainder he fell in much
+superior strength upon the English (Plate III., B). Paul Hoste says[48]
+that Vice-Admiral d'Estrées, commanding the French, had taken measures
+for tacking and breaking through the Dutch division opposed to him so
+as to rejoin the Duke of York, the allied commander-in-chief. It may be
+so, for D'Estrées was a very brave man, and not enough of a seaman to
+appreciate the dangers of the attempt; but no such move was begun, and
+both the English and Ruyter thought that the French rather avoided than
+sought close action. Had D'Estrées, however, gone about, and attempted
+to break through the line of experienced Dutchmen to windward of him
+with the still raw seamen of France, the result would have been as
+disastrous as that which overtook the Spanish admiral at the battle of
+St. Vincent a hundred and twenty-five years later, when he tried to
+reunite his broken fleet by breaking through the close order of Jervis
+and Nelson. (See Plate III., a.) The truth, which gradually dawns
+through a mass of conflicting statements, is, that the Duke of York,
+though a fair seaman and a brave man, was not an able one; that his
+fleet was not in good order and was thus surprised; that his orders
+beforehand were not so precise as to make the French admiral
+technically disobedient in taking the opposite tack from the
+commander-in-chief, and so separating the squadrons; and that Ruyter
+profited most ably by the surprise which he had himself prepared, and
+by the further opportunity given him by the ineptness of his enemies.
+Unless for circumstances that are not stated, the French admiral took
+the right tack, with a northeast wind, for it led out to sea and would
+give room for manoeuvring; had the Duke of York chosen the same, the
+allied fleet would have gone out together, with only the disadvantage
+of the wind and bad order. In that case, however, Ruyter could, and
+probably would, have done just what he did at the Texel a year
+later,--check the van, the French, with a small containing force, and
+fall with the mass of his fleet upon the centre and rear. It is the
+similarity of his action in both cases, under very different
+conditions, that proves he intended at Southwold Bay merely to keep the
+French in check while he destroyed the English.
+
+In this battle, called indifferently Southwold Bay and Solebay, Ruyter
+showed a degree of skill combined with vigor which did not appear upon
+the sea, after his death, until the days of Suffren and Nelson. His
+battles of the war of 1672 were no "affairs of circumspection," though
+they were fought circumspectly; his aim was no less than the enemy's
+total overthrow, by joining good combinations to fury of attack. At
+Solebay he was somewhat, though not greatly, inferior to his enemies;
+afterward much more so.
+
+The substantial results of Solebay fight were wholly favorable to the
+Dutch. The allied fleets were to have assisted the operations of the
+French army by making a descent upon the coast of Zealand. Ruyter's
+attack had inflicted an amount of damage, and caused an expenditure of
+ammunition, which postponed the sailing of the fleet for a month; it
+was a diversion, not only important, but vital in the nearly desperate
+condition to which the United Provinces were reduced ashore. It may be
+added, as an instructive comment on the theory of commerce-destroying,
+that after this staggering check to the enemy's superior forces,
+Ruyter met and convoyed safely to port a fleet of Dutch merchantmen.
+
+The progress of the land campaign must now be briefly described.[49]
+Early in May the French army in several corps moved forward, passing
+through the outskirts of the Spanish Netherlands, and directing their
+attack upon Holland from the south and east. The republican party
+which was in power in Holland had neglected the army, and now made the
+mistake of scattering the force they had among many fortified towns,
+trusting that each would do something toward delaying the French.
+Louis, however, under the advice of Turenne, simply observed the more
+important places, while the second-rate towns surrendered nearly as
+fast as they were summoned; the army of the Provinces, as well as
+their territory, thus passing rapidly, by fractions, into the power of
+the enemy. Within a month the French were in the heart of the country,
+having carried all before them, and with no organized force remaining
+in their front sufficient of itself to stop them. In the fortnight
+following the battle of Solebay, terror and disorganization spread
+throughout the republic. On the 15th of June the Grand Pensionary
+obtained permission of the States-General to send a deputation to
+Louis XIV., begging him to name the terms on which he would grant them
+peace; any humiliation to the foreigner was better in the eyes of the
+politician than to see the opposite party, the House of Orange, come
+into power on his downfall. While negotiations were pending, the Dutch
+towns continued to surrender; and on the 20th of June a few French
+soldiers entered Muyden, the key to Amsterdam. They were only
+stragglers, though the large body to which they belonged was near at
+hand; and the burghers, who had admitted them under the influence of
+the panic prevailing throughout the land, seeing that they were alone,
+soon made them drunk and put them out. The nobler feeling that
+animated Amsterdam now made itself felt in Muyden; a body of troops
+hurried up from the capital, and the smaller city was saved.
+"Situated on the Zuyder Zee, two hours distant from Amsterdam, at the
+junction of a number of rivers and canals, Muyden not only held the
+key of the principal dykes by which Amsterdam could surround herself
+with a protecting inundation, it also held the key of the harbor of
+this great city, all the ships which went from the North Sea to
+Amsterdam by the Zuyder Zee being obliged to pass under its guns.
+Muyden saved and its dykes open, Amsterdam had time to breathe, and
+remained free to break off her communications by land and to maintain
+them by sea."[50] It was the turning-point of the invasion; but what
+would have been the effect upon the spirit of the Dutch, oppressed by
+defeat and distracted in council, if in that fateful fortnight which
+went before, the allied fleet had attacked their coasts? From this
+they were saved by the battle of Solebay.
+
+Negotiations continued. The burgomasters--the party representing
+wealth and commerce--favored submission; they shrank from the
+destruction of their property and trade. New advances were made; but
+while the envoys were still in the camp of Louis, the populace and the
+Orange party rose, and with them the spirit of resistance. On the 25th
+of June Amsterdam opened the dykes, and her example was followed by
+the other cities of Holland; immense loss was entailed, but the
+flooded country and the cities contained therein, standing like
+islands amid the waters, were safe from attack by land forces until
+freezing weather. The revolution continued. William of Orange,
+afterward William III. of England, was on the 8th of July made
+stadtholder, and head of the army and navy; and the two De Witts, the
+heads of the republican party, were murdered by a mob a few weeks
+later.
+
+The resistance born of popular enthusiasm and pride of country was
+strengthened by the excessive demands of Louis XIV. It was plain that
+the Provinces must conquer or be destroyed. Meanwhile the other States
+of Europe were waking up to the danger, and the Emperor of Germany,
+the Elector of Brandenburg, and the King of Spain declared for
+Holland; while Sweden, though nominally in alliance with France, was
+unwilling to see the destruction of the Provinces, because that would
+be to the advantage of England's sea power. Nevertheless the next
+year, 1673, opened with promise for France, and the English king was
+prepared to fulfil his part of the compact on the seas; but the Dutch,
+under the firm leadership of William of Orange, and with their hold on
+the sea unshaken, now refused to accept conditions of peace which had
+been offered by themselves the year before.
+
+Three naval battles were fought in 1673, all near the coast of the
+United Provinces; the first two, June 7 and June 14, off Schoneveldt,
+from which place they have taken their name; the third, known as the
+battle of the Texel, August 21. In all three Ruyter attacked, choosing
+his own time, and retiring when it suited him to the protection of his
+own shores. For the allies to carry out their objects and make any
+diversion upon the seaboard, or on the other hand to cripple the sea
+resources of the hard-pressed Provinces, it was necessary first to
+deal successfully with Ruyter's fleet. The great admiral and his
+government both felt this, and took the resolution that "the fleet
+should be posted in the passage of Schoneveldt, or a little farther
+south toward Ostend, to observe the enemy, and if attacked, or seeing
+the enemy's fleet disposed to make a descent upon the shores of the
+United Provinces, should resist vigorously, by opposing his designs
+and destroying his ships."[51] From this position, with good lookouts,
+any movement of the allies would be known.
+
+The English and French put to sea about the 1st of June, under the
+command of Prince Rupert, first cousin to the king, the Duke of York
+having been obliged to resign his office on account of the passage of
+the Test Act, directed against persons of the Roman Catholic faith
+holding any public employment. The French were under Vice-Admiral
+d'Estrées, the same who had commanded them at Solebay. A force of six
+thousand English troops at Yarmouth was ready to embark if De Ruyter
+was worsted. On the 7th of June the Dutch were made out, riding within
+the sands at Schoneveldt. A detached squadron was sent to draw them
+out, but Ruyter needed no invitation; the wind served, and he followed
+the detached squadron with such impetuosity as to attack before the
+allied line was fairly formed. On this occasion the French occupied
+the centre. The affair was indecisive, if a battle can be called so in
+which an inferior force attacks a superior, inflicts an equal loss,
+and frustrates the main object of the enemy. A week later Ruyter again
+attacked, with results which, though indecisive as before as to the
+particular action, forced the allied fleet to return to the English
+coast to refit, and for supplies. The Dutch in these encounters had
+fifty-five ships-of-the-line; their enemies eighty-one, fifty-four of
+which were English.
+
+The allied fleets did not go to sea again until the latter part of
+July, and this time they carried with them a body of troops meant for
+a landing. On the 20th of August the Dutch fleet was seen under way
+between the Texel and the Meuse. Rupert at once got ready to fight;
+but as the wind was from the northward and westward, giving the allies
+the weather-gage, and with it the choice of the method of attack,
+Ruyter availed himself of his local knowledge, keeping so close to the
+beach that the enemy dared not approach,--the more so as it was late
+in the day. During the night the wind shifted to east-southeast off
+the land, and at daybreak, to use the words of a French official
+narrative, the Dutch "made all sail and stood down boldly into
+action."
+
+The allied fleet was to leeward on the port tack, heading about
+south,--the French in the van, Rupert in the centre, and Sir Edward
+Spragge commanding the rear. De Ruyter divided his fleet into three
+squadrons, the leading one of which, of ten or twelve ships only, he
+sent against the French; while with the rest of his force he attacked
+the English in the centre and rear (Plate IV., A, A', A''). If we
+accept the English estimate of the forces, which gives the English
+sixty ships, the French thirty, and the Dutch seventy, Ruyter's plan
+of attack, by simply holding the French in check as at Solebay,
+allowed him to engage the English on equal terms. The battle took on
+several distinct phases, which it is instructive to follow. M. de
+Martel, commanding the van of the French, and consequently the leading
+subdivision of the allied fleet, was ordered to stretch ahead, go
+about and gain to windward of the Dutch van, so as to place it between
+two fires. This he did (B); but as soon as Bankert--the same who had
+manoeuvred so judiciously at Solebay the year before--saw the danger,
+he put his helm up and ran through the remaining twenty ships of
+D'Estrées' squadron with his own twelve (C),--a feat as creditable to
+him as it was discreditable to the French; and then wearing round
+stood down to De Ruyter, who was hotly engaged with Rupert (C'). He
+was not followed by D'Estrées, who suffered him to carry this
+important reinforcement to the Dutch main attack undisturbed. This
+practically ended the French share in the fight.
+
+ [Illustration: Pl. IV. TEXEL. Aug. 21, 1673.]
+
+Rupert, during his action with De Ruyter, kept off continually, with
+the object of drawing the Dutch farther away from their coast, so that
+if the wind shifted they might not be able to regain its shelter. De
+Ruyter followed him, and the consequent separation of the centre from
+the van (B, B') was one of the reasons alleged by D'Estrées for his
+delay. It does not, however, seem to have prevented Bankert from
+joining his chief.
+
+In the rear an extraordinary action on the part of Sir Edward Spragge
+increased the confusion in the allied fleet. For some reason this
+officer considered Tromp, who commanded the Dutch rear, as his
+personal antagonist, and in order to facilitate the latter's getting
+into action, he hove-to (stopped) the whole English rear to wait for
+him. This ill-timed point of honor on Spragge's part seems to have
+sprung from a promise he had made to the king that he would bring back
+Tromp alive or dead, or else lose his own life. The stoppage, which
+recalls the irresponsible and insubordinate action of the junior Dutch
+flag-officers in the former war, of course separated the rear (A'',
+B'', C''), which also drifted rapidly to leeward, Spragge and Tromp
+carrying on a hot private action on their own account. These two
+junior admirals sought each other personally, and the battle between
+their flags was so severe that Spragge twice had to shift his own to
+another ship; on the second occasion the boat in which he was embarked
+was sunk by a shot, and he himself drowned.
+
+Rupert, thus forsaken by his van and rear, found himself alone with
+Ruyter (B'); who, reinforced by his van, had the address further to
+cut off the rear subdivision of the allied centre, and to surround the
+remaining twenty ships with probably thirty or forty of his own (C').
+It is not creditable to the gunnery of the day that more substantial
+results did not follow; but it is to be remembered that all Ruyter's
+skill could secure, except for probably a very short time, was an
+action on equal terms with the English; his total inferiority in
+numbers could not be quite overcome. The damage to the English and
+Dutch may therefore have been great, and was probably nearly equal.
+
+Rupert finally disengaged himself, and seeing that the English rear
+(C'') was not replying well to its immediate opponents, ran down
+toward it, Ruyter following him; the two opposing centres steering
+parallel courses, and within cannon-shot, but by mutual consent,
+induced perhaps by ammunition running short, refraining from firing.
+At four P.M. the centres and rears united, and toward five a fresh
+engagement began, which continued till seven, when Ruyter withdrew,
+probably because of the approach of the French, who, by their own
+accounts, rejoined Rupert about that time. This ended the battle,
+which, like all that preceded it in this war, may be called a drawn
+fight, but as to which the verdict of the English naval historian is
+doubtless correct: "The consequences which the Dutch, through the
+prudence of their admiral, drew from this battle were exceedingly
+great; for they opened their ports, which were entirely blocked up,
+and put an end to all thoughts, by removing the possibility, of an
+invasion."[52]
+
+The military features of the action have sufficiently appeared in the
+account that has been given,--the skill of De Ruyter; the firmness and
+promptness of Bankert, first in checking and then in passing through
+the French division; the apparent disloyalty or, at the best,
+inefficiency of the latter; the insubordination and military
+blundering of Spragge; the seeming lack of everything but hard
+fighting on Rupert's part. The allies indulged in bitter mutual
+recriminations. Rupert blamed both D'Estrées and Spragge; D'Estrées
+found fault with Rupert for running to leeward; and D'Estrées' own
+second, Martel, roundly called his chief a coward, in a letter which
+earned him an imprisonment in the Bastille. The French king ordered an
+inquiry by the intendant of the navy at Brest, who made a report[53]
+upon which the account here given has mainly rested, and which leaves
+little doubt of the dishonor of the French arms in this battle. "M.
+d'Estrées gave it to be understood," says the French naval historian,
+"that the king wished his fleet spared, and that the English should
+not be trusted. Was he wrong in not relying upon the sincerity of the
+English alliance, when he was receiving from all quarters warnings
+that the people and the nobles were murmuring against it, and Charles
+II. was perhaps alone in his kingdom in wishing it?"[54] Possibly not;
+but he was surely wrong if he wished any military man, or body of men,
+to play the equivocal part assigned to the French admiral on this day;
+the loss of the fleet would have been a lighter disaster. So evident
+to eye-witnesses was the bad faith or cowardice (and the latter
+supposition is not admissible), that one of the Dutch seamen, as they
+discussed among themselves why the French did not come down, said:
+"You fools! they have hired the English to fight for them, and all
+their business here is to see that they earn their wages." A more
+sober-minded and significant utterance is that with which the
+intendant at Brest ends the official report before mentioned: "It
+would appear in all these sea-fights Ruyter has never cared to attack
+the French squadron, and that in this last action he had detached ten
+ships of the Zealand squadron to keep it in play."[55] No stronger
+testimony is needed to Ruyter's opinion of the inefficiency or
+faithlessness of that contingent to the allied forces.
+
+Another chapter in the history of maritime coalitions was closed, on
+the 21st of August, 1673, by the battle of the Texel. In it, as in
+others, were amply justified the words with which a modern French
+naval officer has stamped them: "United by momentary political
+interests, but at bottom divided to the verge of hatred, never
+following the same path in counsel or in action, they have never
+produced good results, or at least results proportioned to the efforts
+of the powers allied against a common enemy. The navies of France,
+Spain, and Holland seem, at several distinct times, to have joined
+only to make more complete the triumph of the British arms."[56] When
+to this well-ascertained tendency of coalitions is added the equally
+well known jealousy of every country over the increasing power of a
+neighbor, and the consequent unwillingness to see such increase
+obtained by crushing another member of the family of nations, an
+approach is made to the measure of naval strength required by a State.
+It is not necessary to be able to meet all others combined, as some
+Englishmen have seemed to think; it is necessary only to be able to
+meet the strongest on favorable terms, sure that the others will not
+join in destroying a factor in the political equilibrium, even if they
+hold aloof. England and Spain were allies in Toulon in 1793, when the
+excesses of Revolutionary France seemed to threaten the social order
+of Europe; but the Spanish admiral told the English flatly that the
+ruin of the French navy, a large part of which was there in their
+hands, could not fail to be injurious to the interests of Spain, and a
+part of the French ships was saved by his conduct, which has been
+justly characterized as not only full of firmness, but also as
+dictated by the highest political reason.[57]
+
+The battle of the Texel, closing the long series of wars in which the
+Dutch and English contended on equal terms for the mastery of the
+seas, saw the Dutch navy in its highest efficiency, and its greatest
+ornament, De Ruyter, at the summit of his glory. Long since old in
+years, for he was now sixty-six, he had lost none of his martial
+vigor; his attack was as furious as eight years before, and his
+judgment apparently had ripened rapidly through the experience of the
+last war, for there is far more evidence of plan and military insight
+than before. To him, under the government of the great Pensionary De
+Witt, with whom he was in close sympathy, the increase of discipline
+and sound military tone now apparent in the Dutch navy must have been
+largely due. He went to this final strife of the two great sea-peoples
+in the fulness of his own genius, with an admirably tempered
+instrument in his hands, and with the glorious disadvantage of
+numbers, to save his country. The mission was fulfilled not by courage
+alone, but by courage, forethought, and skill. The attack at the Texel
+was, in its general lines, the same as that at Trafalgar, the enemy's
+van being neglected to fall on the centre and rear, and as at
+Trafalgar the van, by failing to do its duty, more than justified the
+conception; but as the odds against De Ruyter were greater than those
+against Nelson, so was his success less. The part played by Bankert at
+Solebay was essentially the same as that of Nelson at St. Vincent,
+when he threw himself across the path of the Spanish division with his
+single ship (see Plate III., c, c'); but Nelson took his course
+without orders from Jervis, while Bankert was carrying out Ruyter's
+plan. Once more, still himself in his bearing, but under sadly altered
+surroundings, will this simple and heroic man come before us; and
+here, in contrast with his glory, seems a proper place to insert a
+little description by the Comte de Guiche[58] of his bearing in the
+Four Days' Fight, which brings out at once the homely and the heroic
+sides of his character.
+
+ "I never saw him [during those last three days] other than
+ even-tempered; and when victory was assured, saying always it
+ was the good God that gives it to us. Amid the disorders of the
+ fleet and the appearance of loss, he seemed to be moved only by
+ the misfortune to his country, but always submissive to the will
+ of God. Finally, it may be said that he has something of the
+ frankness and lack of polish of our patriarchs; and, to conclude
+ what I have to say of him, I will relate that the day after the
+ victory I found him sweeping his own room and feeding his
+ chickens."
+
+Nine days after the battle of the Texel, on the 30th of August, 1673,
+a formal alliance was made between Holland on the one hand, and Spain,
+Lorraine, and the emperor of Germany on the other, and the French
+ambassador was dismissed from Vienna. Louis almost immediately offered
+Holland comparatively moderate terms; but the United Provinces, with
+their new allies by their sides and with their backs borne firmly upon
+the sea which had favored and supported them, set their face steadily
+against him. In England the clamor of the people and Parliament became
+louder; the Protestant feeling and the old enmity to France were daily
+growing, as was the national distrust of the king. Charles, though he
+had himself lost none of his hatred of the republic, had to give way.
+Louis, seeing the gathering storm, made up his mind, by the counsel of
+Turenne, to withdraw from his dangerously advanced position by
+evacuating Holland, and to try to make peace with the Provinces
+separately while continuing the war with the House of Austria in Spain
+and Germany. Thus he returned to Richelieu's policy, and Holland was
+saved. February 19, 1674, peace was signed between England and the
+Provinces. The latter recognized the absolute supremacy of the English
+flag from Cape Finisterre in Spain to Norway, and paid a war
+indemnity.
+
+The withdrawal of England, which remained neutral during the remaining
+four years of the war, necessarily made it less maritime. The King of
+France did not think his navy, either in numbers or efficiency, able
+to contend alone with that of Holland; he therefore withdrew it from
+the ocean and confined his sea enterprises to the Mediterranean, with
+one or two half-privateering expeditions to the West Indies. The
+United Provinces for their part, being freed from danger on the side
+of the sea, and not having, except for a short time, any serious idea
+of operating against the French coast, diminished their own fleets.
+The war became more and more continental, and drew in more and more
+the other powers of Europe. Gradually the German States cast their lot
+with Austria, and on May 28, 1674, the Diet proclaimed war against
+France. The great work of French policy in the last generations was
+undone, Austria had resumed her supremacy in Germany, and Holland had
+not been destroyed. On the Baltic, Denmark, seeing Sweden inclining
+toward France, hastened to make common cause with the German Empire,
+sending fifteen thousand troops. There remained in Germany only
+Bavaria, Hanover, and Wurtemberg faithful still to their French
+alliance. The land war had thus drawn in nearly all the powers of
+Europe, and, from the nature of the case, the principal theatre of the
+conflict was beyond the eastern boundary of France, toward the Rhine,
+and in the Spanish Netherlands; but while this was raging, a maritime
+episode was introduced by the fact of Denmark and Sweden being engaged
+on opposite sides. Of this it will not be necessary to speak, beyond
+mentioning that the Dutch sent a squadron under Tromp to join the
+Danes, and that the united fleets won a great victory over the Swedes
+in 1676, taking from them ten ships. It is therefore evident that the
+sea superiority of Holland detracted greatly from Sweden's value as an
+ally to Louis XIV.
+
+Another maritime strife arose in the Mediterranean by the revolt of
+the Sicilians against the Spanish rule.[59] The help they asked from
+France was granted as a diversion against Spain, but the Sicilian
+enterprise never became more than a side issue. Its naval interest
+springs from bringing Ruyter once more on the scene, and that as the
+antagonist of Duquesne, the equal, and by some thought even the
+superior, of Tourville, whose name has always stood far above all
+others in the French navy of that day.
+
+Messina revolted in July, 1674, and the French king at once took it
+under his protection. The Spanish navy throughout seems to have
+behaved badly, certainly inefficiently; and early in 1675 the French
+were safely established in the city. During the year their naval power
+in the Mediterranean was much increased, and Spain, unable to defend
+the island herself, applied to the United Provinces for a fleet, the
+expenses of which she would bear. The Provinces, "fatigued by the war,
+involved in debt, suffering cruelly in their commerce, exhausted by
+the necessity of paying the emperor and all the German princes, could
+no longer fit out the enormous fleets which they had once opposed to
+France and England." They however hearkened to Spain and sent De
+Ruyter, with a squadron of only eighteen ships and four fire-ships.
+The admiral, who had noted the growth of the French navy, said the
+force was too small, and departed oppressed in spirit, but with the
+calm resignation which was habitual to him. He reached Cadiz in
+September, and in the mean time the French had further strengthened
+themselves by the capture of Agosta, a port commanding the southeast
+of Sicily. De Ruyter was again delayed by the Spanish government, and
+did not reach the north coast of the island until the end of December,
+when head winds kept him from entering the Straits of Messina. He
+cruised between Messina and the Lipari Islands in a position to
+intercept the French fleet convoying troops and supplies, which was
+expected under Duquesne.
+
+On the 7th of January, 1676, the French came in sight, twenty
+ships-of-the-line and six fire-ships; the Dutch had but nineteen
+ships, one of which was a Spaniard, and four fire-ships; and it must
+be remembered that, although there is no detailed account of the Dutch
+ships in this action, they were as a rule inferior to those of
+England, and yet more to those of France. The first day was spent in
+manoeuvring, the Dutch having the weather-gage; but during that night,
+which was squally and drove the Spanish galleys accompanying the Dutch
+to take refuge under Lipari, the wind shifted, and coming out at
+west-southwest, gave the French the weather-gage and the power to
+attack. Duquesne resolved to use it, and sending the convoy ahead,
+formed his line on the starboard tack standing south; the Dutch did
+the same, and waited for him (Plate V., A, A, A).
+
+ [Illustration: Pl. V. STROMBOLI JAN. 8, 1676. Pl. Va. POCOCK AND
+ D'ACHÉ 1758.]
+
+An emotion of surprise must be felt at seeing the great Dutch admiral
+surrender the choice of attack on the 7th. At daybreak of that day he
+saw the enemy and steered for him; at three P.M., a French account
+says, he hauled his wind on the same tack as themselves, but out of
+cannon-shot to windward. How account for the seeming reluctance of the
+man who three years before had made the desperate attacks of Solebay
+and the Texel? His reasons have not been handed down; it may be that
+the defensive advantages of the lee-gage had been recognized by this
+thoughtful seaman, especially when preparing to meet, with inferior
+forces, an enemy of impetuous gallantry and imperfect seamanship. If
+any such ideas did influence him they were justified by the result.
+The battle of Stromboli presents a partial anticipation of the tactics
+of the French and English a hundred years later; but in this case it
+is the French who seek the weather-gage and attack with fury, while
+the Dutch take the defensive. The results were very much such as Clerk
+pointed out to the English in his celebrated work on naval tactics,
+the accounts here followed being entirely French.[60]
+
+The two fleets being drawn up in line-of-battle on the starboard tack,
+heading south, as has been said, De Ruyter awaited the attack which he
+had refused to make. Being between the French and their port, he felt
+they must fight. At nine A.M. the French line kept away all together
+and ran down obliquely upon the Dutch, a manoeuvre difficult to be
+performed with accuracy, and during which the assailant receives his
+enemy's fire at disadvantage (A', A'', A'''). In doing this, two ships
+in the French van were seriously disabled. "M. de la Fayette, in the
+'Prudente,' began the action; but having rashly thrown himself into
+the midst of the enemy's van, he was dismantled and forced to haul
+off" (a). Confusion ensued in the French line, from the difficult
+character of the manoeuvre. "Vice-Admiral de Preuilli, commanding the
+van, in keeping away took too little room, so that in coming to the
+wind again, the ships, in too close order, lapped and interfered with
+one another's fire [A']. The absence of M. de la Fayette from the line
+threw the 'Parfait' into peril. Attacked by two ships, she lost her
+maintopmast and had also to haul off for repairs." Again, the French
+came into action in succession instead of all together, a usual and
+almost inevitable result of the manoeuvre in question. "In the _midst_
+of a terrible cannonade," that is, after part of his ships were
+engaged, "Duquesne, commanding the centre, took post on the beam of
+Ruyter's division." The French rear came into action still later,
+after the centre (A'', A'''). "Langeron and Bethune, commanding
+leading ships of the French centre, are crushed by superior forces."
+How can this be, seeing the French had the more ships? It was because,
+as the narrative tells us, "the French had not yet repaired the
+disorder of the first movement." However, all at last got into action
+(B, B, B), and Duquesne gradually restored order. The Dutch, engaged
+all along the line, resisted everywhere, and there was not one of
+their ships which was not closely engaged; more cannot be said for the
+admiral and captains of the inferior fleet. The remaining part of the
+fight is not very clearly related. Ruyter is said to have given way
+continually with his two leading divisions; but whether this was a
+confession of weakness or a tactical move does not appear. The rear
+was separated (C'), in permitting which either Ruyter or the immediate
+commander was at fault; but the attempts made by the French to
+surround and isolate it failed, probably because of damaged spars, for
+one French ship did pass entirely around the separated division. The
+action ended at 4.30 P.M., except in the rear, and the Spanish galleys
+shortly after came up and towed the disabled Dutch ships away. Their
+escape shows how injured the French must have been. The positions, C,
+C', are intended to show the Dutch rear far separated, and the
+disorder in which a fleet action under sail necessarily ended from
+loss of spars.
+
+Those who are familiar with Clerk's work on naval tactics, published
+about 1780, will recognize in this account of the battle of Stromboli
+all the features to which he called the attention of English seamen in
+his thesis on the methods of action employed by them and their
+adversaries in and before his time. Clerk's thesis started from the
+postulate that English seamen and officers were superior in skill or
+spirit, or both, to the French, and their ships on the whole as fast;
+that they were conscious of this superiority and therefore eager to
+attack, while the French, equally conscious of inferiority, or for
+other reasons, were averse to decisive engagements. With these
+dispositions the latter, feeling they could rely on a blindly furious
+attack by the English, had evolved a crafty plan by which, while
+seeming to fight, they really avoided doing so, and at the same time
+did the enemy much harm. This plan was to take the lee-gage, the
+characteristic of which, as has before been pointed out, is that it is
+a defensive position, and to await attack. The English error,
+according to Clerk, upon which the French had learned by experience
+that they could always count, was in drawing up their line parallel to
+the enemy, or nearly so, and then keeping away all together to attack,
+ship for ship, each its opposite in the hostile line. By standing down
+in this manner the assailant lost the use of most of his artillery,
+while exposed to the full fire of his opponent, and invariably came up
+in confusion, because the order of attack was one difficult to
+maintain at any time, and much more so in the smoke under fire, with
+torn sails and falling masts. This was precisely the attack made by
+Duquesne at Stromboli, and it there had precisely the consequences
+Clerk points out,--confusion in the line, the van arriving first and
+getting the brunt of the fire of the defence, disabled ships in the
+van causing confusion in the rear, etc. Clerk further asserts, and he
+seems to be right, that as the action grew warm, the French, by
+running off to leeward, in their turn, led the English to repeat the
+same mode of attack;[61] and so we find, at Stromboli, Ruyter giving
+ground in the same way, though his motive does not appear. Clerk also
+points out that a necessary corollary of the lee-gage, assumed for
+tactical reasons, is to aim at the assailant's spars, his motive
+power, so that his attack cannot be pushed farther than the defendant
+chooses, and at Stromboli the crippled condition of the French is
+evident; for after Ruyter had fallen to leeward, and could no longer
+help his separated rear, it was practically unmolested by the French,
+although none of these had been sunk. While therefore there cannot
+with certainty be attributed to Ruyter the deliberate choice of the
+lee-gage, for which there was as yet no precedent, it is evident that
+he reaped all its benefits, and that the character of the French
+officers of his day, inexperienced as seamen and of impetuous valor,
+offered just the conditions that gave most advantage to an inferior
+force standing on the defensive. The qualities and characteristics of
+the enemy are among the principal factors which a man of genius
+considers, and it was to this as much as to any other one trait that
+Nelson owed his dazzling successes. On the other hand, the French
+admiral attacked in a wholly unscientific manner, ship against ship,
+without an attempt to concentrate on a part of the enemy, or even
+trying to keep him in play until the French squadron of eight
+ships-of-the-line in Messina, near by, could join. Such tactics cannot
+be named beside that of Solebay or the Texel; but as Duquesne was the
+best French officer of the century, with the possible exception of
+Tourville, this battle has a value of its own in the history of
+tactics, and may by no means be omitted. The standing of the
+commander-in-chief is the warrant that it marks the highest point to
+which French naval tactics has as yet attained. Before quitting this
+discussion, it may be noted that the remedy Clerk proposed was to
+attack the rear ships of the enemy's line, and preferably to leeward;
+the remainder of the fleet must then either abandon them or stand down
+for a general action, which according to his postulate was all that
+the English seamen desired.
+
+After the fight De Ruyter sailed to Palermo, one of his ships sinking
+on the way. Duquesne was joined outside Messina by the French division
+that had been lying there. The remaining incidents of the Sicilian war
+are unimportant to the general subject. On the 22d of April, De Ruyter
+and Duquesne met again off Agosta. Duquesne had twenty-nine ships, the
+allied Spaniards and Dutch twenty-seven, of which ten were Spanish.
+Unfortunately the Spaniard commanded in chief, and took the centre of
+the line with the ships of his country, contrary to the advice of
+Ruyter, who, knowing how inefficient his allies were, wished to
+scatter them through the line and so support them better. Ruyter
+himself took the van, and the allies, having the wind, attacked; but
+the Spanish centre kept at long cannon range, leaving the brunt of the
+battle to fall on the Dutch van. The rear, following the
+commander-in-chief's motions, was also but slightly engaged. In this
+sorrowful yet still glorious fulfilment of hopeless duty, De Ruyter,
+who never before in his long career had been struck by an enemy's
+shot, received a mortal wound. He died a week later at Syracuse, and
+with him passed away the last hope of resistance on the sea. A month
+later the Spanish and Dutch fleets were attacked at anchor at Palermo,
+and many of them destroyed; while a division sent from Holland to
+reinforce the Mediterranean fleet was met by a French squadron in the
+Straits of Gibraltar and forced to take refuge in Cadiz.
+
+The Sicilian enterprise continued to be only a diversion, and the
+slight importance attached to it shows clearly how entirely Louis XIV.
+was bent on the continental war. How differently would the value of
+Sicily have impressed him, had his eyes been fixed on Egypt and
+extension by sea. As the years passed, the temper of the English
+people became more and more excited against France; the trade
+rivalries with Holland seemed to fall into the shade, and it became
+likely that England, which had entered the war as the ally of Louis,
+would, before it closed, take up arms against him. In addition to
+other causes of jealousy she saw the French navy increased to a number
+superior to her own. Charles for a while resisted the pressure of
+Parliament, but in January, 1678, a treaty of alliance, offensive and
+defensive, was made between the two sea countries; the king recalled
+the English troops which until now had been serving as part of the
+French army, and when Parliament opened again in February, asked for
+money to equip ninety ships and thirty thousand soldiers. Louis, who
+was expecting this result, at once ordered the evacuation of Sicily.
+He did not fear England by land, but on the sea he could not yet hold
+his own against the union of the two sea powers. At the same time he
+redoubled his attacks on the Spanish Netherlands. As long as there was
+a hope of keeping the ships of England out of the fight, he had
+avoided touching the susceptibilities of the English people on the
+subject of the Belgian sea-coast; but now that they could no longer be
+conciliated, he thought best to terrify Holland by the sharpness of
+his attack in the quarter where she dreaded him most.
+
+The United Provinces were in truth the mainspring of the coalition.
+Though among the smallest in extent of the countries arrayed against
+Louis, they were strongest in the character and purpose of their
+ruler, the Prince of Orange, and in the wealth which, while supporting
+the armies of the confederates, also kept the poor and greedy German
+princes faithful to their alliance. Almost alone, by dint of mighty
+sea power, by commercial and maritime ability, they bore the burden of
+the war; and though they staggered and complained, they still bore it.
+As in later centuries England, so at the time we are now speaking of
+Holland, the great sea power, supported the war against the ambition
+of France; but her sufferings were great. Her commerce, preyed upon by
+French privateers, lost heavily; and there was added an immense
+indirect loss in the transfer of the carrying-trade between foreign
+countries, which had contributed so much to the prosperity of the
+Dutch. When the flag of England became neutral, this rich business
+went to her ships, which crossed the seas the more securely because of
+the eager desire of Louis to conciliate the English nation. This
+desire led him also to make very large concessions to English
+exigencies in the matter of commercial treaties, undoing much of the
+work of protection upon which Colbert sought to nourish the yet feeble
+growth of French sea power. These sops, however, only stayed for a
+moment the passions which were driving England; it was not
+self-interest, but stronger motives, which impelled her to a break
+with France.
+
+Still less was it to the interest of Holland to prolong the war, after
+Louis showed a wish for peace. A continental war could at best be but
+a necessary evil, and source of weakness to her. The money she spent
+on her own and the allied armies was lost to her navy, and the sources
+of her prosperity on the sea were being exhausted. How far the Prince
+of Orange was justified, by the aims of Louis XIV., in that unyielding
+attitude of opposition toward him which he always maintained, may be
+uncertain, and there is here no need to decide the question; but there
+can be no doubt that the strife sacrificed the sea power of Holland
+through sheer exhaustion, and with it destroyed her position among
+the nations of the world. "Situated between France and England," says
+a historian of Holland, "by one or other of them were the United
+Provinces, after they had achieved their independence of Spain,
+constantly engaged in wars, which exhausted their finances,
+annihilated their navy, and caused the rapid decline of their trade,
+manufactures, and commerce; and thus a peace-loving nation found
+herself crushed by the weight of unprovoked and long-continued
+hostilities. Often, too, the friendship of England was scarcely less
+harmful to Holland than her enmity. As one increased and the other
+lessened, it became the alliance of the giant and the dwarf."[62]
+Hitherto we have seen Holland the open enemy or hearty rival of
+England; henceforward she appears as an ally,--in both cases a
+sufferer from her smaller size, weaker numbers, and less favored
+situation.
+
+The exhaustion of the United Provinces and the clamor of their
+merchants and peace party on the one hand, aided on the other by the
+sufferings of France, the embarrassment of her finances, and the
+threatened addition of England's navy to her already numerous enemies,
+inclined to peace the two principal parties to this long war. Louis
+had long been willing to make peace with Holland alone; but the States
+had been withheld, at first by fidelity to those who had joined them
+in their hour of trouble, and latterly by the firm purpose of William
+of Orange. Difficulties were gradually smoothed away, and the Peace of
+Nimeguen between the United Provinces and France was signed August 11,
+1678. The other powers shortly afterward acceded to it. The principal
+sufferer, as was natural, was the overgrown but feeble monarchy whose
+centre was Spain, which gave up to France Franche Comté and a number
+of fortified towns in the Spanish Netherlands, thus extending the
+boundaries of France to the east and northeast. Holland, for whose
+destruction Louis began the war, lost not a foot of ground in Europe;
+and beyond the seas only her colonies on the west coast of Africa and
+in Guiana. She owed her safety at first, and the final successful
+issue, to her sea power. That delivered her in the hour of extreme
+danger, and enabled her afterward to keep alive the general war. It
+may be said to have been one of the chief factors, and inferior to no
+other one singly, in determining the event of the great war which was
+formally closed at Nimeguen.
+
+The effort none the less sapped her strength, and being followed by
+many years of similar strain broke her down. But what was the effect
+upon the vastly greater state, the extreme ambition of whose king was
+the principal cause of the exhausting wars of this time? Among the
+many activities which illustrated the brilliant opening of the reign
+of the then youthful king of France, none was so important, none so
+intelligently directed, as those of Colbert, who aimed first at
+restoring the finances from the confusion into which they had fallen,
+and then at establishing them upon a firm foundation of national
+wealth. This wealth, at that time utterly beneath the possibilities of
+France, was to be developed on the lines of production encouraged,
+trade stimulated to healthful activity, a large merchant shipping, a
+great navy, and colonial extension. Some of these are sources, others
+the actual constituents, of sea power; which indeed may be said in a
+seaboard nation to be the invariable accompaniment, if it be not the
+chief source, of its strength. For nearly twelve years all went well;
+the development of the greatness of France in all these directions
+went forward rapidly, if not in all with equal strides, and the king's
+revenues increased by bounds. Then came the hour in which he had to
+decide whether the exertions which his ambition naturally, perhaps
+properly, prompted should take the direction which, while imposing
+great efforts, did nothing to sustain but rather hindered the natural
+activities of his people, and broke down commerce by making control of
+the sea uncertain; or whether he should launch out in pursuits which,
+while involving expense, would keep peace on his borders, lead to the
+control of the sea, and by the impulse given to trade, and all upon
+which trade depends, would bring in money nearly if not quite equal
+to that which the State spent. This is not a fanciful picture; by his
+attitude toward Holland, and its consequences, Louis gave the first
+impulse to England upon the path which realized to her, within his own
+day, the results which Colbert and Leibnitz had hoped for France. He
+drove the Dutch carrying-trade into the ships of England; allowed her
+to settle peacefully Pennsylvania and Carolina, and to seize New York
+and New Jersey; and he sacrificed, to gain her neutrality, the growing
+commerce of France. Not all at once, but very rapidly, England pressed
+into the front place as a sea power; and however great her sufferings
+and the sufferings of individual Englishmen, it remained true of her
+that even in war her prosperity was great. Doubtless France could not
+forget her continental position, nor wholly keep free from continental
+wars; but it may be believed that if she had chosen the path of sea
+power, she might both have escaped many conflicts and borne those that
+were unavoidable with greater ease. At the Peace of Nimeguen the
+injuries were not irreparable, but "the agricultural classes,
+commerce, manufactures, and the colonies had alike been smitten by the
+war; and the conditions of peace, so advantageous to the territorial
+and military power of France, were much less so to manufactures, the
+protective tariffs having been lowered in favor of England and
+Holland,"[63] the two sea powers. The merchant shipping was stricken,
+and the splendid growth of the royal navy, that excited the jealousy
+of England, was like a tree without roots; it soon withered away under
+the blast of war.
+
+Before finally quitting this war with Holland, a short notice of the
+Comte d'Estrées, to whom Louis committed the charge of the French
+contingent of the allied fleet, and who commanded it at Solebay and
+the Texel, will throw some light upon the qualifications of the French
+naval officers of the day before experience had made seamen of many of
+them. D'Estrées went to sea for the first time in 1667, being then a
+man of mature years; but in 1672 we find him in the chief command of
+an important squadron, having under him Duquesne, who was a seaman,
+and had been so for nearly forty years. In 1677, D'Estrées obtained
+from the king a body of eight ships which he undertook to maintain at
+his own expense, upon the condition of receiving half the prizes made.
+With this squadron he made an attack upon the then Dutch island of
+Tobago, with a recklessness which showed that no lack of courage
+prompted his equivocal conduct at the Texel. The next year he went out
+again and contrived to run the whole squadron ashore on the Aves
+Islands. The account given by the flag-captain of this transaction is
+amusing as well as instructive. In his report he says:--
+
+ "The day that the squadron was lost, the sun having been taken
+ by the pilots, the vice-admiral as usual had them put down the
+ position in his cabin. As I was entering to learn what was going
+ on, I met the third pilot, Bourdaloue, who was going out crying.
+ I asked him what the matter was, and he answered: 'Because I
+ find more drift than the other pilots, the admiral is
+ threatening me and abusing me, as usual; yet I am only a poor
+ lad who does the best he can.' When I had entered the cabin, the
+ admiral, who was very angry, said to me, 'That scoundrel of a
+ Bourdaloue is always coming to me with some nonsense or other; I
+ will drive him out of the ship. He makes us to be running a
+ course, the devil knows where, I don't.' As I did not know which
+ was right," says the captain of the ship, rather naïvely, "I did
+ not dare to say anything for fear of bringing down a like storm
+ on my own head."[64]
+
+Some hours after this scene, which, as the French officer from whom
+the extract is taken says, "appears now almost grotesque, but which is
+only an exact portrayal of the sea manners of the day, the whole
+squadron was lost on a group of rocks known as the Aves Islands. Such
+were the officers." The flag-captain, in another part of his report,
+says: "The shipwreck resulted from the general line of conduct held by
+Vice-Admiral d'Estrées. It was always the opinion of his servants, or
+others than the proper officers of the ship, which prevailed. This
+manner of acting may be understood in the Comte d'Estrées, who,
+without the necessary knowledge of a profession he had embraced so
+late, always had with him obscure counsellors, in order to appropriate
+the opinions they gave him so as to blind the ship's company as to his
+capacity."[65] D'Estrées had been made vice-admiral two years after he
+first went aboard ship.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[45] Martin: History of France.
+
+[46] Martin: History of France.
+
+[47] Ledyard, vol ii. p. 599; Campbell: Lives of the Admirals. See
+also letter of Sir Richard Haddock, Naval Chronicle, vol. xvii. p.
+121.
+
+[48] Hoste: Naval Tactics.
+
+[49] See Map, p. 107.
+
+[50] Martin: History of France.
+
+[51] Brandt: Life of De Ruyter.
+
+[52] Campbell: Lives of the Admirals.
+
+[53] Troude: Batailles Navales de la France, year 1673.
+
+[54] Ibid.
+
+[55] Troude: Batailles Navales de la France, year 1673.
+
+[56] Chabaud-Arnault: Revue Mar. et Col. July, 1885.
+
+[57] Jurien de la Gravière: Guerres Maritimes.
+
+[58] Mémoires.
+
+[59] See Map of Mediterranean, p. 15.
+
+[60] Lapeyrouse-Bonfils: Hist. de la Marine Française.
+
+[61] This movement, according to Clerk, was not made by the whole of a
+French line together, but in a way much more scientific and military.
+A group of two or three ships withdrew at a time, being covered by the
+smoke and the continued fire of the rest of their line. In time a
+second line was partly formed, which in its turn protected the ships
+which had remained on the first, as they executed the somewhat exposed
+movement of falling back. In Plan V., Dutch ships at b, b, b, are
+represented as thus withdrawing. English official reports of the
+eighteenth century often speak of French ships acting thus; the
+English officers attributing to their superior valor a movement which
+Clerk more plausibly considers a skilful military manoeuvre, well
+calculated to give the defence several opportunities of disabling the
+assailants as they bore down on a course which impeded the use of
+their artillery. In 1812 the frigate "United States," commanded by
+Decatur, employed the same tactics in her fight with the "Macedonian;"
+and the Confederate gunboats at Mobile by the same means inflicted on
+Farragut's flag-ship the greater part of the heavy loss which she
+sustained. In its essential features the same line of action can now
+be followed by a defendant, having greater speed, when the ardor of
+the attack, or the necessities of the case, force the assailant to a
+direct approach. An indirect cause of a lee line falling farther to
+leeward has never been noticed. When a ship in that line (as at c)
+found itself without an opponent abeam, and its next ahead perhaps
+heavily engaged, the natural impulse would be to put up the helm so as
+to bring the broadside to bear. This advantage would be gained by a
+loss of ground to leeward and consequent disorder in the line; which,
+if the act were repeated by several ships, could only be restored by
+the whole line keeping away.
+
+[62] Davies: History of Holland.
+
+[63] Martin: History of France.
+
+[64] Gougeard: Marine de Guerre.
+
+[65] Troude: Batailles Navales.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+ ENGLISH REVOLUTION.--WAR OF THE LEAGUE OF AUGSBURG,
+ 1688-1697.--SEA BATTLES OF BEACHY HEAD AND LA HOUGUE.
+
+
+The Peace of Nimeguen was followed by a period of ten years in which
+no extensive war broke out. They were, however, far from being years
+of political quiet. Louis XIV. was as intent upon pushing on his
+frontiers to the eastward in peace as in war, and grasped in quick
+succession fragments of territory which had not been given him by the
+peace. Claiming this and that in virtue of ancient feudal ties; this
+and that other as implicitly surrendered by the treaty, because
+dependent upon something else that had been explicitly surrendered;
+purchasing at one time, using bare force in other cases, and backing
+up all the so-called peaceful methods of obtaining his asserted rights
+by the presence of armed power, he carried on this process of
+extension between 1679 and 1682. The aggression most startling to
+Europe, and above all to the German Empire, was the seizure of the
+then imperial city of Strasburg on the 30th of September, 1681; and on
+the same day Casale, in Italy, was sold to him by the Duke of Mantua,
+showing that his ambitions were directed that way as well as to the
+north and east. Both of these were positions of great strategic
+importance, threatening, the one Germany, the other Italy, in case of
+war.
+
+The excitement throughout Europe was very great; in every direction
+Louis, serenely trusting to his power, was making new enemies and
+alienating former friends. The king of Sweden, directly insulted, and
+injured in his duchy of Deux-Ponts, turned against him, as did the
+Italian States; and the Pope himself sided with the enemies of a king
+who was already showing his zeal for the conversion of the
+Protestants, and was preparing for the revocation of the Edict of
+Nantes. But the discontent, though deep and general, had to be
+organized and directed; the spirit necessary to give it form and final
+effective expression was found again in Holland, in William of Orange.
+Time, however, was needed to mature the work. "No one yet armed
+himself; but every one talked, wrote, agitated, from Stockholm to
+Madrid.... The war of the pen preceded by many years the war of the
+sword; incessant appeals were made to European opinion by
+indefatigable publicists; under all forms was diffused the terror of
+the New Universal Monarchy," which was seeking to take the place once
+filled by the House of Austria. It was known that Louis sought to make
+himself or his son emperor of Germany. But complications of different
+kinds, private interests, lack of money, all combined to delay action.
+The United Provinces, despite William's wishes, were yet unwilling to
+act again as banker for a coalition, and the emperor was so threatened
+on his eastern frontier by the rebel Hungarians and the Turks that he
+dared not risk a western war.
+
+Meanwhile the armed navy of France was daily growing in strength and
+efficiency under Colbert's care, and acquiring the habit of war by
+attacks upon the Barbary pirates and their ports. During the same
+years the navies both of England and of Holland were declining in
+numbers and efficiency. It has already been said that in 1688, when
+William needed Dutch ships for his expedition to England, it was
+objected that the navy was in a far different condition from 1672,
+"being incalculably decreased in strength and deprived of its most
+able commanders." In England, the decline of discipline had been
+followed by an economical policy as to material, gradually lessening
+the numbers and injuring the condition of the fleet; and after the
+little flare-up and expected war with France in 1678, the king gave
+the care of the navy to a new body of men, concerning whom an English
+naval historian says: "This new administration lasted five years, and
+if it had continued five years longer would in all probability have
+remedied even the numerous and mighty evils it had introduced, by
+wearing out the whole royal navy, and so leaving no room for future
+mistakes. However, a just sense of this induced the king, in 1684, to
+resume the management of the fleet into his own hands, restoring most
+of the old officers; but before any great progress in the work of
+restoration could be made, his Majesty died,"[66]--in 1685. The change
+of sovereigns was of vast importance, not merely to the English navy,
+but from the ultimate effect it was to have upon the designs of Louis
+XIV. and the fortune of the general war which his aggressions were
+preparing. James II. was peculiarly interested in the navy, being
+himself a seaman, and having commanded in chief at Lowestoft and
+Southwold Bay. He knew its actual depressed condition; and the
+measures he at once took to restore it, both in numbers and
+efficiency, were thoughtful and thorough. In the three years of his
+reign very much indeed was done to prepare a weapon which was first
+proved against himself and his best friend.
+
+The accession of James II., which promised fairly for Louis,
+precipitated the action of Europe against him. The House of Stuart,
+closely allied to the King of France, and sympathizing with his
+absolutist rule, had used the still great power of the sovereign to
+check the political and religious enmity of the English nation to
+France. James II. added to the same political sympathies a strength of
+Roman Catholic fervor which led him into acts peculiarly fitted to
+revolt the feeling of the English people, with the final result of
+driving him from the throne, and calling to it, by the voice of
+Parliament, his daughter Mary, whose husband was William of Orange.
+
+In the same year that James became king, a vast diplomatic combination
+against France began. This movement had two sides, religious and
+political. The Protestant States were enraged at the increasing
+persecutions of the French Protestants, and their feelings became
+stronger as the policy of James of England showed itself more and more
+bent toward Rome. The Protestant northern States, Holland, Sweden, and
+Brandenburg, drew together in alliances; and they counted for support
+upon the Emperor of Austria and Germany, upon Spain and other Roman
+Catholic States whose motives were political apprehension and anger.
+The emperor had latterly been successful against the Turks, thus
+freeing his hands for a move against France. July 9, 1686, there was
+signed at Augsburg a secret agreement between the emperor, the kings
+of Spain and Sweden, and a number of German princes. Its object was at
+first defensive only against France, but it could readily be turned
+into an offensive alliance. This compact took the name of the League
+of Augsburg, and from it the general war which followed two years
+later was called the War of the League of Augsburg.
+
+The next year, 1687, saw yet greater successes of the Empire over the
+Turks and Hungarians. It was evident that France could expect no more
+from diversions in that quarter. At the same time the discontent of
+the English and the ambitions of the Prince of Orange, who hoped from
+his accession to the throne of England no ordinary personal
+aggrandizement, but the fulfilment of his strongest political wish and
+conviction, in curbing forever the power of Louis XIV., became more
+and more plain. But for his expedition into England, William needed
+ships, money, and men from the United Provinces; and they hung back,
+knowing that the result would be war with the French king, who
+proclaimed James his ally. Their action was at last decided by the
+course of Louis, who chose this moment to revoke concessions made at
+Nimeguen to Dutch trade. The serious injury thus done to Holland's
+material interests turned the wavering scale. "This violation of the
+conventions of Nimeguen," says a French historian,[67] "by giving a
+severe blow to Dutch commerce, reducing her European trade more than
+one fourth, removed the obstacle that religious passions still
+encountered in material interests, and put all Holland at the
+disposition of William, none having reason longer to conciliate
+France." This was in November, 1687. In the summer of the following
+year the birth of an heir to the English throne brought things to an
+issue. English loyalty might have put up with the reign of the father,
+now advanced in years, but could not endure the prospect of a
+continued Roman Catholic royalty.
+
+Matters had at last reached the crisis to which they had been tending
+for years. Louis and William of Orange, long-standing enemies, and at
+the moment the two chief figures in European politics, alike from
+their own strong personalities and the cause which either represented,
+stood on the brink of great actions, whose effects were to be felt
+through many generations. William, despotic in temper himself, stood
+on the shores of Holland looking hopefully toward free England, from
+which he was separated by the narrow belt of water that was the
+defence of the island kingdom, and might yet be an impassable barrier
+to his own high aims; for the French king at that moment could control
+the sea if he would. Louis, holding all the power of France in his
+single grasp, facing eastward as before, saw the continent gathering
+against him; while on his flank was England heartily hostile, longing
+to enter on the strife against him, but as yet without a leader. It
+still remained with him to decide whether he would leave the road open
+for the head to join the waiting body, and to bring Holland and
+England, the two sea powers, under one rule. If he attacked Holland by
+land, and sent his superior navy into the Channel, he might well keep
+William in his own country; the more so as the English navy, beloved
+and petted by the king, was likely to have more than the usual loyalty
+of seamen to their chief. Faithful to the bias of his life, perhaps
+unable to free himself from it, he turned toward the continent, and
+September 24, 1688, declared war against Germany and moved his armies
+toward the Rhine. William, overjoyed, saw removed the last obstacle to
+his ambition. Delayed for some weeks by contrary winds, he finally
+set sail from Holland on the 30th of October. More than five hundred
+transports, with fifteen thousand troops, escorted by fifty
+men-of-war, formed the expedition; and it is typical of its mingled
+political and religious character, that the larger part of the army
+officers were French Protestants who had been driven from France since
+the last war, the commander-in-chief under William being the Huguenot
+Schomberg, late a marshal of France. The first start was foiled by a
+violent storm; but sailing again on the 10th of November, a fresh,
+fair breeze carried the ships through the Straits and the Channel, and
+William landed on the 15th at Torbay. Before the end of the year,
+James had fled from his kingdom. On the 21st of the following April,
+William and Mary were proclaimed sovereigns of Great Britain, and
+England and Holland were united for the war, which Louis had declared
+against the United Provinces as soon as he heard of William's
+invasion. During all the weeks that the expedition was preparing and
+delayed, the French ambassador at the Hague and the minister of the
+navy were praying the king to stop it with his great sea power,--a
+power so great that the French fleet in the first years of the war
+outnumbered those of England and Holland combined; but Louis would
+not. Blindness seems to have struck the kings of England and France
+alike; for James, amid all his apprehensions, steadily refused any
+assistance from the French fleet, trusting to the fidelity of the
+English seamen to his person, although his attempts to have Mass
+celebrated on board the ships had occasioned an uproar and mutiny
+which nearly ended in the crews throwing the priests overboard.
+
+France thus entered the War of the League of Augsburg without a single
+ally. "What her policy had most feared, what she had long averted, was
+come to pass. England and Holland were not only allied, but united
+under the same chief; and England entered the coalition with all the
+eagerness of passions long restrained by the Stuart policy." As
+regards the sea war, the different battles have much less tactical
+value than those of De Ruyter. The chief points of strategic interest
+are the failure of Louis, having a decided superiority at sea,
+properly to support James II. in Ireland, which remained faithful to
+him, and the gradual disappearance from the ocean of the great French
+fleets, which Louis XIV. could no longer maintain, owing to the
+expense of that continental policy which he had chosen for himself. A
+third point of rather minor interest is the peculiar character and
+large proportions taken on by the commerce-destroying and privateering
+warfare of the French, as their large fleets were disappearing. This,
+and the great effect produced by it, will appear at first to
+contradict what has been said as to the general inadequacy of such a
+warfare when not supported by fleets; but an examination of the
+conditions, which will be made later on, will show that the
+contradiction is rather apparent than real.
+
+Taught by the experience of the last conflict, the chief effort of the
+French king, in the general war he had brought upon himself, should
+have been directed against the sea powers,--against William of Orange
+and the Anglo-Dutch alliance. The weakest point in William's position
+was Ireland; though in England itself not only were there many
+partisans of the exiled king, but even those who had called in William
+fenced his kingship about with jealous restrictions. His power was not
+secure so long as Ireland was not subdued. James, having fled from
+England in January, 1689, landed in Ireland in the following March,
+accompanied by French troops and a French squadron, and was
+enthusiastically welcomed everywhere but in the Protestant North. He
+made Dublin his capital, and remained in the country until July of the
+next year. During these fifteen months the French were much superior
+at sea; they landed troops in Ireland on more than one occasion; and
+the English, attempting to prevent this, were defeated in the naval
+battle of Bantry Bay.[68] But although James was so well established,
+and it was of the utmost importance to sustain him; although it was
+equally important to keep William from getting a foothold till James
+was further strengthened and Londonderry, then passing through its
+famous siege, reduced; and although the French were superior to the
+united English and Dutch on the seas in 1689 and 1690; nevertheless,
+the English admiral Rooke was able, unmolested, to throw succors and
+troops into Londonderry, and afterward landed Marshal Schomberg, with
+a small army, near Carrickfergus. Rooke stopped intercourse between
+Ireland and Scotland, where were many Stuart partisans, and then with
+his small squadron passed along the east coast of Ireland, attempted
+to burn the shipping in Dublin harbor, failing only through lack of
+wind, and finally came off Cork, then occupied by James, took
+possession of an island in the harbor, and returned in safety to the
+Downs in October. These services, which raised the siege of
+Londonderry and kept open the communications between England and
+Ireland, extended throughout the summer months; nor was any attempt
+made by the French to stop them. There can be little doubt that an
+effective co-operation of the French fleet in the summer of 1689 would
+have broken down all opposition to James in Ireland, by isolating that
+country from England, with corresponding injury to William's power.
+
+The following year the same strategic and political mistake was made.
+It is the nature of an enterprise such as James's, dependent upon a
+weaker people and foreign help, to lose strength if it does not
+progress; but the chances were still in his favor, provided France
+co-operated heartily, and above all, with her fleet. It is equally the
+nature of a merely military navy like that of France to be strongest
+at the beginning of hostilities; whereas that of the allied sea powers
+grew daily stronger, drawing upon the vast resources of their merchant
+shipping and their wealth. The disparity of force was still in favor
+of France in 1690, but it was not as great as the year before. The
+all-important question was where to direct it. There were two
+principal courses, involving two views of naval strategy. The one was
+to act against the allied fleet, whose defeat, if sufficiently severe,
+might involve the fall of William's throne in England; the other was
+to make the fleet subsidiary to the Irish campaign. The French king
+decided upon the former, which was undoubtedly the proper course; but
+there was no reason for neglecting, as he did, the important duty of
+cutting off the communications between the two islands. As early as
+March he had sent a large fleet with six thousand troops and supplies
+of war, which were landed without any trouble in the southern ports of
+Ireland; but after performing that service, the ships employed
+returned to Brest, and there remained inactive during May and June
+while the grand fleet under the Comte de Tourville was assembling.
+During those two months the English were gathering an army on their
+west coast, and on the 21st of June, William embarked his forces at
+Chester on board two hundred and eighty-eight transports, escorted by
+only six men-of-war. On the 24th he landed in Carrickfergus, and the
+ships-of-war were dismissed to join the English grand fleet, which,
+however, they were not able to do; Tourville's ships having in the
+mean time got to sea and occupied the channel to the eastward. There
+is nothing more striking than the carelessness shown by both the
+contending parties, during the time that Ireland was in dispute, as to
+the communications of their opponents with the island; but this was
+especially strange in the French, as they had the larger forces, and
+must have received pretty accurate information of what was going on
+from disaffected persons in England. It appears that a squadron of
+twenty-five frigates, to be supported by ships-of-the-line, were told
+off for duty in St. George's Channel; but they never reached their
+station, and only ten of the frigates had got as far as Kinsale by the
+time James had lost all at the battle of the Boyne. The English
+communications were not even threatened for an hour.
+
+Tourville's fleet, complete in numbers, having seventy-eight ships, of
+which seventy were in the line-of-battle, with twenty-two fire-ships,
+got to sea June 22, the day after William embarked. On the 30th the
+French were off the Lizard, to the dismay of the English admiral, who
+was lying off the Isle of Wight in such an unprepared attitude that
+he had not even lookout ships to the westward. He got under way,
+standing off-shore to the southeast, and was joined from time to time,
+during the next ten days, by other English and Dutch ships. The two
+fleets continued moving to the eastward, sighting each other from time
+to time.
+
+The political situation in England was critical. The Jacobites were
+growing more and more open in their demonstrations, Ireland had been
+in successful revolt for over a year, and William was now there,
+leaving only the queen in London. The urgency of the case was such
+that the council decided the French fleet must be fought, and orders
+to that effect were sent to the English admiral, Herbert. In obedience
+to his instructions he went out, and on the 10th of July, being to
+windward, with the wind at northeast, formed his line-of-battle, and
+then stood down to attack the French, who waited for him, with their
+foretopsails aback[69] on the starboard tack, heading to the northward
+and westward.
+
+The fight that followed is known as the battle of Beachy Head. The
+ships engaged were, French seventy, English and Dutch according to
+their own account fifty-six, according to the French sixty. In the
+allied line of battle the Dutch were in the van; the English,
+commanded in person by Herbert, in the centre; and the rear was made
+up partly of English and partly of Dutch ships. The stages of the
+battle were as follows:--
+
+1. The allies, being to windward, bore down together in line abreast.
+As usual, this manoeuvre was ill performed, and as also generally
+happens, the van came under fire before the centre and rear, and bore
+the brunt of the injury.
+
+2. Admiral Herbert, though commander-in-chief, failed to attack
+vigorously with the centre, keeping it at long range. The allied van
+and rear came to close action (Plate VI., A). Paul Hoste's[70] account
+of this manoeuvre of the allies is that the admiral intended to fall
+mainly on the French rear. To that end he closed the centre to the
+rear and kept it to windward at long cannon-shot (refused it), so as
+to prevent the French from tacking and doubling on the rear. If that
+were his purpose, his plan, though tolerably conceived in the main,
+was faulty in detail, for this manoeuvre of the centre left a great
+gap between it and the van. He should rather have attacked, as Ruyter
+did at the Texel, as many of the rear ships as he thought he could
+deal with, and refused his van, assigning to it the part of checking
+the French van. It may be conceded that an admiral who, from inferior
+numbers, cannot spread as long and close a line as his enemy, should
+not let the latter overlap the extremities of his fleet; but he should
+attain his end not, as Herbert did, by leaving a great opening in the
+centre, but by increasing each interval between the ships refused. The
+allied fleet was thus exposed to be doubled on at two points, both van
+and centre; and both points were attacked.
+
+3. The commander of the French van, seeing the Dutch close to his line
+and more disabled than himself, pressed six of his leading ships
+ahead, where they went about, and so put the Dutch between two fires
+(Plate VI. B).
+
+ [Illustration: Pl. VI. LA HOUGUE MAY 29, 1692. Pl. VIa. BEACHY
+ HEAD JULY 10, 1690.]
+
+At the same time Tourville, finding himself without adversaries in the
+centre, having beaten off the leading division of the enemy's centre,
+pushed forward his own leading ships, which Herbert's dispositions had
+left without opponents; and these fresh ships strengthened the attack
+upon the Dutch in the van (B).
+
+This brought about a _mêlée_ at the head of the lines, in which the
+Dutch, being inferior, suffered heavily. Luckily for the allies the
+wind fell calm; and while Tourville himself and other French ships got
+out their boats to tow into action again, the allies were shrewd
+enough to drop anchor with all sail set, and before Tourville took in
+the situation the ebb-tide, setting southwest, had carried his fleet
+out of action. He finally anchored a league from his enemy.
+
+At nine P.M., when the tide changed, the allies weighed and stood to
+the eastward. So badly had many of them been mauled, that, by English
+accounts, it was decided rather to destroy the disabled ships than to
+risk a general engagement to preserve them.
+
+Tourville pursued; but instead of ordering a general chase, he kept
+the line-of-battle, reducing the speed of the fleet to that of the
+slower ships. The occasion was precisely one of those in which a
+_mêlée_ is permissible, indeed, obligatory. An enemy beaten and in
+flight should be pursued with ardor, and with only so much regard to
+order as will prevent the chasing vessels from losing mutual
+support,--a condition which by no means implies such relative bearings
+and distances as are required in the beginning or middle of a
+well-contested action. The failure to order such general pursuit
+indicates the side on which Tourville's military character lacked
+completeness; and the failure showed itself, as is apt to be the case,
+at the supreme moment of his career. He never had such another
+opportunity as in this, the first great general action in which he
+commanded in chief, and which Hoste, who was on board the flag-ship,
+calls the most complete naval victory ever gained. It was so indeed at
+that time,--the most complete, but not the most decisive, as it
+perhaps might have been. The French, according to Hoste, lost not even
+a boat, much less a ship, which, if true, makes yet more culpable the
+sluggishness of the pursuit; while the allies fled, casting sixteen of
+their ships ashore and burning them in sight of the enemy, who pursued
+as far as the Downs. The English indeed give the allied loss as only
+eight ships,--an estimate probably full as much out one way as the
+French the other. Herbert took his fleet to the Thames, and baffled
+the enemy's further pursuit by removing the buoys.[71]
+
+Tourville's is the only great historical name among the seamen of this
+war, if we except the renowned privateersmen at whose head was Jean
+Bart. Among the English, extraordinary merit cannot be claimed for any
+one of the gallant and enterprising men who commanded squadrons.
+Tourville, who by this time had served afloat for nearly thirty
+years, was at once a seaman and a military man. With superb courage,
+of which he had given dazzling examples in his youth, he had seen
+service wherever the French fleets had fought,--in the Anglo-Dutch
+war, in the Mediterranean, and against the Barbary pirates. Reaching
+the rank of admiral, he commanded in person all the largest fleets
+sent out during the earlier years of this war, and he brought to the
+command a scientific knowledge of tactics, based upon both theory and
+experience, joined to that practical acquaintance with the seaman's
+business which is necessary in order to apply tactical principles upon
+the ocean to the best advantage. But with all these high qualities he
+seems to have failed, where so many warriors fail, in the ability to
+assume a great responsibility.[72] The caution in his pursuit of the
+allies after Beachy Head, though so different in appearance, came from
+the same trait which impelled him two years later to lead his fleet
+into almost certain destruction at La Hougue, because he had the
+king's order in his pocket. He was brave enough to do anything, but
+not strong enough to bear the heaviest burdens. Tourville was in fact
+the forerunner of the careful and skilful tacticians of the coming
+era, but with the savor still of the impetuous hard-fighting which
+characterized the sea commanders of the seventeenth century. He
+doubtless felt, after Beachy Head, that he had done very well and
+could be satisfied; but he could not have acted as he did had he felt,
+to use Nelson's words, that "if we had taken ten ships out of the
+enemy's eleven, and let the eleventh escape, being able to take her, I
+could never call such a good day."
+
+The day after the sea fight off Beachy Head, with its great but still
+partial results, the cause of James II. was lost ashore in Ireland.
+The army which William had been allowed to transport there unmolested
+was superior in number and quality to that of James, as William
+himself was superior as a leader to the ex-king. The counsel of Louis
+XIV. was that James should avoid decisive action, retiring if
+necessary to the Shannon, in the midst of a country wholly devoted to
+him. It was, however, a good deal to ask, this abandonment of the
+capital after more than a year's occupancy, with all the consequent
+moral effect; it would have been much more to the purpose to stop
+William's landing. James undertook to cover Dublin, taking up the line
+of the river Boyne, and there on the 11th of July the two armies met,
+with the result that James was wholly defeated. The king himself fled
+to Kinsale, where he found ten of those frigates that had been meant
+to control St. George's Channel. He embarked, and again took refuge in
+France, begging Louis to improve the victory at Beachy Head by landing
+him with another French army in England itself. Louis angrily refused,
+and directed that the troops still remaining in Ireland should be at
+once withdrawn.
+
+The chances of a rising in favor of James, at least upon the shores of
+the Channel, if they existed at all, were greatly exaggerated by his
+own imagination. After the safe retreat of the allied fleet to the
+Thames, Tourville, in accordance with his instructions, made several
+demonstrations in the south of England; but they were wholly fruitless
+in drawing out any show of attachment to the Stuart cause.
+
+In Ireland it was different. The Irish army with its French contingent
+fell back, after the battle of the Boyne, to the Shannon, and there
+again made a stand; while Louis, receding from his first angry
+impulse, continued to send reinforcements and supplies. But the
+increasing urgency of the continental war kept him from affording
+enough support, and the war in Ireland came to a close a little over a
+year later, by the defeat at Aghrim and capitulation of Limerick. The
+battle of the Boyne, which from its peculiar religious coloring has
+obtained a somewhat factitious celebrity, may be taken as the date at
+which the English crown was firmly fixed on William's head. Yet it
+would be more accurate to say that the success of William, and with it
+the success of Europe against Louis XIV. in the War of the League of
+Augsburg, was due to the mistakes and failure of the French naval
+campaign in 1690; though in that campaign was won the most conspicuous
+single success the French have ever gained at sea over the English. As
+regards the more striking military operations, it is curious to remark
+that Tourville sailed the day after William left Chester, and won
+Beachy Head the day before the battle of the Boyne; but the real
+failure lay in permitting William to transport that solid body of men
+without hindrance. It might have been favorable to French policy to
+let him get into Ireland, but not with such a force at his back. The
+result of the Irish campaign was to settle William safely on the
+English throne and establish the Anglo-Dutch alliance; and the union
+of the two sea peoples under one crown was the pledge, through their
+commercial and maritime ability, and the wealth they drew from the
+sea, of the successful prosecution of the war by their allies on the
+continent.
+
+The year 1691 was distinguished by only one great maritime event. This
+was ever afterward known in France as Tourville's "deep-sea" or
+"off-shore" cruise; and the memory of it as a brilliant strategic and
+tactical display remains to this day in the French navy. That staying
+power, which has already been spoken of as distinctive of nations
+whose sea power is not a mere military institution, but based upon the
+character and pursuits of the people, had now come into play with the
+allies. Notwithstanding the defeat and loss of Beachy Head, the united
+fleets took the sea in 1691 with one hundred ships-of-the-line under
+the command of Admiral Russell. Tourville could only gather
+seventy-two, the same number as the year before. "With these he left
+Brest June 25. As the enemy had not yet appeared upon the coasts of
+the Channel, he took up his cruising ground at the entrance, sending
+lookout ships in all directions. Informed that the allies had
+stationed themselves near the Scilly Islands to cover the passage of a
+convoy expected from the Levant, Tourville did not hesitate to steer
+for the English coasts, where the approaching arrival of another
+merchant fleet from Jamaica was equally expected. Deceiving the
+English cruisers by false courses, he reached the latter fleet, took
+from it several ships, and dispersed it before Russell could come up
+to fight him. When at last Tourville was in presence of the allied
+fleet, he manoeuvred so skilfully, always keeping the weather-gage,
+that the enemy, drawn far out into the ocean, lost fifty days without
+finding an opportunity to engage. During this time French privateers,
+scattered throughout the Channel, harassed the enemy's commerce and
+protected convoys sent into Ireland. Worn out by fruitless efforts,
+Russell steered for the Irish coast. Tourville, after having protected
+the return of the French convoys, anchored again in Brest Roads."
+
+The actual captures made by Tourville's own fleet were insignificant,
+but its service to the commerce-destroying warfare of the French, by
+occupying the allies, is obvious; nevertheless, the loss of English
+commerce was not as great this year as the next. The chief losses of
+the allies seem to have been in the Dutch North Sea trade.
+
+The two wars, continental and maritime, that were being waged, though
+simultaneous, were as yet independent of each other. It is unnecessary
+in connection with our subject to mention the operations of the
+former. In 1692 there occurred the great disaster to the French fleet
+which is known as the battle of La Hougue. In itself, considered
+tactically, it possesses little importance, and the actual results
+have been much exaggerated; but popular report has made it one of the
+famous sea battles of the world, and therefore it cannot be wholly
+passed by.
+
+Misled by reports from England, and still more by the representations
+of James, who fondly nursed his belief that the attachment of many
+English naval officers to his person was greater than their love of
+country or faithfulness to their trust, Louis XIV. determined to
+attempt an invasion of the south coast of England, led by James in
+person. As a first step thereto, Tourville, at the head of between
+fifty and sixty ships-of-the-line, thirteen of which were to come
+from Toulon, was to engage the English fleet; from which so many
+desertions were expected as would, with the consequent demoralization,
+yield the French an easy and total victory. The first hitch was in the
+failure of the Toulon fleet, delayed by contrary winds, to join; and
+Tourville went to sea with only forty-four ships, but with a
+peremptory order from the king to fight when he fell in with the
+enemy, were they few or many, and come what might.
+
+On the 29th of May, Tourville saw the allies to the northward and
+eastward; they numbered ninety-nine sail-of-the-line. The wind being
+southwest, he had the choice of engaging, but first summoned all the
+flag-officers on board his own ship, and put the question to them
+whether he ought to fight. They all said not, and he then handed them
+the order of the king.[73] No one dared dispute that; though, had they
+known it, light vessels with contrary orders were even then searching
+for the fleet. The other officers then returned to their ships, and
+the whole fleet kept away together for the allies, who waited for
+them, on the starboard tack, heading south-southeast, the Dutch
+occupying the van, the English the centre and rear. When they were
+within easy range, the French hauled their wind on the same tack,
+keeping the weather-gage. Tourville, being so inferior in numbers,
+could not wholly avoid the enemy's line extending to the rear of his
+own, which was also necessarily weak from its extreme length; but he
+avoided Herbert's error at Beachy Head, keeping his van refused with
+long intervals between the ships, to check the enemy's van, and
+engaging closely with his centre and rear (Plate VIa. A, A, A). It is
+not necessary to follow the phases of this unequal fight; the
+extraordinary result was that when the firing ceased at night, in
+consequence of a thick fog and calm, not a single French ship had
+struck her colors nor been sunk. No higher proof of military spirit
+and efficiency could be given by any navy, and Tourville's seamanship
+and tactical ability contributed largely to the result, which it must
+also be confessed was not creditable to the allies. The two fleets
+anchored at nightfall (B, B, B), a body of English ships (B')
+remaining to the southward and westward of the French, Later on, these
+cut their cables and allowed themselves to drift through the French
+line in order to rejoin their main body; in doing which they were
+roughly handled.
+
+Having amply vindicated the honor of his fleet, and shown the
+uselessness of further fighting, Tourville now thought of retreat,
+which was begun at midnight with a light northeast wind and continued
+all the next day. The allies pursued, the movements of the French
+being much embarrassed by the crippled condition of the flag-ship
+"Royal Sun," the finest ship in the French navy, which the admiral
+could not make up his mind to destroy. The direction of the main
+retreat was toward the Channel Islands, thirty-five ships being with
+the admiral; of them twenty passed with the tidal current through the
+dangerous passage known as the Race of Alderney, between the island of
+that name and the mainland, and got safe to St. Malo. Before the
+remaining fifteen could follow, the tide changed; and the anchors
+which had been dropped dragging, these ships were carried to the
+eastward and to leeward of the enemy. Three sought refuge in
+Cherbourg, which had then neither breakwater nor port, the remaining
+twelve at Cape La Hougue; and they were all burned either by their own
+crews or by the allies. The French thus lost fifteen of the finest
+ships in their navy, the least of which carried sixty guns; but this
+was little more than the loss of the allies at Beachy Head. The
+impression made upon the public mind, accustomed to the glories and
+successes of Louis XIV., was out of all proportion to the results, and
+blotted out the memory of the splendid self-devotion of Tourville and
+his followers. La Hougue was also the last general action fought by
+the French fleet, which did rapidly dwindle away in the following
+years, so that this disaster seemed to be its death-blow. As a matter
+of fact, however, Tourville went to sea the next year with seventy
+ships, and the losses were at the time repaired. The decay of the
+French navy was not due to any one defeat, but to the exhaustion of
+France and the great cost of the continental war; and this war was
+mainly sustained by the two sea peoples whose union was secured by the
+success of William in the Irish campaign. Without asserting that the
+result would have been different had the naval operations of France
+been otherwise directed in 1690, it may safely be said that their
+misdirection was the immediate cause of things turning out as they
+did, and the first cause of the decay of the French navy.
+
+The five remaining years of the War of the League of Augsburg, in
+which all Europe was in arms against France, are marked by no great
+sea battles, nor any single maritime event of the first importance. To
+appreciate the effect of the sea power of the allies, it is necessary
+to sum up and condense an account of the quiet, steady pressure which
+it brought to bear and maintained in all quarters against France. It
+is thus indeed that sea power usually acts, and just because so quiet
+in its working, it is the more likely to be unnoticed and must be
+somewhat carefully pointed out.
+
+The head of the opposition to Louis XIV. was William III., and his
+tastes being military rather than naval combined with the direction of
+Louis' policy to make the active war continental rather than maritime;
+while the gradual withdrawal of the great French fleets, by leaving
+the allied navies without enemies on the sea, worked in the same way.
+Furthermore, the efficiency of the English navy, which was double in
+numbers that of the Dutch, was at this time at a low pitch; the
+demoralizing effects of the reign of Charles II. could not be wholly
+overcome during the three years of his brother's rule, and there was a
+yet more serious cause of trouble growing out of the political state
+of England. It has been said that James believed the naval officers
+and seamen to be attached to his person; and, whether justly or
+unjustly, this thought was also in the minds of the present rulers,
+causing doubts of the loyalty and trustworthiness of many officers,
+and tending to bring confusion into the naval administration. We are
+told that "the complaints made by the merchants were extremely well
+supported, and showed the folly of preferring unqualified men to that
+board which directed the naval power of England; and yet the mischief
+could not be amended, because the more experienced people who had been
+long in the service were thought disaffected, and it appeared the
+remedy might have proved worse than the disease."[74] Suspicion
+reigned in the cabinet and the city, factions and irresolution among
+the officers; and a man who was unfortunate or incapable in action
+knew that the yet more serious charge of treason might follow his
+misadventure.
+
+After La Hougue, the direct military action of the allied navies was
+exerted in three principal ways, the first being in attacks upon the
+French ports, especially those in the Channel and near Brest. These
+had rarely in view more than local injury and the destruction of
+shipping, particularly in the ports whence the French privateers
+issued; and although on some occasions the number of troops embarked
+was large, William proposed to himself little more than the diversion
+which such threats caused, by forcing Louis to take troops from the
+field for coast defence. It may be said generally of all these
+enterprises against the French coast, in this and later wars, that
+they effected little, and even as a diversion did not weaken the
+French armies to any great extent. If the French ports had been less
+well defended, or French water-ways open into the heart of the
+country, like our own Chesapeake and Delaware bays and the Southern
+sounds, the result might have been different.
+
+In the second place, the allied navies were of great direct military
+value, though they fought no battles, when Louis XIV. decided in 1694
+to make his war against Spain offensive. Spain, though so weak in
+herself, was yet troublesome from her position in the rear of France;
+and Louis finally concluded to force her to peace by carrying the war
+into Catalonia, on the northeast coast. The movement of his armies was
+seconded by his fleet under Tourville; and the reduction of that
+difficult province went on rapidly until the approach of the allied
+navies in largely superior force caused Tourville to retire to Toulon.
+This saved Barcelona; and from that time until the two sea nations had
+determined to make peace, they kept their fleets on the Spanish coast
+and arrested the French advance. When, in 1697, William had become
+disposed to peace and Spain refused it, Louis again invaded, the
+allied fleet did not appear, and Barcelona fell. At the same time a
+French naval expedition was successfully directed against Cartagena in
+South America, and under the two blows, both of which depended upon
+the control of the sea, Spain yielded.
+
+The third military function of the allied navies was the protection of
+their sea commerce; and herein, if history may be trusted, they
+greatly failed. At no time has war against commerce been conducted on
+a larger scale and with greater results than during this period; and
+its operations were widest and most devastating at the very time that
+the great French fleets were disappearing, in the years immediately
+after La Hougue, apparently contradicting the assertion that such a
+warfare must be based on powerful fleets or neighboring seaports. A
+somewhat full discussion is due, inasmuch as the distress to commerce
+wrought by the privateers was a large factor in bringing the sea
+nations to wish for peace; just as the subsidies, which their
+commerce enabled them to pay the continental armies, besides keeping
+up their own, were the chief means by which the war was prolonged and
+France brought to terms. The attack and defence of commerce is still a
+living question.
+
+In the first place it is to be observed that the decay of the French
+fleet was gradual, and that the moral effect of its appearance in the
+Channel, its victory at Beachy Head, and gallant conduct at La Hougue
+remained for some time impressed on the minds of the allies. This
+impression caused their ships to be kept together in fleets, instead
+of scattering in pursuit of the enemy's cruisers, and so brought to
+the latter a support almost equal to an active warfare on the seas.
+Again, the efficiency of the English navy, as has been said, was low,
+and its administration perhaps worse; while treason in England gave
+the French the advantage of better information. Thus in the year
+following La Hougue, the French, having received accurate information
+of a great convoy sailing for Smyrna, sent out Tourville in May,
+getting him to sea before the allies were ready to blockade him in
+Brest, as they had intended. This delay was due to bad administration,
+as was also the further misfortune that the English government did not
+learn of Tourville's departure until after its own fleet had sailed
+with the trade. Tourville surprised the convoy near the Straits,
+destroyed or captured one hundred out of four hundred ships, and
+scattered the rest. This is not a case of simple cruising warfare, for
+Tourville's fleet was of seventy-one ships; but it shows the
+incompetency of the English administration. In truth, it was
+immediately after La Hougue that the depredations of cruisers became
+most ruinous; and the reason was twofold: first, the allied fleet was
+kept together at Spithead for two months and more, gathering troops
+for a landing on the continent, thus leaving the cruisers unmolested;
+and in the second place, the French, not being able to send their
+fleet out again that summer, permitted the seamen to take service in
+private ships, thus largely increasing the numbers of the latter. The
+two causes working together gave an impunity and extension to
+commerce-destroying which caused a tremendous outcry in England. "It
+must be confessed," says the English naval chronicler, "that our
+commerce suffered far less the year before, when the French were
+masters at sea, than in this, when their grand fleet was blocked up in
+port." But the reason was that the French having little commerce and a
+comparatively large number of seamen, mainly employed in the fleet,
+were able, when this lay by, to release them to cruisers. As the
+pressure of the war became greater, and Louis continued to reduce the
+number of his ships in commission, another increase was given to the
+commerce-destroyers. "The ships and officers of the royal navy were
+loaned, under certain conditions, to private firms, or to companies
+who wished to undertake privateering enterprises, in which even the
+cabinet ministers did not disdain to take shares;" indeed, they were
+urged to do so to please the king. The conditions generally provided
+that a certain proportion of the profits should go to the king, in
+return for the use of the ships. Such employment would be demoralizing
+to any military service, but not necessarily all at once; and the
+conditions imparted for the time a tone and energy to privateering
+that it cannot always have. In truth, the public treasury, not being
+able to maintain the navy, associated with itself private capital,
+risking only material otherwise useless, and looking for returns to
+robbing the enemy. The commerce-destroying of this war, also, was no
+mere business of single cruisers; squadrons of three or four up to
+half a dozen ships acted together under one man, and it is only just
+to say that under seamen like Jean Bart, Forbin, and Duguay-Trouin,
+they were even more ready to fight than to pillage. The largest of
+these private expeditions, and the only one that went far from the
+French shores, was directed in 1697 against Cartagena, on the Spanish
+Main. It numbered seven ships-of-the-line and six frigates, besides
+smaller vessels, and carried twenty-eight hundred troops. The chief
+object was to lay a contribution on the city of Cartagena; but its
+effect on the policy of Spain was marked, and led to peace. Such a
+temper and concert of action went far to supply the place of
+supporting fleets, but could not wholly do so; and although the allies
+continued to keep their large fleets together, still, as the war went
+on and efficiency of administration improved, commerce-destroying was
+brought within bounds. At the same time, as an evidence of how much
+the unsupported cruisers suffered, even under these favorable
+conditions, it may be mentioned that the English report fifty-nine
+ships-of-war captured against eighteen admitted by the French during
+the war,--a difference which a French naval historian attributes, with
+much probability, to the English failing to distinguish between
+ships-of-war properly so called, and those loaned to private firms.
+Captures of actual privateers do not appear in the list quoted from.
+"The commerce-destroying of this war, therefore, was marked by the
+particular characteristics of cruisers acting together in squadron,
+not far from their base, while the enemy thought best to keep his
+fleet concentrated elsewhere; notwithstanding which, and the bad
+administration of the English navy, the cruisers were more and more
+controlled as the great French fleets disappeared." The results of the
+war of 1689-1697 do not therefore vitiate the general conclusion that
+"a cruising, commerce-destroying warfare, to be destructive, must be
+seconded by a squadron warfare, and by divisions of ships-of-the-line;
+which, forcing the enemy to unite his forces, permit the cruisers to
+make fortunate attempts upon his trade. Without such backing the
+result will be simply the capture of the cruisers." Toward the end of
+this war the real tendency was becoming manifest, and was still more
+plainly seen in the next, when the French navy had sunk to a yet lower
+state of weakness.
+
+Notwithstanding their losses, the sea nations made good their cause.
+The war, which began with the French taking the offensive, ended by
+reducing them everywhere to the defensive, and forced Louis to do
+violence at once to his strongest prejudices and his most reasonable
+political wishes, by recognizing as king of England him whom he looked
+upon as a usurper as well as his own inveterate enemy. On its
+surface, and taken as a whole, this war will appear almost wholly a
+land struggle, extending from the Spanish Netherlands down the line of
+the Rhine, to Savoy in Italy and Catalonia in Spain. The sea fights in
+the Channel, the Irish struggle receding in the distance, look like
+mere episodes; while the underlying action of trade and commerce is
+wholly disregarded, or noticed only as their outcries tell of their
+sufferings. Yet trade and shipping not only bore the burden of
+suffering, but in the main paid the armies that were fighting the
+French; and this turning of the stream of wealth from both sea nations
+into the coffers of their allies was perhaps determined, certainly
+hastened, by the misdirection of that naval supremacy with which
+France began the war. It was then possible, as it will usually be
+possible, for a really fine military navy of superior force to strike
+an overwhelming blow at a less ready rival; but the opportunity was
+allowed to slip, and the essentially stronger, better founded sea
+power of the allies had time to assert itself.
+
+The peace signed at Ryswick in 1697 was most disadvantageous to
+France; she lost all that had been gained since the Peace of Nimeguen,
+nineteen years before, with the single important exception of
+Strasburg. All that Louis XIV. had gained by trick or force during the
+years of peace was given up. Immense restitutions were made to Germany
+and to Spain. In so far as the latter were made in the Netherlands,
+they were to the immediate advantage of the United Provinces, and
+indeed of all Europe as well as of Spain. To the two sea nations the
+terms of the treaty gave commercial benefits, which tended to the
+increase of their own sea power and to the consequent injury of that
+of France.
+
+France had made a gigantic struggle; to stand alone as she did then,
+and as she has since done more than once, against all Europe is a
+great feat. Yet it may be said that as the United Provinces taught the
+lesson that a nation, however active and enterprising, cannot rest
+upon external resources alone, if intrinsically weak in numbers and
+territory, so France in its measure shows that a nation cannot
+subsist indefinitely off itself, however powerful in numbers and
+strong in internal resources.
+
+It is said that a friend once found Colbert looking dreamily from his
+windows, and on questioning him as to the subject of his meditations,
+received this reply: "In contemplating the fertile fields before my
+eyes, I recall those which I have seen elsewhere; what a rich country
+is France!" This conviction supported him amid the many
+discouragements of his official life, when struggling to meet the
+financial difficulties arising from the extravagance and wars of the
+king; and it has been justified by the whole course of the nation's
+history since his days. France is rich in natural resources as well as
+in the industry and thrift of her people. But neither individual
+nations nor men can thrive when severed from natural intercourse with
+their kind; whatever the native vigor of constitution, it requires
+healthful surroundings, and freedom to draw to itself from near and
+from far all that is conducive to its growth and strength and general
+welfare. Not only must the internal organism work satisfactorily, the
+processes of decay and renewal, of movement and circulation, go on
+easily, but, from sources external to themselves, both mind and body
+must receive healthful and varied nourishment. With all her natural
+gifts France wasted away because of the want of that lively
+intercourse between the different parts of her own body and constant
+exchange with other people, which is known as commerce, internal or
+external. To say that war was the cause of these defects is to state
+at least a partial truth; but it does not exhaust the matter. War,
+with its many acknowledged sufferings, is above all harmful when it
+cuts a nation off from others and throws it back upon itself. There
+may indeed be periods when such rude shocks have a bracing effect, but
+they are exceptional, and of short duration, and they do not
+invalidate the general statement. Such isolation was the lot of France
+during the later wars of Louis XIV., and it well-nigh destroyed her;
+whereas to save her from the possibility of such stagnation was the
+great aim of Colbert's life.
+
+War alone could not entail it, if only war could be postponed until
+the processes of circulation within and without the kingdom were
+established and in vigorous operation. They did not exist when he took
+office; they had to be both created and firmly rooted in order to
+withstand the blast of war. Time was not given to accomplish this
+great work, nor did Louis XIV. support the schemes of his minister by
+turning the budding energies of his docile and devoted subjects into
+paths favorable to it. So when the great strain came upon the powers
+of the nation, instead of drawing strength from every quarter and
+through many channels, and laying the whole outside world under
+contribution by the energy of its merchants and seamen, as England has
+done in like straits, it was thrown back upon itself, cut off from the
+world by the navies of England and Holland, and the girdle of enemies
+which surrounded it upon the continent. The only escape from this
+process of gradual starvation was by an effectual control of the sea;
+the creation of a strong sea power which should insure free play for
+the wealth of the land and the industry of the people. For this, too,
+France had great natural advantages in her three seaboards, on the
+Channel, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean; and politically she had
+had the fair opportunity of joining to her own maritime power that of
+the Dutch in friendly alliance, hostile or at least wary toward
+England. In the pride of his strength, conscious of absolute control
+in his kingdom, Louis cast away this strong reinforcement to his
+power, and proceeded to rouse Europe against him by repeated
+aggressions. In the period which we have just considered, France
+justified his confidence by a magnificent, and upon the whole
+successful, maintenance of his attitude against all Europe; she did
+not advance, but neither did she greatly recede. But this display of
+power was exhausting; it ate away the life of the nation, because it
+drew wholly upon itself and not upon the outside world, with which it
+could have been kept in contact by the sea. In the war that next
+followed, the same energy is seen, but not the same vitality; and
+France was everywhere beaten back and brought to the verge of ruin.
+The lesson of both is the same; nations, like men, however strong,
+decay when cut off from the external activities and resources which at
+once draw out and support their internal powers. A nation, as we have
+already shown, cannot live indefinitely off itself, and the easiest
+way by which it can communicate with other peoples and renew its own
+strength is the sea.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[66] Campbell: Lives of the Admirals.
+
+[67] Martin: History of France.
+
+[68] See Map of English Channel, etc., p. 107.
+
+[69] That is, nearly motionless.
+
+[70] Hoste: Naval Tactics.
+
+[71] Ledyard says the order to remove the buoys was not carried out
+(Naval History, vol. ii. p. 636).
+
+[72] Seignelay, the French minister of marine of the day, called him
+"poltron de tête, mais pas de coeur."
+
+[73] The author has followed in the text the traditional and generally
+accepted account of Tourville's orders and the motives of his action.
+A French writer, M. de Crisenoy, in a very interesting paper upon the
+secret history preceding and accompanying the event, traverses many of
+these traditional statements. According to him, Louis XIV. was not
+under any illusion as to the loyalty of the English officers to their
+flag; and the instructions given to Tourville, while peremptory under
+certain conditions, did not compel him to fight in the situation of
+the French fleet on the day of the battle. The tone of the
+instructions, however, implied dissatisfaction with the admiral's
+action in previous cruises, probably in the pursuit after Beachy Head,
+and a consequent doubt of his vigor in the campaign then beginning.
+Mortification therefore impelled him to the desperate attack on the
+allied fleet; and, according to M. de Crisenoy, the council of war in
+the admiral's cabin, and the dramatic production of the king's orders,
+had no existence in fact.
+
+[74] Campbell: Lives of the Admirals.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+ WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION, 1702-1713.--SEA BATTLE OF MALAGA.
+
+
+During the last thirty years of the seventeenth century, amid all the
+strifes of arms and diplomacy, there had been clearly foreseen the
+coming of an event which would raise new and great issues. This was
+the failure of the direct royal line in that branch of the House of
+Austria which was then on the Spanish throne; and the issues to be
+determined when the present king, infirm both in body and mind, should
+die, were whether the new monarch was to be taken from the House of
+Bourbon or from the Austrian family in Germany; and whether, in either
+event, the sovereign thus raised to the throne should succeed to the
+entire inheritance, the Empire of Spain, or some partition of that
+vast inheritance be made in the interests of the balance of European
+power. But this balance of power was no longer understood in the
+narrow sense of continental possessions; the effect of the new
+arrangements upon commerce, shipping, and the control both of the
+ocean and the Mediterranean, was closely looked to. The influence of
+the two sea powers and the nature of their interests were becoming
+more evident.
+
+It is necessary to recall the various countries that were ruled by
+Spain at that time in order to understand the strategic questions, as
+they may fairly be called, now to be settled. These were, in Europe,
+the Netherlands (now Belgium); Naples and the south of Italy; Milan
+and other provinces in the north; and, in the Mediterranean, Sicily,
+Sardinia, and the Balearic Isles. Corsica at that time belonged to
+Genoa. In the western hemisphere, besides Cuba and Porto Rico, Spain
+then held all that part of the continent now divided among the
+Spanish American States, a region whose vast commercial possibilities
+were coming to be understood; and in the Asian archipelago there were
+large possessions that entered less into the present dispute. The
+excessive weakness of this empire, owing to the decay of the central
+kingdom, had hitherto caused other nations, occupied as they were with
+more immediate interests, to regard with indifference its enormous
+extent. This indifference could not last when there was a prospect of
+a stronger administration, backed possibly by alliances with one of
+the great powers of Europe.
+
+It would be foreign to our subject to enter into the details of
+diplomatic arrangement, which, by shifting about peoples and
+territories from one ruler to another, sought to reach a political
+balance peacefully. The cardinal points of each nation's policy may be
+shortly stated. The Spanish cabinet and people objected to any
+solution which dismembered the empire. The English and the Dutch
+objected to any extension of France in the Spanish Netherlands, and to
+the monopoly by the French of the trade with Spanish America, both
+which they feared as the results of placing a Bourbon on the Spanish
+throne. Louis XIV. wanted Naples and Sicily for one of his sons, in
+case of any partition; thus giving France a strong Mediterranean
+position, but one which would be at the mercy of the sea powers,--a
+fact which induced William III. to acquiesce in this demand. The
+Emperor of Austria particularly objected to these Mediterranean
+positions going away from his family, and refused to come into any of
+the partition treaties. Before any arrangement was perfected, the
+actual king of Spain died, but before his death was induced by his
+ministers to sign a will, bequeathing all his States to the grandson
+of Louis XIV., then Duke of Anjou, known afterward as Philip V. of
+Spain. By this step it was hoped to preserve the whole, by enlisting
+in its defence the nearest and one of the most powerful States in
+Europe,--nearest, if are excepted the powers ruling the sea, which are
+always near any country whose ports are open to their ships.
+
+Louis XIV. accepted the bequest, and in so doing felt bound in honor
+to resist all attempts at partition. The union of the two kingdoms
+under one family promised important advantages to France, henceforth
+delivered from that old enemy in the rear, which had balked so many of
+her efforts to extend her frontiers eastward. As a matter of fact,
+from that time, with rare breaks, there existed between the two
+kingdoms an alliance, the result of family ties, which only the
+weakness of Spain kept from being dangerous to the rest of Europe. The
+other countries at once realized the situation, and nothing could have
+saved war but some backward step on the part of the French king. The
+statesmen of England and Holland, the two powers on whose wealth the
+threatened war must depend, proposed that the Italian States should be
+given to the son of the Austrian emperor, Belgium be occupied by
+themselves, and that the new king of Spain should grant no commercial
+privileges in the Indies to France above other nations. To the credit
+of their wisdom it must be said that this compromise was the one which
+after ten years of war was found, on the whole, best; and in it is
+seen the growing sense of the value of extension by sea. Louis,
+however, would not yield; on the contrary, he occupied, by connivance
+of the Spanish governors, towns in the Netherlands which had been held
+by Dutch troops under treaties with Spain. Soon after, in February,
+1701, the English Parliament met, and denounced any treaty which
+promised France the dominion of the Mediterranean. Holland began to
+arm, and the Emperor of Austria pushed his troops into northern Italy,
+where a campaign followed, greatly to the disadvantage of Louis.
+
+In September of the same year, 1701, the two sea powers and the
+Emperor of Austria signed a secret treaty, which laid down the chief
+lines of the coming war, with the exception of that waged in the
+Spanish peninsula itself. By it the allies undertook to conquer the
+Spanish Netherlands in order to place a barrier between France and the
+United Provinces; to conquer Milan as a security for the emperor's
+other provinces; and to conquer Naples and Sicily for the same
+security, and also for the security of the navigation and commerce of
+the subjects of his Britannic Majesty and of the United Provinces. The
+sea powers should have the right to conquer, for the utility of the
+said navigation and commerce, the countries and towns of the Spanish
+Indies; and all that they should be able to take there should be for
+them and remain theirs. The war begun, none of the allies could treat
+without the others, nor without having taken just measures--first, to
+prevent the kingdoms of France and Spain from ever being united under
+the same king; second, to prevent the French from ever making
+themselves masters of the Spanish Indies, or from sending ships
+thither to engage, directly or indirectly, in commerce; third, to
+secure to the subjects of his Britannic Majesty and of the United
+Provinces the commercial privileges which they enjoyed in all the
+Spanish States under the late king.
+
+It will be noticed that in these conditions there is no suggestion of
+any intention to resist the accession of the Bourbon king, who was
+called to the throne by the Spanish government and at first
+acknowledged by England and Holland; but, on the other hand, the
+Emperor of Austria does not withdraw the Austrian claim, which centred
+in his own person. The voice of the sea powers was paramount in the
+coalition, as the terms of the treaty safeguarding their commercial
+interests show, though, as they were about to use German armies for
+the land war, German claims also had to be considered. As a French
+historian points out:--
+
+ "This was really a new treaty of partition.... William III., who
+ had conducted all, had taken care not to exhaust England and
+ Holland, in order to restore the Spanish monarchy, intact, to
+ the emperor; his final condition was to reduce the new king,
+ Philip V., to Spain proper, and to secure to England and Holland
+ at once the commercial use of all the regions that had been
+ under the Spanish monarchy, together with important military and
+ maritime positions against France."[75]
+
+But though war was imminent, the countries about to engage hesitated.
+Holland would not move without England, and despite the strong
+feeling of the latter country against France, the manufacturers and
+merchants still remembered the terrible sufferings of the last war.
+Just then, as the scales were wavering, James II. died. Louis,
+yielding to a sentiment of sympathy and urged by his nearest
+intimates, formally recognized the son of James as king of England;
+and the English people, enraged at what they looked on as a threat and
+an insult, threw aside all merely prudential considerations. The House
+of Lords declared that "there could be no security till the usurper of
+the Spanish monarchy was brought to reason;" and the House of Commons
+voted fifty thousand soldiers and thirty-five thousand seamen, besides
+subsidies for German and Danish auxiliaries. William III. died soon
+after, in March, 1702; but Queen Anne took up his policy, which had
+become that of the English and Dutch peoples.
+
+Louis XIV. tried to break part of the on-coming storm by forming a
+league of neutrals among the other German States; but the emperor
+adroitly made use of the German feeling, and won to his side the
+Elector of Brandenburg by acknowledging him as king of Prussia, thus
+creating a North-German Protestant royal house, around which the other
+Protestant States naturally gathered, and which was in the future to
+prove a formidable rival to Austria. The immediate result was that
+France and Spain, whose cause was thenceforth known as that of the two
+crowns, went into the war without any ally save Bavaria. War was
+declared in May by Holland against the kings of France and Spain; by
+England against France and Spain, Anne refusing to recognize Philip V.
+even in declaring war, because he had recognized James III. as king of
+England; while the emperor was still more outspoken, declaring against
+the King of France and the Duke of Anjou. Thus began the great War of
+the Spanish Succession.
+
+It is far from easy, in dealing with a war of such proportions,
+lasting for more than ten years, to disentangle from the general
+narrative that part which particularly touches our subject, without at
+the same time losing sight of the relation of the one part to the
+whole. Such a loss, however, is fatal to the end in view, which is
+not a mere chronicle of naval events, nor even a tactical or strategic
+discussion of certain naval problems divorced from their surroundings
+of cause and effect in general history, but an appreciation of the
+effect of sea power upon the general result of the war and upon the
+prosperity of nations. It will conduce to clearness, however, to point
+out again that the aim of William III. was not to dispute the claim of
+Philip V. to the throne,--a matter of comparative indifference to the
+sea powers,--but to seize, to the benefit of their commerce and
+colonial empire, such portions of the Spanish American possessions as
+he could, and at the same time to impose such conditions upon the new
+monarchy as would at least prevent any loss, to English and Dutch
+commerce, of the privileges they had had under the Austrian line. Such
+a policy would not direct the main effort of the sea nations upon the
+Spanish peninsula, but upon America; and the allied fleets might not
+have entered the Straits. Sicily and Naples were to go, not to
+England, but to Austria. Subsequent causes led to an entire change in
+this general plan. A new candidate, a son of the Emperor of Germany,
+was set up in 1703 by the coalition under the name of Carlos III., and
+the peninsula became the scene of a doubtful and bloody war, keeping
+the Anglo-Dutch fleets hovering round the coasts; with the result, as
+regards the sea powers, that nothing of decisive importance was done
+in Spanish America, but that England issued from the strife with
+Gibraltar and Port Mahon in her hands, to be thenceforth a
+Mediterranean power. At the same time that Carlos III. was proclaimed,
+a treaty was negotiated with Portugal, known as the Methuen Treaty,
+which gave England the practical monopoly of Portuguese trade, and
+sent the gold of Brazil by way of Lisbon to London,--an advantage so
+great that it aided materially in keeping up the war on the continent
+as well as in maintaining the navy. At the same time the efficiency of
+the latter so increased that the losses by French cruisers, though
+still heavy, were at no time unendurable.
+
+When the war broke out, in pursuance of the original policy, Sir
+George Rooke, with a fleet of fifty ships-of-the-line and transports
+carrying fourteen thousand troops, was sent against Cadiz, which was
+the great European centre of the Spanish-American trade; there came
+the specie and products of the West, and thence they were dispersed
+through Europe. It had been the purpose of William III. also to seize
+Cartagena, one of the principal centres of the same trade in the other
+hemisphere; and to that end, six months before his death, in
+September, 1701, he had despatched there a squadron under that
+traditional seaman of the olden time, Benbow. Benbow fell in with a
+French squadron sent to supply and strengthen the place, and brought
+it to action north of Cartagena; but though superior in force, the
+treason of several of his captains, who kept out of action, defeated
+his purpose, and after fighting till his ship was helpless and he
+himself had received a mortal wound, the French escaped and Cartagena
+was saved. Before his death Benbow received a letter from the French
+commodore to this effect: "Yesterday morning I had no hope but I
+should have supped in your cabin. As for those cowardly captains of
+yours, hang them up, for, by God! they deserve it." And hanged two of
+them were. Rooke's expedition against Cadiz also failed, as it was
+nearly certain to do; for his instructions were so to act as to
+conciliate the Spanish people and disincline them to the Bourbon king.
+Such doubtful orders tied his hands; but after failing there, he
+learned that the galleons from the West Indies, loaded with silver and
+merchandise, had put into Vigo Bay under escort of French
+ships-of-war. He went there at once, and found the enemy in a harbor
+whose entrance was but three quarters of a mile wide, defended by
+fortifications and a heavy boom; but a passage was forced through the
+boom under a hot fire, the place seized, and all the shipping, with
+much of the specie, either taken or sunk. This affair, which is known
+in history as that of the Vigo galleons, was a brilliant and
+interesting feat of arms, but has no military features calling for
+mention, except the blow it gave to the finances and prestige of the
+two crowns.
+
+The affair at Vigo had, however, important political results, and
+helped to that change in the general plan of the sea powers which has
+been mentioned. The King of Portugal, moved by fear of the French, had
+acknowledged Philip V.; but his heart was against him, for he dreaded
+French influence and power brought so near his little and isolated
+kingdom. It had been a part of Rooke's mission to detach him from the
+alliance of the two crowns; and the affair of Vigo, happening so near
+his own frontiers, impressed him with a sense of the power of the
+allied navies. In truth, Portugal is nearer to the sea than to Spain,
+and must fall naturally under the influence of the power controlling
+the sea. Inducements were offered,--by the Emperor of Austria a
+cession of Spanish territory, by the sea powers a subsidy; but the
+king was not willing to declare himself until the Austrian claimant
+should have landed at Lisbon, fairly committing the coalition to a
+peninsular as well as a continental war. The emperor transferred his
+claims to his second son, Charles; and the latter, after being
+proclaimed in Vienna and acknowledged by England and Holland, was
+taken by the allied fleets to Lisbon, where he landed in March, 1704.
+This necessitated the important change in the plans of the sea powers.
+Pledged to the support of Carlos, their fleets were thenceforth tied
+to the shores of the peninsula and the protection of commerce; while
+the war in the West Indies, becoming a side issue on a small scale,
+led to no results. From this time on, Portugal was the faithful ally
+of England, whose sea power during this war gained its vast
+preponderance over all rivals. Her ports were the refuge and support
+of English fleets, and on Portugal was based in later days the
+Peninsular war with Napoleon. In and through all, Portugal, for a
+hundred years, had more to gain and more to fear from England than
+from any other power.
+
+Great as were the effects of the maritime supremacy of the two sea
+powers upon the general result of the war, and especially upon that
+undisputed empire of the seas which England held for a century after,
+the contest is marked by no one naval action of military interest.
+Once only did great fleets meet, and then with results that were
+indecisive; after which the French gave up the struggle at sea,
+confining themselves wholly to a commerce-destroying warfare. This
+feature of the War of the Spanish Succession characterizes nearly the
+whole of the eighteenth century, with the exception of the American
+Revolutionary struggle. The noiseless, steady, exhausting pressure
+with which sea power acts, cutting off the resources of the enemy
+while maintaining its own, supporting war in scenes where it does not
+appear itself, or appears only in the background, and striking open
+blows at rare intervals, though lost to most, is emphasized to the
+careful reader by the events of this war and of the half-century that
+followed. The overwhelming sea power of England was the determining
+factor in European history during the period mentioned, maintaining
+war abroad while keeping its own people in prosperity at home, and
+building up the great empire which is now seen; but from its very
+greatness its action, by escaping opposition, escapes attention. On
+the few occasions in which it is called to fight, its superiority is
+so marked that the affairs can scarcely be called battles; with the
+possible exceptions of Byng's action at Minorca and Hawke's at
+Quiberon, the latter one of the most brilliant pages in naval history,
+no decisive encounter between equal forces, possessing military
+interest, occurs between 1700 and 1778.
+
+Owing to this characteristic, the War of the Spanish Succession, from
+the point of view of our subject, has to be blocked out in general
+outline, avoiding narrative and indicating general bearings,
+especially of the actions of the fleets. With the war in Flanders, in
+Germany, and in Italy the navies had naturally no concern; when they
+had so protected the commerce of the allies that there was no serious
+check to that flow of subsidies upon which the land war depended,
+their part toward it was done. In the Spanish peninsula it was
+different. Immediately after landing Carlos III. at Lisbon, Sir George
+Rooke sailed for Barcelona, which it was understood would be handed
+over when the fleets appeared; but the governor was faithful to his
+king and kept down the Austrian party. Rooke then sailed for Toulon,
+where a French fleet was at anchor. On his way he sighted another
+French fleet coming from Brest, which he chased but was unable to
+overtake; so that both the enemy's squadrons were united in the port.
+It is worth while to note here that the English navy did not as yet
+attempt to blockade the French ports in winter, as they did at a later
+date. At this period fleets, like armies, went into winter quarters.
+Another English admiral, Sir Cloudesley Shovel, had been sent in the
+spring to blockade Brest; but arriving too late, he found his bird
+flown, and at once kept on to the Mediterranean. Rooke, not thinking
+himself strong enough to resist the combined French squadrons, fell
+back toward the Straits; for at this time England had no ports, no
+base, in the Mediterranean, no useful ally; Lisbon was the nearest
+refuge. Rooke and Shovel met off Lagos, and there held a council of
+war, in which the former, who was senior, declared that his
+instructions forbade his undertaking anything without the consent of
+the kings of Spain and Portugal. This was indeed tying the hands of
+the sea powers; but Rooke at last, chafing at the humiliating
+inaction, and ashamed to go home without doing something, decided to
+attack Gibraltar for three reasons: because he heard it was
+insufficiently garrisoned, because it was of infinite importance as a
+port for the present war, and because its capture would reflect credit
+on the queen's arms. The place was attacked, bombarded, and then
+carried by an assault in boats. The English possession of Gibraltar
+dates from August 4, 1704, and the deed rightly keeps alive the name
+of Rooke, to whose judgment and fearlessness of responsibility England
+owes the key of the Mediterranean.
+
+The Bourbon king of Spain at once undertook to retake the place, and
+called upon the French fleet in Toulon to support his attack.
+Tourville had died in 1701, and the fleet was commanded by the Count
+of Toulouse,--a natural son of Louis XIV., only twenty-six years old.
+Rooke also sailed eastward, and the two fleets met on the 24th of
+August off Velez Malaga. The allies were to windward with a northeast
+wind, both fleets on the port tack heading to the southward and
+eastward. There is some uncertainty as to the numbers; the French had
+fifty-two ships-of-the-line, their enemy probably half a dozen more.
+The allies kept away together, each ship for its opposite; there was
+apparently no attempt on Rooke's part at any tactical combination. The
+battle of Malaga possesses indeed no military interest, except that it
+is the first in which we find fully developed that wholly unscientific
+method of attack by the English which Clerk criticised, and which
+prevailed throughout the century. It is instructive to notice that the
+result in it was the same as in all others fought on the same
+principle. The van opened out from the centre, leaving quite an
+interval; and the attempt made to penetrate this gap and isolate the
+van was the only tactical move of the French. We find in them at
+Malaga no trace of the cautious, skilful tactics which Clerk rightly
+thought to recognize at a later day. The degeneracy from the able
+combinations of Monk, Ruyter, and Tourville to the epoch of mere
+seamanship is clearly marked by the battle of Malaga, and gives it its
+only historical importance. In it was realized that primitive mode of
+fighting which Macaulay has sung, and which remained for many years
+the ideal of the English navy:--
+
+ "Then on both sides the leaders
+ Gave signal for the charge;
+ And on both sides the footmen
+ Strode forth with lance and targe;
+ And on both sides the horsemen
+ Struck their spurs deep in gore,
+ And _front to front_ the armies
+ Met with a mighty roar."
+
+Human movement is not always advance; and there are traces of a
+somewhat similar ideal in the naval periodical literature of our own
+day. The fight was severe, lasting from ten in the morning till five
+in the afternoon, but was entirely indecisive. The next day the wind
+shifted, giving the weather-gage to the French, but they did not use
+the opportunity to attack; for which they were much to blame, if their
+claim of the advantage the day before is well founded. Rooke could not
+have fought; nearly half his fleet, twenty-five ships, it is said, had
+used up all their ammunition. Even during the battle itself several of
+the allied ships were towed out of line, because they had not powder
+and ball for a single broadside. This was doubtless due to the attack
+upon Gibraltar, in which fifteen thousand shot were expended, and to
+the lack of any port serving as a base of supplies,--a deficiency
+which the new possession would hereafter remove. Rooke, in seizing
+Gibraltar, had the same object in view that prompted the United States
+to seize Port Royal at the beginning of the Civil War, and which made
+the Duke of Parma urge upon his king, before sending the Spanish Great
+Armada, to seize Flushing on the coast of Holland,--advice which, had
+it been followed, would have made unnecessary that dreary and
+disastrous voyage to the north of England. The same reasons would
+doubtless lead any nation intending serious operations against our
+seaboard, to seize points remote from the great centres and
+susceptible of defence, like Gardiner's Bay or Port Royal, which in an
+inefficient condition of our navy they might hold with and for their
+fleets.
+
+Rooke retired in peace to Lisbon, bestowing by the way on Gibraltar
+all the victuals and ammunition that could be spared from the fleet.
+Toulouse, instead of following up his victory, if it was one, went
+back to Toulon, sending only ten ships-of-the-line to support the
+attack on Gibraltar. All the attempts of the French against the place
+were carried on in a futile manner; the investing squadron was finally
+destroyed and the land attack converted into a blockade. "With this
+reverse," says a French naval officer, "began in the French people a
+regrettable reaction against the navy. The wonders to which it had
+given birth, its immense services, were forgotten. Its value was no
+longer believed. The army, more directly in contact with the nation,
+had all its favor, all its sympathy. The prevailing error, that the
+greatness or decay of France depended upon some Rhenish positions,
+could not but favor these ideas adverse to the sea service, which have
+made England's strength and our weakness."[76]
+
+During this year, 1704, the battle of Blenheim was fought, in which
+the French and Bavarian troops were wholly overthrown by the English
+and German under Marlborough and Prince Eugene. The result of this
+battle was that Bavaria forsook the French alliance, and Germany
+became a secondary theatre of the general war, which was waged
+thereafter mainly in the Netherlands, Italy, and the Peninsula.
+
+The following year, 1705, the allies moved against Philip V. by two
+roads,--from Lisbon upon Madrid, and by way of Barcelona. The former
+attack, though based upon the sea, was mainly by land, and resultless;
+the Spanish people in that quarter showed unmistakably that they would
+not welcome the king set up by foreign powers. It was different in
+Catalonia. Carlos III. went there in person with the allied fleet. The
+French navy, inferior in numbers, kept in port. The French army also
+did not appear. The allied troops invested the town, aided by three
+thousand seamen and supported by supplies landed from the fleet, which
+was to them both base of supplies and line of communications.
+Barcelona surrendered on the 9th of October; all Catalonia welcomed
+Carlos, and the movement spread to Aragon and Valencia, the capital of
+the latter province declaring for Carlos.
+
+The following year, 1706, the French took the offensive in Spain on
+the borders of Catalonia, while defending the passes of the mountains
+toward Portugal. In the absence of the allied fleet, and of the
+succors which it brought and maintained, the resistance was weak, and
+Barcelona was again besieged, this time by the French party supported
+by a French fleet of thirty sail-of-the-line and numerous transports
+with supplies from the neighboring port of Toulon. The siege, begun
+April 5, was going on hopefully; the Austrian claimant himself was
+within the walls, the prize of success; but on the 10th of May the
+allied fleet appeared, the French ships retired, and the siege was
+raised in disorder. The Bourbon claimant dared not retreat into
+Aragon, and so passed by Roussillon into France, leaving his rival in
+possession. At the same time there moved forward from Portugal--that
+other base which the sea power of the English and Dutch at once
+controlled and utilized--another army maintained by the subsidies
+earned from the ocean. This time the western attack was more
+successful; many cities in Estremadura and Leon fell, and as soon as
+the allied generals learned the raising of the siege of Barcelona,
+they pressed on by way of Salamanca to Madrid. Philip V., after
+escaping into France, had returned to Spain by the western Pyrenees;
+but on the approach of the allies he had again to fly, leaving to them
+his capital. The Portuguese and allied troops entered Madrid, June 26,
+1706. The allied fleet, after the fall of Barcelona, seized Alicante
+and Cartagena.
+
+So far success had gone; but the inclinations of the Spanish people
+had been mistaken, and the strength of their purpose and pride,
+supported by the natural features of their country, was not yet
+understood. The national hatred to the Portuguese was aroused, as well
+as the religious dislike to heretics, the English general himself
+being a Huguenot refugee. Madrid and the surrounding country were
+disaffected, and the south sent the Bourbon king assurance of its
+fidelity. The allies were not able to remain in the hostile capital,
+particularly as the region around was empty of supplies and full of
+guerillas. They retired to the eastward, drawing toward the Austrian
+claimant in Aragon. Reverse followed reverse, and on the 25th of
+April, 1707, the allied army was disastrously overthrown at Almansa,
+losing fifteen thousand men. All Spain fell back again into the power
+of Philip V., except the province of Catalonia, part of which also was
+subdued. The next year, 1708, the French made some progress in the
+same quarter, but were not able to attack Barcelona; Valencia and
+Alicante, however, were reduced.
+
+The year 1707 was not marked by any naval event of importance. During
+the summer the allied fleets in the Mediterranean were diverted from
+the coast of Spain to support an attack upon Toulon made by the
+Austrians and Piedmontese. The latter moved from Italy along the coast
+of the Mediterranean, the fleet supporting the flank on the sea, and
+contributing supplies. The siege, however, failed, and the campaign
+was inconclusive. Returning home, the admiral, Sir Cloudesley Shovel,
+with several ships-of-the-line, was lost on the Scilly Islands, in one
+of those shipwrecks which have become historical.
+
+In 1708 the allied fleets seized Sardinia, which from its fruitfulness
+and nearness to Barcelona became a rich storehouse to the Austrian
+claimant, so long as by the allied help he controlled the sea. The
+same year Minorca, with its valuable harbor, Port Mahon, was also
+taken, and from that time for fifty years remained in English hands.
+Blocking Cadiz and Cartagena by the possession of Gibraltar, and
+facing Toulon with Port Mahon, Great Britain was now as strongly based
+in the Mediterranean as either France or Spain; while, with Portugal
+as an ally, she controlled the two stations of Lisbon and Gibraltar,
+watching the trade routes both of the ocean and of the inland sea. By
+the end of 1708 the disasters of France by land and sea, the frightful
+sufferings of the kingdom, and the almost hopelessness of carrying on
+a strife which was destroying France, and easily borne by England, led
+Louis XIV. to offer most humiliating concessions to obtain peace. He
+undertook to surrender the whole Spanish monarchy, reserving only
+Naples for the Bourbon king. The allies refused; they demanded the
+abandonment of the whole Spanish Empire without exception by the Duke
+of Anjou, refusing to call him king, and added thereto ruinous
+conditions for France herself. Louis would not yield these, and the
+war went on.
+
+During the remaining years the strenuous action of the sea power of
+the allies, which had by this time come to be that of Great Britain
+alone, with little help from Holland, was less than ever obtrusive,
+but the reality of its effect remained. The Austrian claimant,
+confined to Catalonia for the most part, was kept in communication
+with Sardinia and the Italian provinces of Germany by the English
+fleet; but the entire disappearance of the French navy and the evident
+intention on the part of Louis to keep no squadrons at sea, allowed
+some diminution of the Mediterranean fleet, with the result of greater
+protection to trade. In the years 1710 and 1711 expeditions were also
+made against the French colonies in North America. Nova Scotia was
+taken, but an attempt on Quebec failed.
+
+During the winter of 1709 and 1710 Louis withdrew all the French
+troops from Spain, thus abandoning the cause of his grandson. But when
+the cause of France was at the very lowest, and it seemed as though
+she might be driven to concessions which would reduce her to a
+second-class power, the existence of the coalition was threatened by
+the disgrace of Marlborough, who represented England in it. His loss
+of favor with the queen was followed by the accession to power of the
+party opposed to the war, or rather to its further continuance. This
+change took place in the summer of 1710, and the inclination toward
+peace was strengthened both by the favorable position in which England
+then stood for treating, and by the heavy burden she was bearing;
+which it became evident could bring in no further advantages
+commensurate to its weight. The weaker ally, Holland, had gradually
+ceased to contribute her stipulated share to the sea forces; and
+although far-sighted Englishmen might see with complacency the
+disappearance of a rival sea power, the immediate increase of expense
+was more looked to and felt by the men of the day. The cost both of
+the continental and Spanish wars was also largely defrayed by
+England's subsidies; and while that on the continent could bring her
+no further gain, it was seen that the sympathies of the Spanish people
+could not be overborne in favor of Carlos III. without paying more
+than the game was worth. Secret negotiations between England and
+France soon began, and received an additional impulse by the
+unexpected death of the Emperor of Germany, the brother of the
+Austrian claimant of the Spanish throne. There being no other male
+heir, Carlos became at once emperor of Austria, and was soon after
+elected emperor of Germany. England had no more wish to see two crowns
+on an Austrian head than on that of a Bourbon.
+
+The demands made by England, as conditions of peace in 1711, showed
+her to have become a sea power in the purest sense of the word, not
+only in fact, but also in her own consciousness. She required that the
+same person should never be king both of France and Spain; that a
+barrier of fortified towns should be granted her allies, Holland and
+Germany, as a defensive line against France; that French conquests
+from her allies should be restored; and for herself she demanded the
+formal cession of Gibraltar and Port Mahon, whose strategic and
+maritime value has been pointed out, the destruction of the port of
+Dunkirk, the home nest of the privateers that preyed on English
+commerce, the cession of the French colonies of Newfoundland, Hudson's
+Bay, and Nova Scotia, the last of which she held at that time, and
+finally, treaties of commerce with France and Spain, and the
+concession of the monopoly of the slave trade with Spanish America,
+known as the Asiento, which Spain had given to France in 1701.
+
+Negotiations continued, though hostilities did not cease; and in June,
+1712, a four months' truce between Great Britain and France removed
+the English troops from the allied armies on the continent, their
+great leader Marlborough having been taken from their head the year
+before. The campaign of 1712 was favorable to France; but in almost
+any event the withdrawal of Great Britain made the end of the war a
+question of but a short time. The remonstrances of Holland were met by
+the reply that since 1707 the Dutch had not furnished more than one
+third their quota of ships, and taking the war through, not over one
+half. The House of Commons in an address to the throne in 1712
+complained that--
+
+ "The service at sea hath been carried on through the whole
+ course of the war in a manner highly disadvantageous to your
+ Majesty's kingdom, for the necessity requiring that great fleets
+ should be fitted out every year for maintaining a superiority
+ in the Mediterranean and for opposing any force which the enemy
+ might prepare either at Dunkirk or in the ports of west France;
+ your Majesty's readiness, in fitting out your proportion of
+ ships for all parts of that service, hath not prevailed with
+ Holland, which has been greatly deficient every year in
+ proportion to what your Majesty hath furnished.... Hence your
+ Majesty hath been obliged to supply those deficiencies with
+ additional reinforcements of your own ships, and your Majesty's
+ ships have been forced in greater numbers to continue in remote
+ seas, and at unseasonable times of the year, to the great damage
+ of the navy. This also hath straitened the convoys for trade;
+ the coasts have been exposed for want of cruisers; and you have
+ been disabled from annoying the enemy in their most beneficial
+ commerce with the West Indies, whence they received those vast
+ supplies of treasure, without which they could not have
+ supported the expenses of the war."
+
+In fact, between 1701 and 1716 the commerce of Spanish America had
+brought into France forty million dollars in specie. To these
+complaints the Dutch envoy to England could only reply that Holland
+was not in a condition to fulfil her compacts. The reverses of 1712,
+added to Great Britain's fixed purpose to have peace, decided the
+Dutch to the same; and the English still kept, amid their
+dissatisfaction with their allies, so much of their old feeling
+against France as to support all the reasonable claims of Holland.
+April 11, 1713, an almost general peace, known as the Peace of
+Utrecht, one of the landmarks of history, was signed between France on
+the one hand, and England, Holland, Prussia, Portugal, and Savoy on
+the other. The emperor still held out, but the loss of British
+subsidies fettered the movements of his armies, and with the
+withdrawal of the sea powers the continental war might have fallen of
+itself; but France with her hands freed carried on during 1713 a
+brilliant and successful campaign in Germany. On the 7th of March,
+1714, peace was signed between France and Austria. Some embers of the
+war continued to burn in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, which
+persisted in their rebellion against Philip V.; but the revolt was
+stifled as soon as the arms of France were turned against them.
+Barcelona was taken by storm in September, 1714; the islands submitted
+in the following summer.
+
+The changes effected by this long war and sanctioned by the peace,
+neglecting details of lesser or passing importance, may be stated as
+follows: 1. The House of Bourbon was settled on the Spanish throne,
+and the Spanish empire retained its West Indian and American
+possessions; the purpose of William III. against her dominion there
+was frustrated when England undertook to support the Austrian prince,
+and so fastened the greater part of her naval force to the
+Mediterranean. 2. The Spanish empire lost its possessions in the
+Netherlands, Gelderland going to the new kingdom of Prussia and
+Belgium to the emperor; the Spanish Netherlands thus became the
+Austrian Netherlands. 3. Spain lost also the principal islands of the
+Mediterranean; Sardinia being given to Austria, Minorca with its fine
+harbor to Great Britain, and Sicily to the Duke of Savoy. 4. Spain
+lost also her Italian possessions, Milan and Naples going to the
+emperor. Such, in the main, were the results to Spain of the fight
+over the succession to her throne.
+
+France, the backer of the successful claimant, came out of the strife
+worn out, and with considerable loss of territory. She had succeeded
+in placing a king of her own royal house on a neighboring throne, but
+her sea strength was exhausted, her population diminished, her
+financial condition ruined. The European territory surrendered was on
+her northern and eastern boundaries; and she abandoned the use of the
+port of Dunkirk, the centre of that privateering warfare so dreaded by
+English merchants. In America, the cession of Nova Scotia and
+Newfoundland was the first step toward that entire loss of Canada
+which befell half a century later; but for the present she retained
+Cape Breton Island, with its port Louisburg, the key to the Gulf and
+River St. Lawrence.
+
+The gains of England, by the treaty and the war, corresponded very
+nearly to the losses of France and Spain, and were all in the
+direction of extending and strengthening her sea power. Gibraltar and
+Port Mahon in the Mediterranean, and the colonies already mentioned in
+North America, afforded new bases to that power, extending and
+protecting her trade. Second only to the expansion of her own was the
+injury to the sea power of France and Holland, by the decay of their
+navies in consequence of the immense drain of the land warfare;
+further indications of that decay will be given later. The very
+neglect of Holland to fill up her quota of ships, and the bad
+condition of those sent, while imposing extra burdens upon England,
+may be considered a benefit, forcing the British navy to greater
+development and effort. The disproportion in military power on the sea
+was further increased by the destruction of the works at Dunkirk; for
+though not in itself a first-class port, nor of much depth of water,
+it had great artificial military strength, and its position was
+peculiarly adapted to annoy English trade. It was but forty miles from
+the South Foreland and the Downs, and the Channel abreast it is but
+twenty miles wide. Dunkirk was one of Louis' earliest acquisitions,
+and in its development was as his own child; the dismantling of the
+works and filling-in of the port show the depth of his humiliation at
+this time. But it was the wisdom of England not to base her sea power
+solely on military positions nor even on fighting-ships, and the
+commercial advantages she had now gained by the war and the peace were
+very great. The grant of the slave trade with Spanish America, in
+itself lucrative, became yet more so as the basis for an immense
+smuggling intercourse with those countries, which gave the English a
+partial recompense for their failure to obtain actual possession;
+while the cessions made to Portugal by France in South America were
+mainly to the advantage of England, which had obtained the control of
+Portuguese trade by the treaty of 1703. The North American colonies
+ceded were valuable, not merely nor chiefly as military stations, but
+commercially; and treaties of commerce on favorable terms were made
+both with France and Spain. A minister of the day, defending the
+treaty in Parliament, said: "The advantages from this peace appear in
+the addition made to our wealth; in the great quantities of bullion
+lately coined in our mint; by the vast increase in our shipping
+employed since the peace, in the fisheries, and in merchandise; and by
+the remarkable growth of the customs upon imports, and of our
+manufactures, and the growth of our country upon export;" in a word,
+by the impetus to trade in all its branches.
+
+While England thus came out from the war in good running condition,
+and fairly placed in that position of maritime supremacy which she has
+so long maintained, her old rival in trade and fighting was left
+hopelessly behind. As the result of the war Holland obtained nothing
+at sea,--no colony, no station. The commercial treaty with France
+placed her on the same terms as England, but she received no
+concessions giving her a footing in Spanish America like that obtained
+by her ally. Indeed, some years before the peace, while the coalition
+was still maintaining Carlos, a treaty was made with the latter by the
+British minister, unknown to the Dutch, practically giving the British
+monopoly of Spanish trade in America; sharing it only with Spaniards,
+which was pretty much the same as not sharing it at all. This treaty
+accidentally became known, and made a great impression on the Dutch;
+but England was then so necessary to the coalition that she ran no
+risk of being left out by its other members. The gain which Holland
+made by land was that of military occupation only, of certain
+fortified places in the Austrian Netherlands, known to history as the
+"barrier towns;" nothing was added by them to her revenue, population,
+or resources; nothing to that national strength which must underlie
+military institutions. Holland had forsaken, perhaps unavoidably, the
+path by which she had advanced to wealth and to leadership among
+nations. The exigencies of her continental position had led to the
+neglect of her navy, which in those days of war and privateering
+involved a loss of carrying-trade and commerce: and although she held
+her head high through the war, the symptoms of weakness were apparent
+in her failing armaments. Therefore, though the United Provinces
+attained the great object for which they began the war, and saved the
+Spanish Netherlands from the hands of France, the success was not
+worth the cost. Thenceforth they withdrew for a long period from the
+wars and diplomacy of Europe; partly, perhaps, because they saw how
+little they had gained, but yet more from actual weakness and
+inability. After the strenuous exertions of the war came a reaction,
+which showed painfully the inherent weakness of a State narrow in
+territory and small in the number of its people. The visible decline
+of the Provinces dates from the Peace of Utrecht; the real decline
+began earlier. Holland ceased to be numbered among the great powers of
+Europe, her navy was no longer a military factor in diplomacy, and her
+commerce also shared in the general decline of the State.
+
+It remains only to notice briefly the results to Austria, and to
+Germany generally. France yielded the barrier of the Rhine, with
+fortified places on the east bank of the river. Austria received, as
+has been mentioned, Belgium, Sardinia, Naples, and the Spanish
+possessions in northern Italy; dissatisfied in other respects, Austria
+was especially discontented at her failure to obtain Sicily, and did
+not cease negotiating afterward, until she had secured that island. A
+circumstance more important to Germany and to all Europe than this
+transitory acquisition of distant and alien countries by Austria was
+the rise of Prussia, which dates from this war as a Protestant and
+military kingdom destined to weigh in the balance against Austria.
+
+Such were the leading results of the War of the Spanish Succession,
+"the vastest yet witnessed by Europe since the Crusades." It was a war
+whose chief military interest was on the land,--a war in which fought
+two of the greatest generals of all times, Marlborough and Prince
+Eugene, the names of whose battles, Blenheim, Ramillies, Malplaquet,
+Turin, are familiar to the most casual reader of history; while a
+multitude of able men distinguished themselves on the other theatres
+of the strife, in Flanders, in Germany, in Italy, in Spain. On the
+sea only one great battle, and that scarcely worthy of the name, took
+place. Yet looking only, for the moment, to immediate and evident
+results, who reaped the benefit? Was it France, whose only gain was to
+seat a Bourbon on the Spanish throne? Was it Spain, whose only gain
+was to have a Bourbon king instead of an Austrian, and thus a closer
+alliance with France? Was it Holland, with its barrier of fortified
+towns, its ruined navy, and its exhausted people? Was it, lastly,
+Austria, even though she had fought with the money of the sea powers,
+and gained such maritime States as the Netherlands and Naples? Was it
+with these, who had waged war more and more exclusively by land, and
+set their eyes more and more on gains on the land, or was it not
+rather with England, who had indeed paid for that continental war and
+even backed it with her troops, but who meanwhile was building up her
+navy, strengthening, extending, and protecting her commerce, seizing
+maritime positions,--in a word, founding and rearing her sea power
+upon the ruins of that of her rivals, friend and foe alike? It is not
+to depreciate the gains of others that the eye fixes on England's
+naval growth; their gains but bring out more clearly the immenseness
+of hers. It was a gain to France to have a friend rather than an enemy
+in her rear, though her navy and shipping were ruined. It was a gain
+to Spain to be brought in close intercourse with a living country like
+France after a century of political death, and she had saved the
+greater part of her threatened possessions. It was a gain to Holland
+to be definitively freed from French aggression, with Belgium in the
+hands of a strong instead of a weak State. And it doubtless was a gain
+to Austria not only to have checked, chiefly at the expense of others,
+the progress of her hereditary enemy, but also to have received
+provinces like Sicily and Naples, which, under wise government, might
+become the foundation of a respectable sea power. But not one of these
+gains, nor all together, compared in greatness, and much less in
+solidity, with the gain to England of that unequalled sea power which
+started ahead during the War of the League of Augsburg, and received
+its completeness and seal during that of the Spanish Succession. By it
+she controlled the great commerce of the open sea with a military
+shipping that had no rival, and in the exhausted condition of the
+other nations could have none; and that shipping was now securely
+based on strong positions in all the disputed quarters of the world.
+Although her Indian empire was not yet begun, the vast superiority of
+her navy would enable her to control the communications of other
+nations with those rich and distant regions, and to assert her will in
+any disputes arising among the trading-stations of the different
+nationalities. The commerce which had sustained her in prosperity, and
+her allies in military efficiency, during the war, though checked and
+harassed by the enemy's cruisers (to which she could pay only partial
+attention amid the many claims upon her), started with a bound into
+new life when the war was over. All over the world, exhausted by their
+share of the common suffering, people were longing for the return of
+prosperity and peaceful commerce; and there was no country ready as
+England was in wealth, capital, and shipping to forward and reap the
+advantages of every enterprise by which the interchange of commodities
+was promoted, either by lawful or unlawful means. In the War of the
+Spanish Succession, by her own wise management and through the
+exhaustion of other nations, not only her navy but her trade was
+steadily built up; and indeed, in that dangerous condition of the
+seas, traversed by some of the most reckless and restless cruisers
+France ever sent out, the efficiency of the navy meant safer voyages,
+and so more employment for the merchant-ships. The British
+merchant-ships, being better protected than those of the Dutch, gained
+the reputation of being far safer carriers, and the carrying-trade
+naturally passed more and more into their hands; while the habit of
+employing them in preference, once established, was likely to
+continue.
+
+ "Taking all things together," says an historian of the British
+ navy, "I doubt whether the credit of the English nation ever
+ stood higher than at this period, or the spirit of the people
+ higher. The success of our arms at sea, the necessity of
+ protecting our trade, and the popularity of every step taken to
+ increase our maritime power, occasioned such measures to be
+ pursued as annually added to our force. Hence arose that mighty
+ difference which at the close of the year 1706 appeared in the
+ Royal Navy; this, not only in the number but in the quality of
+ the ships, was much superior to what it had been at the time of
+ the Revolution or even before. Hence it was that our trade
+ rather increased than diminished during the last war, and that
+ we gained so signally by our strict intercourse with
+ Portugal."[77]
+
+The sea power of England therefore was not merely in the great navy,
+with which we too commonly and exclusively associate it; France had
+had such a navy in 1688, and it shrivelled away like a leaf in the
+fire. Neither was it in a prosperous commerce alone; a few years after
+the date at which we have arrived, the commerce of France took on fair
+proportions, but the first blast of war swept it off the seas as the
+navy of Cromwell had once swept that of Holland. It was in the union
+of the two, carefully fostered, that England made the gain of sea
+power over and beyond all other States; and this gain is distinctly
+associated with and dates from the War of the Spanish Succession.
+Before that war England was one of the sea powers; after it she was
+_the_ sea power, without any second. This power also she held alone,
+unshared by friend and unchecked by foe. She alone was rich, and in
+her control of the sea and her extensive shipping had the sources of
+wealth so much in her hands that there was no present danger of a
+rival on the ocean. Thus her gain of sea power and wealth was not only
+great but solid, being wholly in her own hands; while the gains of the
+other States were not merely inferior in degree, but weaker in kind,
+in that they depended more or less upon the good will of other
+peoples.
+
+Is it meant, it may be asked, to attribute to sea power alone the
+greatness or wealth of any State? Certainly not. The due use and
+control of the sea is but one link in the chain of exchange by which
+wealth accumulates; but it is the central link, which lays under
+contribution other nations for the benefit of the one holding it, and
+which, history seems to assert, most surely of all gathers to itself
+riches. In England, this control and use of the sea seems to arise
+naturally, from the concurrence of many circumstances; the years
+immediately preceding the War of the Spanish Succession had, moreover,
+furthered the advance of her prosperity by a series of fiscal
+measures, which Macaulay speaks of as "the deep and solid foundation
+on which was to rise the most gigantic fabric of commercial prosperity
+which the world had ever seen." It may be questioned, however, whether
+the genius of the people, inclined to and developed by trade, did not
+make easier the taking of such measures; whether their adoption did
+not at least partially spring from, as well as add to, the sea power
+of the nation. However that may be, there is seen, on the opposite
+side of the Channel, a nation which started ahead of England in the
+race,--a nation peculiarly well fitted, by situation and resources,
+for the control of the sea both by war and commerce. The position of
+France is in this peculiar, that of all the great powers she alone had
+a free choice; the others were more or less constrained to the land
+chiefly, or to the sea chiefly, for any movement outside their own
+borders; but she to her long continental frontier added a seaboard on
+three seas. In 1672 she definitely chose expansion by land. At that
+time Colbert had administered her finances for twelve years, and from
+a state of terrible confusion had so restored them that the revenue of
+the King of France was more than double that of the King of England.
+In those days France paid the subsidies of Europe; but Colbert's plans
+and hopes for France rested upon making her powerful on the sea. The
+war with Holland arrested these plans, the onward movement of
+prosperity ceased, the nation was thrown back upon itself, shut off
+from the outside world. Many causes doubtless worked together to the
+disastrous result which marked the end of the reign of Louis XIV.:
+constant wars, bad administration in the latter half of the period,
+extravagance throughout; but France was practically never invaded, the
+war was kept at or beyond her own frontiers with slight exceptions,
+her home industries could suffer little from direct hostilities. In
+these respects she was nearly equal to England, and under better
+conditions than her other enemies. What made the difference in the
+results? Why was France miserable and exhausted, while England was
+smiling and prosperous? Why did England dictate, and France accept,
+terms of peace? The reason apparently was the difference in wealth and
+credit. France stood alone against many enemies; but those enemies
+were raised and kept moving by English subsidies. The Lord Treasurer
+of England, writing in 1706 to Marlborough, says:--
+
+ "Though the land and trade of both England and Holland have
+ excessive burthens upon them, yet the credit continues good both
+ of them and us; whereas the finances of France are so much more
+ exhausted that they are forced to give twenty and twenty-five
+ per cent for every penny they send out of the kingdom, unless
+ they send it in specie."
+
+In 1712 the expenditure of France was 240,000,000 francs, while the
+taxes brought in only 113,000,000 gross, of which, after deducting
+losses and necessary expenses, only 37,000,000 remained in the
+treasury; the deficit was sought to be met by anticipating parts of
+the revenue for years ahead, and by a series of extraordinary
+transactions tedious to name or to understand.
+
+ "In the summer of 1715 [two years after the peace] it seemed as
+ if the situation could not grow worse,--no more public nor
+ private credit; no more clear revenue for the State; the
+ portions of the revenue not pledged, anticipated on the
+ following years. Neither labor nor consumption could be resumed
+ for want of circulation; usury reigned on the ruins of society.
+ The alternations of high prices and the depreciation of
+ commodities finally crushed the people. Provision riots broke
+ out among them, and even in the army. Manufactures were
+ languishing or suspended; forced mendicity was preying upon the
+ cities. The fields were deserted, the lands fallow for lack of
+ instruments, for lack of manure, for lack of cattle; the houses
+ were falling to ruin. Monarchical France seemed ready to expire
+ with its aged king."[78]
+
+Thus it was in France, with a population of nineteen millions at that
+time to the eight millions of all the British Islands; with a land
+vastly more fertile and productive; before the great days, too, of
+coal and iron. "In England, on the contrary, the immense grants of
+Parliament in 1710 struck the French prodigiously; for while their
+credit was low, or in a manner quite gone, ours was at its zenith."
+During that same war "there appeared that mighty spirit among our
+merchants which enabled them to carry on all their schemes with a
+vigor that kept a constant circulation of money throughout the
+kingdom, and afforded such mighty encouragement to all manufactures as
+has made the remembrance of those times grateful in worse."
+
+ "By the treaty with Portugal we were prodigious gainers.... The
+ Portuguese began to feel the comfortable effects of their Brazil
+ gold mines, and the prodigious commerce that followed with us
+ made their good fortune in great measure ours; and so it has
+ been ever since; otherwise I know not how the expenses of the
+ war had been borne.... The running cash in the kingdom increased
+ very considerably, which must be attributed in great measure to
+ our Portuguese trade; and this, as I have made manifest, we owed
+ wholly to our power at sea [which took Portugal from the
+ alliance of the two crowns, and threw her upon the protection of
+ the maritime powers]. Our trade with the Spanish West Indies by
+ way of Cadiz was certainly much interrupted at the beginning of
+ this war; but afterward it was in great measure restored, as
+ well by direct communication with several provinces when under
+ the Archduke, as through Portugal, by which a very great though
+ contraband trade was carried on. We were at the same time very
+ great gainers by our commerce with the Spaniards in the West
+ Indies [also contraband].... Our colonies, though complaining of
+ neglect, grew richer, more populous, and carried their trade
+ farther than in former times.... Our national end with respect
+ to England was in this war particularly in great measure
+ answered,--I mean the destruction of the French power at sea,
+ for, after the battle of Malaga, we hear no more of their great
+ fleets; and though by this the number of their privateers was
+ very much increased, yet the losses of our merchants were far
+ less in the latter than in the former reign.... It is certainly
+ a matter of great satisfaction that ... setting out at first
+ with the sight of so great a naval power as the French king had
+ assembled in 1688, while we struggled under such difficulties,
+ and when we got out of that troublesome war, in 1697, found
+ ourselves loaded with a debt too heavy to be shaken off in the
+ short interval of peace, yet by 1706, instead of seeing the navy
+ of France riding upon our coast, we sent every year a powerful
+ fleet to insult theirs, superior to them not only in the ocean,
+ but in the Mediterranean, forcing them entirely out of that sea
+ by the mere sight of our flag.... By this we not only secured
+ our trade with the Levant, and strengthened our interests with
+ all the Italian princes, but struck the States of Barbary with
+ terror, and awed the Sultan from listening to any proposals from
+ France. Such were the fruits of the increase of our naval power,
+ and of the manner in which it was employed.... Such fleets were
+ necessary; they at once protected our flag and our allies, and
+ attached them to our interest; and, what is of greater
+ importance than all the rest, they established our reputation
+ for maritime force so effectually that we feel even to this day
+ [1740] the happy effects of the fame thus acquired."[79]
+
+It is needless to add more. Thus stood the Power of the Seas during
+the years in which the French historians tell us that their cruisers
+were battening on her commerce. The English writer admits heavy
+losses. In 1707, that is, in the space of five years, the returns,
+according to the report of a committee of the House of Lords, "show
+that since the beginning of the war England had lost 30 ships-of-war
+and 1146 merchant-ships, of which 300 were retaken; whereas we had
+taken from them, or destroyed, 80 ships-of-war, and 1346 merchantmen;
+175 privateers also were taken." The greater number of the
+ships-of-war were probably on private venture, as has been explained.
+But, be the relative numbers what they may, no argument is needed
+beyond the statements just given, to show the inability of a mere
+cruising warfare, not based upon large fleets, to break down a great
+sea power. Jean Bart died in 1702; but in Forbin, Du Casse, and
+others, and above all in Duguay-Trouin, he left worthy successors, the
+equals of any commerce-destroyers the world has ever seen.
+
+The name of Duguay-Trouin suggests the mention, before finally leaving
+the War of the Spanish Succession, of his greatest privateering
+expedition, carried to a distance from home rarely reached by the
+seamen of his occupation, and which illustrates curiously the spirit of
+such enterprises in that day, and the shifts to which the French
+government was reduced. A small French squadron had attacked Rio
+Janeiro in 1710, but being repulsed, had lost some prisoners, who were
+said to have been put to death. Duguay-Trouin sought permission to
+avenge the insult to France. The king, consenting, advanced the ships
+and furnished the crews; and a regular contract was drawn up between
+the king on the one hand and the company employing Duguay-Trouin on the
+other, stipulating the expenses to be borne and supplies furnished on
+either hand; among which we find the odd, business-like provision that
+for every one of the troops embarked who shall die, be killed, or
+desert during the cruise, the company should pay a forfeit of thirty
+francs. The king was to receive one fifth of the net profits, and was
+to bear the loss of any one of the vessels that should be wrecked, or
+destroyed in action. Under these provisions, enumerated in full in a
+long contract, Duguay-Trouin received a force of six ships-of-the-line,
+seven frigates, and over two thousand troops, with which he sailed to
+Rio Janeiro in 1711; captured the place after a series of operations,
+and allowed it to be ransomed at the price of something under four
+hundred thousand dollars, probably nearly equal to a million in the
+present day, besides five hundred cases of sugar. The privateering
+company cleared about ninety-two per cent on their venture. As two of
+the ships-of-the-line were never heard from after sailing on the
+return voyage, the king's profits were probably small.
+
+While the War of the Spanish Succession was engaging all western
+Europe, a strife which might have had a profound influence upon its
+issue was going on in the east. Sweden and Russia were at war, the
+Hungarians had revolted against Austria, and Turkey was finally drawn
+in, though not till the end of the year 1710. Had Turkey helped the
+Hungarians, she would have made a powerful diversion, not for the
+first time in history, in favor of France. The English historian
+suggests that she was deterred by fear of the English fleet; at all
+events she did not move, and Hungary was reduced to obedience. The war
+between Sweden and Russia was to result in the preponderance of the
+latter upon the Baltic, the subsidence of Sweden, the old ally of
+France, into a second-rate State, and the entrance of Russia
+definitively into European politics.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[75] Martin: History of France.
+
+[76] Lapeyrouse-Bonfils: Hist. de la Marine Française.
+
+[77] Campbell: Lives of the Admirals.
+
+[78] Martin: History of France.
+
+[79] Campbell: Lives of the Admirals.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+ THE REGENCY IN FRANCE.--ALBERONI IN SPAIN.--POLICIES OF WALPOLE
+ AND FLEURI.--WAR OF THE POLISH SUCCESSION.--ENGLISH CONTRABAND
+ TRADE IN SPANISH AMERICA.--GREAT BRITAIN DECLARES WAR AGAINST
+ SPAIN.--1715-1739.
+
+
+The Peace of Utrecht was soon followed by the deaths of the rulers of
+the two countries which had played the foremost part in the War of the
+Spanish Succession. Queen Anne died August 1, 1714; Louis XIV. on the
+1st of September, 1715.
+
+The successor to the English throne, the German George I., though
+undoubtedly the choice of the English people, was far from being their
+favorite, and was rather endured as a necessary evil, giving them a
+Protestant instead of a Roman Catholic king. Along with the coldness
+and dislike of his own partisans, he found a very considerable body of
+disaffected men, who wished to see the son of James II. on the throne.
+There was therefore a lack of solidity, more apparent than real, but
+still real, in his position. In France, on the contrary, the
+succession to the throne was undisputed; but the heir was a child of
+five years, and there was much jealousy as to the possession of the
+regency, a power more absolute than that of the King of England. The
+regency was obtained and exercised by the next in succession to the
+throne, Philip, Duke of Orleans; but he had to apprehend, not only
+attempts on the part of rivals in France to shake his hold, but also
+the active enmity of the Bourbon king of Spain, Philip V.,--an enmity
+which seems to have dated from an intrigue of Orleans, during the late
+war, to supplant Philip on the Spanish throne. There was therefore a
+feeling of instability, of apprehension, in the governments of England
+and France, which influenced the policy of both. As regards the
+relations of France and Spain, the mutual hatred of the actual rulers
+stood for a while in the way of the friendly accord Louis XIV. had
+hoped from family ties, and was injurious to the true interests of
+both nations.
+
+The Regent Orleans, under the advice of the most able and celebrated
+French statesman of that day, the Abbé Dubois, made overtures of
+alliance to the King of Great Britain. He began first by commercial
+concessions of the kind generally acceptable to the English,
+forbidding French shipping to trade to the South Seas under penalty of
+death, and lowering the duties on the importation of English coal.
+England at first received these advances warily; but the regent would
+not be discouraged, and offered, further, to compel the Pretender,
+James III., to withdraw beyond the Alps. He also undertook to fill up
+the port at Mardyck, a new excavation by which the French government
+was trying to indemnify itself for the loss of Dunkirk. These
+concessions, all of which but one, it will be noted, were at the
+expense of the sea power or commercial interests of France, induced
+England to sign a treaty by which the two countries mutually
+guaranteed the execution of the treaties of Utrecht as far as their
+respective interests were concerned; especially the clause by which
+the House of Orleans was to succeed to the French throne, if Louis XV.
+died childless. The Protestant succession in England was likewise
+guaranteed. Holland, exhausted by the war, was unwilling to enter upon
+new engagements, but was at last brought over to this by the remission
+of certain dues on her merchandise entering France. The treaty, signed
+in January, 1717, was known as the Triple Alliance, and bound France
+to England for some years to come.
+
+While France was thus making overtures to England, Spain, under the
+guidance of another able churchman, was seeking the same alliance and
+at the same time developing her national strength with the hope of
+recovering her lost Italian States. The new minister, Cardinal
+Alberoni, promised Philip V. to put him in a position to reconquer
+Sicily and Naples, if granted five years of peace. He worked hard to
+bring up the revenues, rebuild the navy, and re-establish the army,
+while at the same time promoting manufactures, commerce, and shipping,
+and the advance made in all these was remarkable; but the more
+legitimate ambition of Spain to recover her lost possessions, and with
+them to establish her power in the Mediterranean, so grievously
+wounded by the loss of Gibraltar, was hampered by the ill-timed
+purpose of Philip to overthrow the regency of Orleans in France.
+Alberoni was compelled to alienate France, whose sea power, as well as
+that of Spain, was concerned in seeing Sicily in friendly hands, and,
+instead of that natural ally, had to conciliate the maritime powers,
+England and Holland. This he also sought to do by commercial
+concessions; promising promptly to put the English in possession of
+the privileges granted at Utrecht, concerning which Spain had so far
+delayed. In return, he asked favorable action from them in Italy.
+George I., who was at heart German, received coldly advances which
+were unfriendly to the German emperor in his Italian dominions; and
+Alberoni, offended, withdrew them. The Triple Alliance, by
+guaranteeing the existing arrangement of succession to the French
+throne, gave further offence to Philip V., who dreamed of asserting
+his own claim. The result of all these negotiations was to bind
+England and France together against Spain,--a blind policy for the two
+Bourbon kingdoms.
+
+The gist of the situation created by these different aims and
+feelings, was that the Emperor of Austria and the King of Spain both
+wanted Sicily, which at Utrecht had been given to the Duke of Savoy;
+and that France and England both wished for peace in western Europe,
+because war would give an opportunity to the malcontents in either
+kingdom. The position of George, however, being more secure than that
+of Orleans, the policy of the latter tended to yield to that of the
+former, and this tendency was increased by the active ill-will of the
+King of Spain. George, as a German, wished the emperor's success; and
+the English statesmen naturally preferred to see Sicily in the hands
+of their late ally and well-assured friend rather than in Spain's.
+France, contrary to her true policy, but under the urgency of the
+regent's position, entertained the same views, and it was proposed to
+modify the Treaty of Utrecht by transferring Sicily from Savoy to
+Austria, giving the former Sardinia instead. It was necessary,
+however, to consider Spain, which under Alberoni had already gained a
+degree of military power astounding to those who had known her
+weakness during the last war. She was not yet ready to fight, for only
+half of the five years asked by the cardinal had passed; but still
+less was she ready to forego her ambitions. A trifling incident
+precipitated an outbreak. A high Spanish official, travelling from
+Rome to Spain by land, and so passing through the Italian States of
+the emperor, was arrested as a rebellious subject by order of the
+latter, who still styled himself King of Spain. At this insult,
+Alberoni could not hold Philip back. An expedition of twelve ships of
+war and eighty-six hundred soldiers was sent against Sardinia, the
+transfer to Savoy not having yet taken effect, and reduced the island
+in a few months. This happened in 1717.
+
+Doubtless the Spaniards would at once have moved on against Sicily;
+but France and England now intervened more actively to prevent the
+general war that seemed threatening. England sent a fleet to the
+Mediterranean, and negotiations began at Paris, Vienna, and Madrid.
+The outcome of these conferences was an agreement between England and
+France to effect the exchange of Sardinia and Sicily just mentioned,
+recompensing Spain by giving her Parma and Tuscany in northern Italy,
+and stipulating that the emperor should renounce forever his absurd
+but irritating claim to the Spanish crown. This arrangement was to be
+enforced by arms, if necessary. The emperor at first refused consent;
+but the increasing greatness of Alberoni's preparations at last
+decided him to accept so advantageous an offer, and the accession of
+Holland to the compact gave it the historical title of the Quadruple
+Alliance. Spain was obstinate; and it is significant of Alberoni's
+achievements in developing her power, and the eagerness, not to say
+anxiety, of George I., that the offer was made to purchase her consent
+by ceding Gibraltar. If the Regent Orleans knew this, it would partly
+justify his forwarding the negotiations.
+
+Alberoni tried to back up his military power by diplomatic efforts
+extending all over Europe. Russia and Sweden were brought together in
+a project for invading England in the interest of the Stuarts; the
+signing of the Quadruple Alliance in Holland was delayed by his
+agents; a conspiracy was started in France against the regent; the
+Turks were stirred up against the emperor; discontent was fomented
+throughout Great Britain; and an attempt was made to gain over the
+Duke of Savoy, outraged by being deprived of Sicily. On the 1st of
+July, 1718, a Spanish army of thirty thousand troops, escorted by
+twenty-two ships-of-the-line, appeared at Palermo. The troops of Savoy
+evacuated the city and pretty nearly the whole island, resistance
+being concentrated in the citadel of Messina. Anxiety was felt in
+Naples itself, until the English admiral, Byng,[80] anchored there the
+day after the investment of Messina. The King of Sicily having now
+consented to the terms of the Quadruple Alliance, Byng received on
+board two thousand Austrian troops to be landed at Messina. When he
+appeared before the place, finding it besieged, he wrote to the
+Spanish general suggesting a suspension of arms for two months. This
+was of course refused; so the Austrians were landed again at Reggio,
+in Italy, and Byng passed through the Straits of Messina to seek the
+Spanish fleet, which had gone to the southward.
+
+The engagement which ensued can scarcely be called a battle, and, as
+is apt to happen in such affairs, when the parties are on the verge of
+war but war has not actually been declared, there is some doubt as to
+how far the attack was morally justifiable on the part of the English.
+It seems pretty sure that Byng was determined beforehand to seize or
+destroy the Spanish fleet, and that as a military man he was justified
+by his orders. The Spanish naval officers had not made up their minds
+to any line of conduct; they were much inferior in numbers, and, as
+must always be the case, Alberoni's hastily revived navy had not
+within the same period reached nearly the efficiency of his army. The
+English approached threateningly near, one or more Spanish ships
+opened fire, whereupon the English, being to windward, stood down and
+made an end of them; a few only escaped into Valetta harbor. The
+Spanish navy was practically annihilated. It is difficult to
+understand the importance attached by some writers to Byng's action at
+this time in attacking without regard to the line-of-battle. He had
+before him a disorderly force, much inferior both in numbers and
+discipline. His merit seems rather to lie in the readiness to assume a
+responsibility from which a more scrupulous man might have shrunk; but
+in this and throughout the campaign he rendered good service to
+England, whose sea power was again strengthened by the destruction not
+of an actual but a possible rival, and his services were rewarded by a
+peerage. In connection with this day's work was written a despatch
+which has great favor with English historians. One of the senior
+captains was detached with a division against some escaping ships of
+the enemy. His report to the admiral ran thus: "SIR,--We have taken or
+destroyed all the Spanish ships upon this coast, the number as per
+margin. Respectfully, etc., G. Walton." One English writer makes, and
+another indorses, the uncalled-for but characteristic fling at the
+French, that the ships thus thrust into the margin would have filled
+some pages of a French narration.[81] It may be granted that the
+so-called "battle" of Cape Passaro did not merit a long description,
+and Captain Walton possibly felt so; but if all reports of naval
+transactions were modelled upon his, the writing of naval history
+would not depend on official papers.
+
+Thus the Spanish navy was struck down on the 11th of August, 1718,
+off Cape Passaro. This settled the fate of Sicily, if it had been
+doubtful before. The English fleet cruised round the island,
+supporting the Austrians and isolating the Spaniards, none of whom
+were permitted to withdraw before peace was made. Alberoni's
+diplomatic projects failed one after the other, with a strange
+fatality. In the following year the French, in pursuance of the terms
+of the alliance, invaded the north of Spain and destroyed the
+dock-yards; burning nine large ships on the stocks, besides the
+materials for seven more, at the instigation of an English _attaché_
+accompanying the French headquarters. Thus was completed the
+destruction of the Spanish navy, which, says an English historian, was
+ascribed to the maritime jealousy of England. "This was done," wrote
+the French commander, the Duke of Berwick, a bastard of the house of
+Stuart, "in order that the English government may be able to show the
+next Parliament that nothing has been neglected to diminish the navy
+of Spain." The acts of Sir George Byng, as given by the English naval
+historian, make yet more manifest the purpose of England at this time.
+While the city and citadel of Messina were being besieged by the
+Austrians, English, and Sardinians, a dispute arose as to the
+possession of the Spanish men-of-war within the mole. Byng,
+"reflecting within himself that possibly the garrison might capitulate
+for the safe return of those ships into Spain, which he was determined
+not to suffer; that on the other hand the right of possession might
+breed an inconvenient dispute at a critical juncture among the princes
+concerned, and if it should at length be determined that they did not
+belong to England it were better they belonged to no one else,
+proposed to Count de Merci, the Austrian general, to erect a battery
+and destroy them as they lay."[82] After some demur on the part of the
+other leaders, this was done. If constant care and watchfulness
+deserve success, England certainly deserved her sea power; but what
+shall be said of the folly of France at this time and in this
+connection?
+
+The steady stream of reverses, and the hopelessness of contending for
+distant maritime possessions when without a navy, broke down the
+resistance of Spain. England and France insisted upon the dismissal of
+Alberoni, and Philip yielded to the terms of the Quadruple Alliance.
+The Austrian power, necessarily friendly to England, was thus firmly
+settled in the central Mediterranean, in Naples and Sicily, as England
+herself was in Gibraltar and Port Mahon. Sir Robert Walpole, the
+minister now coming into power in England, failed at a later day to
+support this favorable conjunction, and so far betrayed the
+traditional policy of his country. The dominion of the House of Savoy
+in Sardinia, which then began, has lasted; it is only within our own
+day that the title King of Sardinia has merged in the broader one of
+King of Italy.
+
+Contemporaneously with and for some time after the short episode of
+Alberoni's ministry and Spain's ambition, a struggle was going on
+around the shores of the Baltic which must be mentioned, because it
+gave rise to another effectual illustration of the sea power of
+England, manifested alike in the north and south with a slightness of
+exertion which calls to mind the stories of the tap of a tiger's paw.
+The long contest between Sweden and Russia was for a moment
+interrupted in 1718, by negotiations looking to peace and to an
+alliance between the two for the settlement of the succession in
+Poland and the restoration of the Stuarts in England. This project, on
+which had rested many of Alberoni's hopes, was finally stopped by the
+death in battle of the Swedish king. The war went on; and the czar,
+seeing the exhaustion of Sweden, purposed its entire subjugation. This
+destruction of the balance of power in the Baltic, making it a Russian
+lake, suited neither England nor France; especially the former, whose
+sea power both for peace and war depended upon the naval stores
+chiefly drawn from those regions. The two western kingdoms interfered,
+both by diplomacy, while England besides sent her fleet. Denmark,
+which was also at war with her traditional enemy Sweden, readily
+yielded; but Peter the Great chafed heavily under the implied
+coercion, until at last orders were sent to the English admiral to
+join his fleet to that of the Swedes and repeat in the Baltic the
+history of Cape Passaro. The czar in alarm withdrew his fleet. This
+happened in 1719; but Peter, though baffled, was not yet subdued. The
+following year the interposition of England was repeated with greater
+effect, although not in time to save the Swedish coasts from serious
+injury; but the czar, recognizing the fixed purpose with which he had
+to deal, and knowing from personal observation and practical
+experience the efficiency of England's sea power, consented finally to
+peace. The French claim much for their own diplomacy in this happy
+result, and say that England supported Sweden feebly; being willing
+that she should lose her provinces on the eastern shore of the Baltic
+because Russia, thus brought down to the sea-shore, could more easily
+open to English trade the vast resources of her interior. This may
+very possibly be true, and certainty can be felt that British
+interests, especially as to commerce and sea power, were looked after;
+but the character of Peter the Great is the guarantee that the
+argument which weighed most heavily with him was the military
+efficiency of the British fleet and its ability to move up to his very
+doors. By this Peace of Nystadt, August 30, 1721, Sweden abandoned
+Livonia, Esthonia, and other provinces on the east side of the Baltic.
+This result was inevitable; it was yearly becoming less possible for
+small States to hold their own.
+
+It can readily be understood that Spain was utterly discontented with
+the terms wrung from her by the Quadruple Alliance. The twelve years
+which followed are called years of peace, but the peace was very
+uncertain, and fraught with elements of future wars. The three great
+grievances rankling with Spain were--Sicily and Naples in the
+possession of Austria, Gibraltar and Mahon in the hands of England,
+and lastly, the vast contraband trade carried on by English merchants
+and ships in Spanish America. It will be seen that England was the
+active supporter of all these injuries; England therefore was the
+special enemy of Spain, but Spain was not the only enemy of England.
+
+The quiet, such as it was, that succeeded the fall of Alberoni was due
+mainly to the character and policy of the two ministers of France and
+England, who agreed in wishing a general peace. The policy and reasons
+of the French regent are already known. Moved by the same reasons, and
+to remove an accidental offence taken by England, Dubois obtained for
+her the further concession from Spain, additional to the commercial
+advantages granted at Utrecht, of sending a ship every year to trade
+in the West Indies. It is said that this ship, after being anchored,
+was kept continually supplied by others, so that fresh cargo came in
+over one side as fast as the old was sent ashore from the other.
+Dubois and the regent both died in the latter half of 1723, after an
+administration of eight years, in which they had reversed the policy
+of Richelieu by alliance with England and Austria and sacrificing to
+them the interests of France.
+
+The regency and the nominal government of France passed to another
+member of the royal family; but the real ruler was Cardinal Fleuri,
+the preceptor of the young king, who was now thirteen years of age.
+Efforts to displace the preceptor resulted only in giving him the
+title, as well as the power, of minister in 1726. At this time Sir
+Robert Walpole had become prime minister of England, with an influence
+and power which gave him practically the entire guidance of the policy
+of the State. The chief wish of both Walpole and Fleuri was peace,
+above all in western Europe. France and England therefore continued to
+act together for that purpose, and though they could not entirely
+stifle every murmur, they were for several years successful in
+preventing outbreaks. But while the aims of the two ministers were
+thus agreed, the motives which inspired them were different. Walpole
+desired peace because of the still unsettled condition of the English
+succession; for the peaceful growth of English commerce, which he had
+ever before his eyes; and probably also because his spirit, impatient
+of equals in the government, shrank from war which would raise up
+stronger men around him. Fleuri, reasonably secure as to the throne
+and his own power, wished like Walpole the peaceful development of his
+country, and shrank from war with the love of repose natural to old
+age; for he was seventy-three when he took office, and ninety when he
+laid it down in death. Under his mild administration the prosperity of
+France revived; the passing traveller could note the change in the
+face of the country and of the people; yet it may be doubted whether
+this change was due to the government of the quiet old man, or merely
+to the natural elasticity of the people, no longer drained by war nor
+isolated from the rest of the world. French authorities say that
+agriculture did not revive throughout the country. It is certain,
+however, that the maritime prosperity of France advanced wonderfully,
+owing mainly to the removal of commercial restrictions in the years
+immediately following the death of Louis XIV. The West India islands
+in particular throve greatly, and their welfare was naturally shared
+by the home ports that traded with them. The tropical climate of
+Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Louisiana, and cultivation by slaves, lent
+themselves readily to the paternal, semi-military government which
+marks all French colonies, but which produced less happy results in
+the bitter weather of Canada. In the West Indies, France at this time
+obtained a decided preponderance over England; the value of the French
+half of Hayti was alone equal to that of all the English West Indies,
+and French coffee and sugar were driving those of England out of
+European markets. A like advantage over England in the Mediterranean
+and Levant trade is asserted by French historians. At the same time
+the East India Company was revived, and its French depot, whose name
+tells its association with the East, the Breton town of L'Orient,
+quickly became a splendid city. Pondicherry on the Coromandel coast,
+and Chandernagore on the Ganges, the chief seats of French power and
+commerce in India, grew rapidly; the Isle of Bourbon and the Isle of
+France, now the Mauritius, whose position is so well suited for the
+control of the Indian Ocean, became, the one a rich agricultural
+colony, the other a powerful naval station. The monopoly of the great
+company was confined to the trade between home and the chief Indian
+stations; the traffic throughout the Indian seas was open to private
+enterprise and grew more rapidly. This great movement, wholly
+spontaneous, and even looked on with distrust by the government, was
+personified in two men, Dupleix and La Bourdonnais; who, the former at
+Chandernagore and the latter at the Isle of France, pointed out and
+led the way in all these undertakings, which were building up the
+power and renown of the French in the Eastern seas. The movement was
+begun which, after making France the rival of England in the Hindustan
+peninsula, and giving her for a moment the promise of that great
+empire which has bestowed a new title on the Queen of Great Britain,
+was destined finally to falter and perish before the sea power of
+England. The extent of this expansion of French trade, consequent upon
+peace and the removal of restrictions, and not due in any sense to
+government protection, is evidenced by the growth of French merchant
+shipping from only three hundred vessels at the death of Louis XIV.,
+to eighteen hundred, twenty years later. This, a French historian
+claims, refutes "the deplorable prejudices, born of our misfortunes,
+that France is not fitted for sea commerce, the only commerce that
+indefinitely extends the power of a nation with its sphere of
+activity."[83]
+
+This free and happy movement of the people was far from acceptable to
+Fleuri, who seems to have seen it with the distrust of a hen that has
+hatched ducklings. Walpole and himself were agreed to love peace; but
+Walpole was obliged to reckon with the English people, and these were
+prompt to resent rivalry upon the sea and in trade, however obtained.
+Moreover, Fleuri had inherited the unfortunate policy of Louis XIV.;
+his eyes were fixed on the continent. He did not indeed wish to follow
+the course of the regency in quarrelling with Spain, but rather to
+draw near to her; and although he was not able for a time to do so
+without sacrificing his peace policy, because of Spain's restless
+enmity to England, yet his mind was chiefly bent upon strengthening
+the position of France on the land, by establishing Bourbon princes
+where he could, and drawing them together by family alliances. The
+navy was allowed to decay more and more. "The French government
+abandoned the sea at the very moment that the nation, through the
+activity of private individuals, was making an effort to regain it."
+The material force fell to fifty-four ships-of-the-line and frigates,
+mostly in bad condition; and even when war with England had been
+imminent for five years, France had but forty-five ships-of-the-line
+to England's ninety. This difference foreshadowed the results which
+followed a quarter of a century of war.
+
+During the same period Walpole, relying upon Fleuri's co-operation,
+resolutely set his face against open war between England and Spain.
+The difficulties caused by the threatening and exasperating action of
+the latter country, and of such allies as she from time to time could
+raise, were met, and for a while successfully met, by naval
+demonstrations,--reminders of that sea power which one nation after
+another had felt and yielded to. In 1725, the Spanish king and the
+emperor agreed to sink their long-standing feud, and signed a treaty
+at Vienna, in which there was a secret clause providing that the
+emperor would support the claim of Spain to Gibraltar and Port Mahon,
+by arms if necessary. Russia also showed a disposition to join this
+confederacy. A counter-alliance was formed between England, France,
+and Prussia; and English fleets were sent, one to the Baltic to awe
+the czarina, another to the coast of Spain to check that government
+and protect Gibraltar, and a third to Porto Bello, on the Spanish
+Main, to blockade the fleet of galleons there assembled, and by
+cutting off the supplies remind the Spanish king at once of his
+dependence upon the specie of America, and of England's control of the
+highway by which it reached him. Walpole's aversion to war was marked
+by giving the admiral at Porto Bello the strictest orders not to
+fight, only to blockade; the consequence of which, through the long
+delay of the squadron upon the sickly coast, was a mortality among
+the crews that shocked the nation, and led, among other causes, to the
+minister's overthrow many years later. Between three and four thousand
+officers and men, including Admiral Hosier himself, died there.
+Walpole's aim, however, was reached; though Spain made a foolish
+attack by land upon Gibraltar, the presence of the English fleet
+assured its supplies and provisions and averted the formal outbreak of
+war. The emperor withdrew from the alliance, and under English
+pressure also revoked the charter of an East India company which he
+had authorized in the Austrian Netherlands, and which took its name
+from the port of Ostend. English merchants demanded the removal of
+this competitor, and also of a similar rival established in Denmark;
+both which concessions the English ministry, backed by Holland,
+obtained. So long as commerce was not seriously disturbed, Walpole's
+peace policy, accompanied as it naturally was by years of plenty and
+general content, was easily maintained, even though Spain continued
+threatening and arrogant in her demands for Gibraltar; but
+unfortunately she now entered more deeply upon a course of annoyance
+to English trade. The concessions of the Asiento, or slave-trade, and
+of the annual ship to South America have been mentioned; but these
+privileges were but a part of the English commerce in those regions.
+The system of Spain with regard to the trade of her colonies was of
+the narrowest and most exclusive character; but, while attempting to
+shut them out from foreign traffic, she neglected to provide for their
+wants herself. The consequence was that a great smuggling or
+contraband trade arose throughout her American possessions, carried on
+mainly by the English, who made their lawful traffic by the Asiento
+and the yearly ship subserve also the unlawful, or at least
+unauthorized, trade. This system was doubtless advantageous to the
+great body of the Spanish colonists, and was encouraged by them, while
+colonial governors connived at it, sometimes for money, sometimes
+swayed by local public opinion and their own knowledge of the
+hardships of the case; but there were Spanish subjects who saw their
+own business injured by the use and abuse of English privileges, and
+the national government suffered both in pocket and in pride by these
+evasions of the revenue. It now began to pull the strings tighter.
+Obsolete regulations were revived and enforced. Words in which the
+action of Spain in this old controversy have been described are
+curiously applicable to certain recent disputes to which the United
+States has been a party. "The letter of the treaty was now followed,
+though the spirit which dictated it was abandoned. Although English
+ships still enjoyed the liberty of putting into Spanish harbors for
+the purpose of refitting and provisioning, yet they were far from
+enjoying the same advantages of carrying on a friendly and commercial
+intercourse. They were now watched with a scrupulous jealousy,
+strictly visited by guarda-costas, and every efficient means adopted
+to prevent any commerce with the colonies, except what was allowed by
+the annual ship." If Spain could have confined herself to closer
+watchfulness and to enforcing in her own waters vexatious customs
+regulations, not essentially different from those sanctioned by the
+general commercial ideas of that day, perhaps no further harm would
+have resulted; but the condition of things and the temper of her
+government would not let her stop there. It was not possible to guard
+and effectually seal a sea-coast extending over hundreds of miles,
+with innumerable inlets; nor would traders and seamen, in pursuit of
+gain which they had come to consider their right, be deterred by fears
+of penalties nor consideration for Spanish susceptibilities. The power
+of Spain was not great enough to enforce on the English ministry any
+regulation of their shipping, or stoppage of the abuse of the treaty
+privileges, in face of the feelings of the merchants; and so the
+weaker State, wronged and harassed, was goaded into the use of wholly
+unlawful means. Ships-of-war and guarda-costas were instructed, or at
+least permitted, to stop and search English ships on the high seas,
+outside of Spanish jurisdiction; and the arrogant Spanish temper,
+unrestrained by the weak central government, made many of these
+visits, both the lawful and the unlawful, scenes of insult and even
+violence. Somewhat similar results, springing from causes not entirely
+different, have occurred in the relations of Spanish officials to the
+United States and American merchant-ships in our own day. The stories
+of these acts of violence coming back to England, coupled with cases
+of loss by confiscation and by the embarrassment of trade, of course
+stirred up the people. In 1737 the West India merchants petitioned the
+House of Commons, saying,--
+
+ "For many years past their ships have not only frequently been
+ stopped and searched, but also forcibly and arbitrarily seized
+ upon the high seas, by Spanish ships fitted out to cruise, under
+ the plausible pretext of guarding their own coasts; that the
+ commanders thereof, with their crews, have been inhumanly
+ treated, and their ships carried into some of the Spanish ports
+ and there condemned with their cargoes, in manifest violation of
+ the treaties subsisting between the two crowns; that the
+ remonstrances of his Majesty's ministers at Madrid receive no
+ attention, and that insults and plunder must soon destroy their
+ trade."
+
+Walpole struggled hard, during the ten years following 1729, to keep
+off war. In that year a treaty signed at Seville professed to regulate
+matters, restoring the conditions of trade to what they had been four
+years before, and providing that six thousand Spanish troops should at
+once occupy the territory of Tuscany and Parma. Walpole argued with
+his own people that war would lose them the commercial privileges they
+already enjoyed in Spanish dominions; while with Spain he carried on
+constant negotiations, seeking concessions and indemnities that might
+silence the home clamor. In the midst of this period a war broke out
+concerning the succession to the Polish throne. The father-in-law of
+the French king was one claimant; Austria supported his opponent. A
+common hostility to Austria once more drew France and Spain together,
+and they were joined by the King of Sardinia, who hoped through this
+alliance to wrest Milan from Austria and add it to his own territory
+of Piedmont. The neutrality of England and Holland was secured by a
+promise not to attack the Austrian Netherlands, the possession of any
+part of which by France was considered to be dangerous to England's
+sea power. The allied States declared war against Austria in October,
+1733, and their armies entered Italy together; but the Spaniards,
+intent on their long-cherished projects against Naples and Sicily,
+left the others and turned southward. The two kingdoms were easily and
+quickly conquered, the invaders having command of the sea and the
+favor of the population. The second son of the King of Spain was
+proclaimed king under the title of Carlos III., and the Bourbon
+Kingdom of the Two Sicilies thus came into existence. Walpole's
+aversion to war, leading him to abandon a long-standing ally, thus
+resulted in the transfer of the central Mediterranean to a control
+necessarily unfriendly to Great Britain.
+
+But while Walpole thus forsook the emperor, he was himself betrayed by
+his friend Fleuri. While making the open alliance with Spain against
+Austria, the French government agreed to a secret clause directed
+against England. This engagement ran as follows: "Whenever it seems
+good to both nations alike, the abuses which have crept into commerce,
+especially through the English, shall be abolished; and if the English
+make objection, France will ward off their hostility with all its
+strength by land and sea." "And this compact was made," as the
+biographer of Lord Hawke points out, "during a period of intimate and
+ostentatious alliance with England itself."[84] "Thus the policy
+against which William III. had called on England and Europe to arm, at
+last came into existence." Had Walpole known of this secret agreement,
+it might have seemed to him an additional argument in favor of peace;
+for, his keen political sagacity warning him of the existence of a
+danger which he yet could not see, he told the House of Commons that
+"if the Spaniards had not private encouragement from powers more
+considerable than themselves, they would never have ventured on the
+insults and injuries which have been proved at your bar;" and he
+expressed the opinion that "England was not a match for the French and
+Spaniards too."
+
+Fleuri had indeed given his old friend and fellow-statesman an ugly
+fall. The particular question which excited the two years' War of the
+Polish Succession, the choice of a ruler for a distracted kingdom
+fated soon to disappear from the list of European States, seems a
+small matter; but the turn imparted to European politics by the action
+of the powers engaged gives it a very different importance. France and
+Austria came to an arrangement in October, 1735, upon terms to which
+Sardinia and Spain afterward acceded, the principal points of which
+were as follows: The French claimant to the Polish throne gave up his
+claim to it, and received instead the duchies of Bar and Lorraine on
+the east of France, with the provision that upon his death they were
+to go to his son-in-law, the King of France, in full sovereignty; the
+two kingdoms of Sicily and Naples were confirmed to the Spanish
+Bourbon prince, Don Carlos; and Austria received back Parma. The
+Sardinian monarchy also got an increase to its Italian territory.
+France thus, under the peace-loving Fleuri, obtained in Bar and
+Lorraine an accession of strength which more warlike rulers had
+coveted in vain; and at the same time her external position was
+fortified at the expense of England, by the transfer of controlling
+positions in the central Mediterranean to an ally. Yet the heart of
+Fleuri might well have failed him as he remembered the secret
+agreement to check the commerce of England, and thought of her mighty
+sea power alongside of the decayed navy of France. That compact
+between France and Spain, to which the Two Sicilies acceded later,
+bore within it, in the then strained relations between England and
+Spain, the germ of the great wars between England and the House of
+Bourbon which issued in the creation of the British Empire and the
+independence of the United States.
+
+The clamor in England over Spanish outrages continued, and was
+carefully nursed by the opposition to Walpole. The minister was now
+over sixty years of age, and scarcely able to change the settled
+convictions and policy of his prime. He was face to face with one of
+those irrepressible conflicts between nations and races toward which a
+policy of repression and compromise can be employed but for a short
+time. The English were bent upon opening the West Indies and Spanish
+America, the Spanish government equally bent upon obstructing them.
+Unfortunately for their policy of obstruction, they strengthened
+Walpole's enemies by unlawful search of English ships on the open sea,
+and possibly also by outrages to English seamen. Some of the latter
+were brought before the bar of the House of Commons, and testified
+that they had been not merely plundered, but tortured, shut up in
+prison, and compelled to live and work under loathsome conditions. The
+most celebrated case was that of a certain Jenkins, the master of a
+merchant-brig, who told that a Spanish officer had torn off one of his
+ears, bidding him carry it to the king his master, and say that if he
+had been there he would have been served likewise. Being asked what
+were his feelings at such a moment of danger and suffering, he was
+said to have replied, "I commended my soul to God and my cause to my
+country." This well-turned dramatic utterance from the mouth of a man
+of his class throws a suspicion of high coloring over the whole story;
+but it can be readily imagined what a capital campaign-cry it would be
+in the heat of a popular movement. The tide of feeling swept away
+Walpole's patchwork of compromise, and war was declared against Spain
+by Great Britain on the 19th of October, 1739. The English ultimatum
+insisted upon a formal renunciation of the right of search as claimed
+and exercised by the Spaniards, and upon an express acknowledgment of
+the British claims in North America. Among these claims was one
+relating to the limits of Georgia, then a recently established colony,
+touching the Spanish territory of Florida.
+
+How far the war thus urged on and begun by England, against the
+judgment of her able minister, was morally justifiable has been warmly
+argued on either side by English writers. The laws of Spain with
+regard to the trade of her colonies did not differ in spirit from
+those of England herself as shown by her Navigation Act, and Spanish
+naval officers found themselves in a position nearly identical with
+that of Nelson when captain of a frigate in the West Indies half a
+century later. American ships and merchants then, after the separation
+from the mother-country, continued the trade which they had enjoyed as
+colonists; Nelson, zealous for the commercial advantage of England as
+then understood, undertook to enforce the act, and in so doing found
+against him the feeling of the West Indians and of the colonial
+authorities. It does not seem that he or those supporting him searched
+unlawfully, for the power of England was great enough to protect her
+shipping interests without using irregular means; whereas Spain
+between 1730 and 1740, being weak, was tempted, as she has since been,
+to seize those whom she knew to have injured her wherever she could
+find them, even outside her lawful jurisdiction.
+
+After reading the entirely sympathetic presentation of the case of
+Walpole's opponents, urging war, which is given by Professor Burrows
+in his Life of Lord Hawke, a foreigner can scarcely fail to conclude
+that the Spaniards were grievously wronged, according to the rights of
+the mother-country over colonies as commonly admitted in that day;
+though no nation could tolerate the right of search as claimed by
+them. It chiefly concerns our subject to notice that the dispute was
+radically a maritime question, that it grew out of the uncontrollable
+impulse of the English people to extend their trade and colonial
+interests. It is possible that France was acting under a similar
+impulse, as English writers have asserted; but the character and
+general policy of Fleuri, as well as the genius of the French people,
+make this unlikely. There was no Parliament and no opposition to make
+known popular opinion in the France of that day, and very different
+estimates of Fleuri's character and administration have found voice
+since then. The English look rather at the ability which obtained
+Lorraine for France and the Sicilies for the House of Bourbon, and
+blame Walpole for being overreached. The French say of Fleuri that "he
+lived from day to day seeking only to have quiet in his old age. He
+had stupefied France with opiates, instead of laboring to cure her. He
+could not even prolong this silent sleep until his own death."[85]
+When the war broke out between England and Spain, "the latter claimed
+the advantage of her defensive alliance with France. Fleuri,
+grievously against his will, was forced to fit out a squadron; he did
+so in niggardly fashion." This squadron, of twenty-two ships, convoyed
+to America the Spanish fleet assembled at Ferrol, and the
+reinforcement prevented the English from attacking.[86] "Still, Fleuri
+made explanations to Walpole and hoped for compromise,--an ill-founded
+hope, which had disastrous results for our sea interests, and
+prevented measures which would have given France, from the beginning
+of the war, the superiority in eastern seas." But "upon Walpole's
+overthrow," says another Frenchman, "Fleuri perceived his mistake in
+letting the navy decay. Its importance had lately struck him. He knew
+that the kings of Naples and Sardinia forsook the French alliance
+merely because an English squadron threatened to bombard Naples and
+Genoa and to bring an army into Italy. For lack of this element of
+greatness, France silently swallowed the greatest humiliations, and
+could only complain of the violence of English cruisers, which
+pillaged our commerce, in violation of the law of nations,"[87] during
+the years of nominal peace that elapsed between the time when the
+French fleet was confined to protecting the Spanish against the
+English and the outbreak of formal war. The explanation of these
+differing views seems not very hard. The two ministers had tacitly
+agreed to follow lines which apparently could not cross. France was
+left free to expand by land, provided she did not excite the jealousy
+of the English people, and Walpole's own sense of English interests,
+by rivalry at sea. This course suited Fleuri's views and wishes. The
+one sought power by sea, the other by land. Which had been wiser, war
+was to show; for, with Spain as an ally to one party, war had to come,
+and that on the sea. Neither minister lived to see the result of his
+policy. Walpole was driven from power in 1742, and died in March,
+1745. Fleuri died in office, January 29, 1743.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[80] Afterward Lord Torrington; father of Admiral John Byng, shot in
+1757.
+
+[81] Campbell: Lives of the Admirals; quoted by Lord Mahon in his
+History of England.
+
+[82] Lives of the Admirals
+
+[83] Martin: History of France.
+
+[84] Burrows: Life of Lord Hawke.
+
+[85] Martin: History of France.
+
+[86] The peculiar political relation which France bore toward England
+between 1739 and 1744, while the latter country was at war with Spain,
+needs to be explained, as it depended upon views of international
+duties which are practically obsolete. By her defensive alliance with
+Spain, France had bound herself to furnish a contingent of specified
+force to the Spanish fleet when that country was involved in war of a
+certain kind. She claimed, however, that her sending these succors was
+not such an act of hostility to England as involved a breach of the
+peace existing between the two nations. The French ships-of-war, while
+thus serving with the Spanish fleet under the terms of the treaty,
+were enemies; but the French nation and all other armed forces of
+France, on sea and land, were neutrals, with all the privileges of
+neutrality. Of course England was not bound to accept this view of the
+matter, and could make the action of France a _casus belli_; but
+France claimed it was not justly so, and England practically conceded
+the claim, though the relation was likely to lead to formal war, as it
+did in 1744. A few years later the Dutch will be found claiming the
+same privilege of neutrality toward France while furnishing a large
+contingent to the Austrian army acting against her.
+
+[87] Lapeyrouse-Bonfils: Hist. de la Marine Française.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+ WAR BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN AND SPAIN, 1739.--WAR OF THE AUSTRIAN
+ SUCCESSION, 1740.--FRANCE JOINS SPAIN AGAINST GREAT BRITAIN,
+ 1744.--SEA BATTLES OF MATTHEWS, ANSON, AND HAWKE.--PEACE OF
+ AIX-LA-CHAPELLE, 1748.
+
+
+We have now reached the opening of a series of great wars, destined to
+last with short intervals of peace for nearly half a century, and
+having, amid many misleading details, one broad characteristic
+distinguishing them from previous, and from many subsequent, wars.
+This strife embraced the four quarters of the world, and that not only
+as side issues here and there, the main struggle being in Europe; for
+the great questions to be determined by it, concerning the world's
+history, were the dominion of the sea and the control of distant
+countries, the possession of colonies, and, dependent upon these, the
+increase of wealth. Singularly enough it is not till nearly the end of
+the long contest that great fleets are found engaging, and the
+struggle transferred to its proper field, the sea. The action of sea
+power is evident enough, the issue plainly indicated from the
+beginning; but for a long time there is no naval warfare of any
+consequence, because the truth is not recognized by the French
+government. The movement toward colonial extension by France is wholly
+popular, though illustrated by a few great names; the attitude of the
+rulers is cold and mistrustful: hence came neglect of the navy, a
+foregone conclusion of defeat on the main question, and destruction
+for the time of her sea power.
+
+Such being the character of the coming wars, it is important to
+realize the relative positions of the three great powers in those
+quarters of the world, outside of Europe, where the strife was to
+engage.
+
+In North America, England now held the thirteen colonies, the original
+United States, from Maine to Georgia. In these colonies was to be
+found the highest development of that form of colonization peculiar to
+England, bodies of free men essentially self-governing and
+self-dependent, still enthusiastically loyal, and by occupation at
+once agricultural, commercial, and sea-faring. In the character of
+their country and its productions, in its long sea-coast and sheltered
+harbors, and in their own selves, they had all the elements of sea
+power, which had already received large development. On such a country
+and such a people the royal navy and army were securely based in the
+western hemisphere. The English colonists were intensely jealous of
+the French and Canadians.
+
+France held Canada and Louisiana, a name much more extensive in its
+application then than now, and claimed the entire valley of the Ohio
+and Mississippi, by right of prior discovery, and as a necessary link
+between the St. Lawrence and the Gulf of Mexico. There was as yet no
+adequate occupation of this intermediate country, nor was the claim
+admitted by England, whose colonists asserted the right to extend
+indefinitely westward. The strength of the French position was in
+Canada; the St. Lawrence gave them access to the heart of the country,
+and though Newfoundland and Nova Scotia had been lost, in Cape Breton
+Island they still held the key of the gulf and river. Canada had the
+characteristics of the French colonial system planted in a climate
+least suited to it. A government paternal, military, and monkish
+discouraged the development of individual enterprise and of free
+association for common ends. The colonists abandoned commerce and
+agriculture, raising only food enough for immediate consumption, and
+were given to arms and hunting. Their chief traffic was in furs. There
+was so little mechanical art among them that they bought of the
+English colonies part of the vessels for their interior navigation.
+The chief element of strength was the military, arms-bearing character
+of the population; each man was a soldier.
+
+Besides the hostility inherited from the mother-countries, there was a
+necessary antagonism between two social and political systems, so
+directly opposed, and lying one alongside the other. The remoteness of
+Canada from the West Indies, and the inhospitable winter climate, made
+it, from the naval point of view, of much less value to France than
+the English colonies to England; besides which the resources and
+population were greatly inferior. In 1750 the population of Canada was
+eighty thousand, that of the English colonies twelve hundred thousand.
+With such disparity of strength and resources, the only chance for
+Canada lay in the support of the sea power of France, either by direct
+control of the neighboring seas, or by such powerful diversion
+elsewhere as would relieve the pressure upon her.
+
+On the continent of North America, in addition to Mexico and the
+countries south of it, Spain held Florida; under which name were
+embraced extensive regions beyond the peninsula, not accurately
+defined, and having little importance at any period of these long
+wars.
+
+In the West Indies and South America, Spain held mainly what are still
+known as Spanish American countries, besides Cuba, Porto Rico, and
+part of Hayti; France had Guadeloupe, Martinique, and the western half
+of Hayti; England, Jamaica, Barbadoes, and some of the smaller
+islands. The fertile character of the soil, the commercial
+productions, and the less rigorous climate would seem to make these
+islands objects of particular ambition in a colonial war; but as a
+matter of fact no attempt was made, nor, except as to Jamaica, which
+Spain wished to recover, was any intention entertained of conquering
+any of the larger islands. The reason probably was that England, whose
+sea power made her the principal aggressor, was influenced in the
+direction of her efforts by the wishes of the great body of Englishmen
+on the North American continent. The smaller West India islands are
+singly too small to be strongly held except by a power controlling the
+sea. They had a twofold value in war: one as offering military
+positions for such a power: the other a commercial value, either as
+adding to one's own resources or diminishing those of the enemy. War
+directed against them may be considered as a war upon commerce, and
+the islands themselves as ships or convoys loaded with enemy's wealth.
+They will be found therefore changing hands like counters, and usually
+restored when peace comes; though the final result was to leave most
+of them in the hands of England. Nevertheless, the fact of each of the
+great powers having a share in this focus of commerce drew thither
+both large fleets and small squadrons, a tendency aided by the
+unfavorable seasons for military operations on the continent; and in
+the West Indies took place the greater number of the fleet-actions
+that illustrated this long series of wars.
+
+ [Illustration: PENINSULA OF INDIA AND CEYLON.]
+
+In yet another remote region was the strife between England and France
+to be waged, and there, as in North America, finally decided by these
+wars. In India, the rival nations were represented by their East India
+companies, who directly administered both government and commerce.
+Back of them, of course, were the mother-countries; but in immediate
+contact with the native rulers were the presidents and officers
+appointed by the companies. At this time the principal settlements of
+the English were,--on the west coast, Bombay; on the east, Calcutta
+upon the Ganges, at some distance from the sea, and Madras; while a
+little south of Madras another town and station, known generally to
+the English as Fort St. David, though sometimes called Cuddalore, had
+been established later. The three presidencies of Bombay, Calcutta,
+and Madras were at this time mutually independent, and responsible
+only to the Court of Directors in England.
+
+France was established at Chandernagore, on the Ganges, above
+Calcutta; at Pondicherry, on the east coast, eighty miles south of
+Madras; and on the west coast, far to the south of Bombay, she had a
+third station of inferior importance, called Mahé. The French,
+however, had a great advantage in the possession of the intermediate
+station already pointed out in the Indian Ocean, the neighboring
+islands of France and Bourbon. They were yet more fortunate in the
+personal character of the two men who were at this time at the head
+of their affairs in the Indian peninsula and the islands, Dupleix and
+La Bourdonnais,--men to whom no rivals in ability or force of
+character had as yet appeared among the English Indian officials. Yet
+in these two men, whose cordial fellow-working might have ruined the
+English settlement in India, there appeared again that singular
+conflict of ideas, that hesitation between the land and the sea as the
+stay of power, a prophecy of which seems to be contained in the
+geographical position of France itself. The mind of Dupleix, though
+not inattentive to commercial interests, was fixed on building up a
+great empire in which France should rule over a multitude of vassal
+native princes. In the pursuit of this end he displayed great tact and
+untiring activity, perhaps also a somewhat soaring and fantastic
+imagination; but when he met La Bourdonnais, whose simpler and sounder
+views aimed at sea supremacy, at a dominion based upon free and
+certain communication with the home country instead of the shifting
+sands of Eastern intrigues and alliances, discord at once arose.
+"Naval inferiority," says a French historian who considers Dupleix to
+have had the higher aims, "was the principal cause that arrested his
+progress;"[88] but naval superiority was precisely the point at which
+La Bourdonnais, himself a seaman and the governor of an island, aimed.
+It may be that with the weakness of Canada, compared to the English
+colonies, sea power could not there have changed the actual issue; but
+in the condition of the rival nations in India everything depended
+upon controlling the sea.
+
+Such were the relative situations of the three countries in the
+principal foreign theatres of war. No mention has been made of the
+colonies on the west coast of Africa, because they were mere trading
+stations having no military importance. The Cape of Good Hope was in
+possession of the Dutch, who took no active part in the earlier wars,
+but long maintained toward England a benevolent neutrality, surviving
+from the alliance in the former wars of the century. It is necessary
+to mention briefly the condition of the military navies, which were
+to have an importance as yet unrealized. Neither precise numbers nor
+an exact account of condition of the ships can be given; but the
+relative efficiency can be fairly estimated. Campbell, the English
+contemporary naval historian, says that in 1727 the English navy had
+eighty-four ships-of-the-line, from sixty guns up; forty 50-gun ships,
+and fifty-four frigates and smaller vessels. In 1734 this number had
+fallen to seventy ships-of-the-line and nineteen 50-gun ships. In
+1744, after four years of war with Spain alone, the number was ninety
+ships-of-the-line and eighty-four frigates. The French navy at the
+same time he estimates at forty-five ships-of-the-line and sixty-seven
+frigates. In 1747, near the end of the first war, he says that the
+royal navy of Spain was reduced to twenty-two ships-of-the-line, that
+of France to thirty-one, while the English had risen to one hundred
+and twenty-six. The French writers consulted are less precise in their
+figures, but agree in representing not only that the navy was reduced
+to a pitiful number of ships, but that these were in bad condition and
+the dock-yards destitute of materials. This neglect of the navy lasted
+more or less throughout these wars, until 1760, when the sense of the
+nation was aroused to the importance of restoring it; too late,
+however, to prevent the most serious of the French losses. In England
+as well as in France discipline and administration had been sapped by
+the long peace; the inefficiency of the armaments sent out was
+notorious, and recalls the scandals that marked the outbreak of the
+Crimean War; while the very disappearance of the French ships led, by
+the necessity of replacing them, to putting afloat vessels superior
+singly, because more modern and scientific, to the older ships of the
+same class in England. Care must be had, however, in accepting too
+easily the complaints of individual writers; French authors will be
+found asserting that English ships are faster, while at the same
+period Englishmen complain that they are slower. It may be accepted as
+generally true that the French ships built between 1740 and 1800 were
+better designed and larger, class for class, than the English. The
+latter had the undoubted superiority both in the number and quality
+of the seamen and officers. Keeping some fleets always afloat, whether
+better or worse, the officers could not quite lose touch of their
+profession; whereas in France it is said that not one fifth of the
+officers were, in 1744, employed. This superiority was kept and
+increased by the practice, which henceforth obtained, of blockading
+the French military ports with superior force; the enemy's squadrons
+when they put to sea found themselves at once at a disadvantage in
+point of practical skill. On the other hand, large as was the number
+of English seamen, the demands of commerce were so great that war
+found them scattered all over the world, and part of the fleet was
+always paralyzed for lack of crews. This constant employment assured
+good seamanship, but the absence of so many men had to be supplied by
+an indiscriminate press, which dragged in a class of miserable and
+sickly men, sadly diluting the quality of the whole. To realize the
+condition of ships' companies of that day, it will be necessary only
+to read the accounts of those sent to Anson starting for a cruise
+round the world, or to Hawke when fitting out for war service; the
+statements are now almost incredible, and the results most deplorable.
+It was not a question of sanitation only; the material sent was
+entirely unfit to meet the conditions of sea life under the most
+favorable circumstances. In both the French and English service a
+great deal of weeding among the officers was necessary. Those were the
+palmy days of court and political influence; and, moreover, it is not
+possible, after a long peace, at once to pick out from among the
+fairest-seeming the men who will best stand the tests of time and
+exposure to the responsibilities of war. There was in both nations a
+tendency to depend upon officers who had been in their prime a
+generation before, and the results were not fortunate.
+
+War having been declared against Spain by England in October, 1739,
+the first attempts of the latter power were naturally directed against
+the Spanish-American colonies, the cause of the dispute, in which it
+was expected to find an easy and rich prey. The first expedition
+sailed under Admiral Vernon in November of the same year, and took
+Porto Bello by a sudden and audacious stroke, but found only the
+insignificant sum of ten thousand dollars in the port whence the
+galleons sailed. Returning to Jamaica, Vernon received large
+reinforcements of ships, and was joined by a land force of twelve
+thousand troops. With this increased force, attempts were made upon
+both Cartagena and Santiago de Cuba, in the years 1741 and 1742, but
+in both wretched failures resulted; the admiral and the general
+quarrelled, as was not uncommon in days when neither had an
+intelligent comprehension of the other's business. Marryatt, when
+characterizing such misunderstandings by a humorous exaggeration,
+seems to have had in view this attempt on Cartagena: "The army thought
+that the navy might have beaten down stone ramparts ten feet thick;
+and the navy wondered why the army had not walked up the same
+ramparts, which were thirty feet perpendicular."
+
+Another expedition, justly celebrated for the endurance and
+perseverance shown by its leader, and famous both for the hardships
+borne and singular final success, was sent out in 1740 under Anson.
+Its mission was to pass round Cape Horn and attack the Spanish
+colonies on the west coast of South America. After many delays, due
+apparently to bad administration, the squadron finally got away toward
+the end of 1740. Passing the Cape at the worst season of the year, the
+ships met a series of tempests of the most violent kind; the squadron
+was scattered, never all to meet again, and Anson, after infinite
+peril, succeeded in rallying a part of it at Juan Fernandez. Two ships
+had put back to England, a third was lost to the southward of Chiloe.
+With the three left to him he cruised along the South American coast,
+taking some prizes and pillaging the town of Payta, intending to touch
+near Panama and join hands with Vernon for the capture of that place
+and the possession of the isthmus, if possible. Learning of the
+disaster at Cartagena, he then determined to cross the Pacific and
+waylay the two galleons that sailed yearly from Acapulco to Manila.
+In the passage across, one of the two ships now left to him was found
+in such bad condition that she had to be destroyed. With the other he
+succeeded in his last undertaking, capturing the great galleon with a
+million and a half dollars in specie. The expedition, from its many
+misfortunes, had no military result beyond the terror and consequent
+embarrassment caused to the Spanish settlements; but its very
+misfortunes, and the calm persistency which worked out a great success
+from them all, have given it a well-deserved renown.
+
+During the year 1740 happened two events which led to a general
+European war breaking in upon that in which Spain and England were
+already engaged. In May of that year Frederick the Great became king
+of Prussia, and in October the emperor Charles VI., formerly the
+Austrian claimant of the Spanish throne, died. He had no son, and left
+by will the sovereignty of his estates to his eldest daughter, the
+celebrated Maria Theresa, to secure whose succession the efforts of
+his diplomacy had been directed for many years. This succession had
+been guaranteed by the European powers; but the apparent weakness of
+her position excited the ambitions of other sovereigns. The Elector of
+Bavaria laid claim to the whole inheritance, in which he was supported
+by France; while the Prussian king claimed and seized the province of
+Silesia. Other powers, large and small, threw in their lot with one or
+the other; while the position of England was complicated by her king
+being also elector of Hanover, and in that capacity hurriedly
+contracting an obligation of neutrality for the electorate, although
+English feeling was strongly in favor of Austria. Meanwhile the
+failure of the Spanish-American expeditions and the severe losses of
+English commerce increased the general outcry against Walpole, who
+resigned early in 1742. England under the new ministry became the open
+ally of Austria; and Parliament voted not only a subsidy to the
+empress-queen, but also a body of troops to be sent as auxiliaries to
+the Austrian Netherlands. At the same time Holland, under English
+influence, and bound like England by previous treaties to support the
+succession of Maria Theresa, also voted a subsidy. Here occurs again
+that curious view of international relations before mentioned. Both of
+these powers thus entered the war against France, but only as
+auxiliaries to the empress, not as principals; as nations, except the
+troops actually in the field, they were considered to be still at
+peace. Such an equivocal situation could in the end have only one
+result. On the sea France had already assumed the same position of
+auxiliary to Spain, in virtue of the defensive alliance between the
+two kingdoms, while affecting still to be at peace with England; and
+it is curious to see the gravity with which French writers complain of
+assaults upon French by English ships, upon the plea that there was no
+open war between the two States. It has already been mentioned that in
+1740 a French squadron supported a division of Spanish ships on their
+way to America. In 1741, Spain, having now entered the continental war
+as an enemy of Austria, sent a body of fifteen thousand troops from
+Barcelona to attack the Austrian possessions in Italy. The English
+admiral Haddock, in the Mediterranean, sought and found the Spanish
+fleet; but with it was a division of twelve French sail-of-the-line,
+whose commander informed Haddock that he was engaged in the same
+expedition and had orders to fight, if the Spaniards, though formally
+at war with England, were attacked. As the allies were nearly double
+his force, the English admiral was obliged to go back to Port Mahon.
+He was soon after relieved; and the new admiral, Matthews, held at
+once the two positions of commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean and
+English minister at Turin, the capital of the King of Sardinia. In the
+course of the year 1742 an English captain in his fleet, chasing some
+Spanish galleys, drove them into the French port of St. Tropez, and
+following them into the harbor burned them, in spite of the so-called
+neutrality of France. In the same year Matthews sent a division of
+ships under Commodore Martin to Naples, to compel the Bourbon king to
+withdraw his contingent of twenty thousand troops serving with the
+Spanish army in northern Italy against the Austrians. To the attempts
+to negotiate, Martin replied only by pulling out his watch and giving
+the government an hour to come to terms. There was nothing for it but
+submission; and the English fleet left the harbor after a stay of
+twenty-four hours, having relieved the empress of a dangerous enemy.
+Henceforward it was evident that the Spanish war in Italy could only
+be maintained by sending troops through France; England controlled the
+sea and the action of Naples. These two last incidents, at St. Tropez
+and Naples, deeply impressed the aged Fleuri, who recognized too late
+the scope and importance of a well-founded sea power. Causes of
+complaint were multiplying on both sides, and the moment was fast
+approaching when both France and England must quit the pretence of
+being only auxiliaries in the war. Before it came to that, however,
+the controlling sea power and wealth of England again made itself felt
+by attaching the King of Sardinia to the Austrian cause. Between the
+dangers and advantages of the French or English alliance the king's
+action was determined by a subsidy and the promise of a strong English
+fleet in the Mediterranean; in return he engaged to enter the war with
+an army of forty-five thousand men. This compact was signed in
+September, 1743. In October, Fleuri being now dead, Louis XV. made
+with Spain a treaty, by which he engaged to declare war against
+England and Sardinia, and to support the Spanish claims in Italy, as
+also to Gibraltar, Mahon, and Georgia. Open war was thus near at hand,
+but the declaration was still deferred. The greatest sea fight that
+took place occurred while nominal peace yet existed.
+
+ [Illustration: Pl. VII. MATTHEWS. FEB., 1744., Pl. VIIa. BYNG.
+ MAY, 1756.]
+
+In the latter part of 1743 the Infante Philip of Spain had sought to
+land on the coast of the Genoese Republic, which was unfriendly to the
+Austrians; but the attempt had been frustrated by the English fleet,
+and the Spanish ships forced to retreat into Toulon. They lay there
+for four months, unable to go out on account of the English
+superiority. In this dilemma the court of Spain applied to Louis XV.
+and obtained an order for the French fleet, under the command of
+Admiral de Court,--an old man of eighty years, a veteran of the days
+of Louis XIV.,--to escort the Spaniards either to the Gulf of Genoa or
+to their own ports, it does not clearly appear which. The French
+admiral was ordered not to fire unless he was attacked. In order to
+secure the best co-operation of the Spaniards, whose efficiency he
+probably distrusted, De Court proposed, as Ruyter had done in days
+long gone by, to scatter their ships among his own; but as the Spanish
+admiral, Navarro, refused, the line-of-battle was formed with nine
+French ships in the van, in the centre six French and three Spaniards,
+in the rear nine Spanish ships; in all, twenty-seven. In this order
+the combined fleets sailed from Toulon February 19, 1744. The English
+fleet, which had been cruising off Hyères in observation, chased, and
+on the 22d its van and centre came up with the allies; but the rear
+division was then several miles to windward and astern, quite out of
+supporting distance (Plate VII., r). The wind was easterly, both
+fleets heading to the southward, and the English had the weather-gage.
+The numbers were nearly equal, the English having twenty-nine to the
+allied twenty-seven; but this advantage was reversed by the failure of
+the English rear to join. The course of the rear-admiral has been
+generally attributed to ill-will toward Matthews; for although he
+proved that in his separated position he made all sail to join, he did
+not attack later on when he could, on the plea that the signal for the
+line-of-battle was flying at the same time as the signal to engage;
+meaning that he could not leave the line to fight without disobeying
+the order to form line. This technical excuse was, however, accepted
+by the subsequent court-martial. Under the actual conditions Matthews,
+mortified and harassed by the inaction of his lieutenant, and fearing
+that the enemy would escape if he delayed longer, made the signal to
+engage when his own van was abreast the enemy's centre, and at once
+bore down himself out of the line and attacked with his flag-ship of
+ninety guns the largest ship in the enemy's line, the "Royal Philip,"
+of one hundred and ten guns, carrying the flag of the Spanish admiral
+(a). In doing this he was bravely supported by his next ahead and
+astern. The moment of attack seems to have been judiciously chosen;
+five Spanish ships had straggled far to the rear, leaving their
+admiral with the support only of his next ahead and astern, while
+three other Spaniards continued on with the French. The English van
+stood on, engaging the allied centre, while the allied van was without
+antagonists. Being thus disengaged, the latter was desirous of tacking
+to windward of the head of the English line, thus putting it between
+two fires, but was checked by the intelligent action of the three
+leading English captains, who, disregarding the signal to bear down,
+kept their commanding position and stopped the enemy's attempts to
+double. For this they were cashiered by the court-martial, but
+afterward restored. This circumspect but justifiable disregard of
+signals was imitated without any justification by all the English
+captains of the centre, save the admiral's seconds already mentioned,
+as well as by some of those in the van, who kept up a cannonade at
+long range while their commander-in-chief was closely and even
+furiously engaged. The one marked exception was Captain Hawke,
+afterward the distinguished admiral, who imitated the example of his
+chief, and after driving his first antagonist out of action, quitted
+his place in the van (b), brought to close quarters (b') a fine
+Spanish ship that had kept at bay five other English ships, and took
+her,--the only prize made that day. The commander of the English van,
+with his seconds, also behaved with spirit and came to close action.
+It is unnecessary to describe the battle further; as a military affair
+it deserves no attention, and its most important result was to bring
+out the merit of Hawke, whom the king and the government always
+remembered for his share in it. The general inefficiency and
+wide-spread misbehavior of the English captains, after five years of
+declared war, will partly explain the failure of England to obtain
+from her undoubted naval superiority the results she might have
+expected in this war--the first act in a forty years' drama--and they
+give military officers a lesson on the necessity of having their
+minds prepared and stocked, by study of the conditions of war in their
+own day, if they would not be found unready and perhaps disgraced in
+the hour of battle.[89] It is not to be supposed that so many English
+seamen misbehaved through so vulgar and rare a defect as mere
+cowardice; it was unpreparedness of mind and lack of military
+efficiency in the captains, combined with bad leadership on the part
+of the admiral, with a possible taint of ill will toward him as a rude
+and domineering superior, that caused this fiasco. Attention may here
+fitly be drawn to the effect of a certain cordiality and good-will on
+the part of superiors toward their subordinates. It is not perhaps
+essential to military success, but it undoubtedly contributes to the
+other elements of that success a spirit, a breath of life, which makes
+possible what would otherwise be impossible; which reaches heights of
+devotion and achievement that the strictest discipline, not so
+enkindled, cannot attain. Doubtless it is a natural gift. The highest
+example of it possibly ever known among seamen was Nelson. When he
+joined the fleet just before Trafalgar, the captains who gathered on
+board the flag-ship seemed to forget the rank of their admiral in
+their desire to testify their joy at meeting him. "This Nelson," wrote
+Captain Duff, who fell in the battle, "is so lovable and excellent a
+man, so kindly a leader, that we all wish to exceed his desires and
+anticipate his orders." He himself was conscious of this fascination
+and its value, when writing of the battle of the Nile to Lord Howe, he
+said, "I had the happiness to command a band of brothers."
+
+The celebrity attained by Matthews's action off Toulon, certainly not
+due to the skill with which it was managed, nor to its results, sprang
+from the clamor at home, and chiefly from the number and findings of
+the courts-martial that followed. Both the admiral and his second, and
+also eleven captains out of the twenty-nine, had charges preferred
+against them. The admiral was cashiered because he had broken the
+line; that is, because his captains did not follow him when he left it
+to get at the enemy,--a decision that smacks more of the Irish bull
+than of the Irish love of fighting. The second was acquitted on the
+technical grounds already given; he avoided the fault of breaking the
+line by keeping far enough away. Of the eleven captains one died, one
+deserted, seven were dismissed or suspended, two only were acquitted.
+Nor were the French and Spaniards better pleased; mutual
+recriminations passed. Admiral de Court was relieved from his command,
+while the Spanish admiral was decorated by his government with the
+title of Marquis de la Victoria, a most extraordinary reward for what
+was at best a drawn fight. The French, on the other hand, assert that
+he left the deck on the plea of a very slight wound, and that the ship
+was really fought by a French captain who happened to be on board.
+
+To use a common expression, this battle, the first general action
+since that off Malaga forty years before, "woke up" the English people
+and brought about a healthful reaction. The sifting process begun by
+the battle itself was continued, but the result was reached too late
+to have its proper effect on the current war. It is rather by its
+deficient action, than by such conspicuous successes as were attained
+in earlier and later times, that the general value of England's sea
+power is now shown; like some precious faculty, scarcely valued when
+possessed, but keenly missed when withdrawn. Mistress now of the seas
+rather by the weakness of her enemies than by her own disciplined
+strength, she drew from that mastery no adequate results; the most
+solid success, the capture of Cape Breton Island, in 1745, was
+achieved by the colonial forces of New England, to which indeed the
+royal navy lent valuable aid, for to troops so situated the fleet is
+the one line of communication. The misconduct off Toulon was repeated
+by officers high in command in the West and East Indies, resulting in
+the latter case in the loss of Madras. Other causes concurred with the
+effete condition of the naval officers to hamper the action of that
+sea power which launches out far from home. The condition of England
+itself was insecure; the cause of the Stuarts was still alive, and
+though a formidable invasion by fifteen thousand troops under Marshal
+Saxe, in 1744, was foiled, partly by the English Channel fleet, and
+partly by a storm which wrecked several of the transports assembled
+off Dunkirk, with the loss of many lives, yet the reality of the
+danger was shown in the following year, when the Pretender landed in
+Scotland with only a few men at his back and the northern kingdom rose
+with him. His successful invasion was carried well down into England
+itself; and sober historians have thought that at one time the chances
+of ultimate success were rather with than against him. Another serious
+fetter upon the full use of England's power was the direction given to
+the French operations on land and the mistaken means used to oppose
+them. Neglecting Germany, France turned upon the Austrian Netherlands,
+a country which England, out of regard to her sea interests, was not
+willing to see conquered. Her commercial preponderance would be
+directly threatened by the passing of Antwerp, Ostend, and the Scheldt
+into the hands of her great rival; and though her best check against
+this would have been to seize valuable French possessions elsewhere
+and hold them as a pledge, the weakness of her government and the
+present inefficiency of the navy prevented her doing so. The position
+of Hanover, again, controlled the action of England; for though united
+only by the tie of a common sovereign, the love of that sovereign for
+his continental dominion, his native country, made itself strongly
+felt in the councils of a weak and time-serving ministry. It was the
+disregard of Hanover by the first William Pitt, consequent upon his
+strong English feeling, that incensed the king and led him so long to
+resist the demands of the nation that he should be put at the head of
+affairs. These different causes--dissension at home, interest in the
+Netherlands, regard for Hanover--combined to prevent a subservient and
+second-rate ministry, divided also among themselves, from giving a
+proper direction and infusing a proper spirit into the naval war; but
+a better condition of the navy itself, more satisfactory results from
+it, might have modified even their action. As it was, the outcome of
+the war was almost nothing as regards the disputes between England and
+her special enemies. On the continent, the questions after 1745
+reduced themselves to two,--what part of the Austrian possessions
+should be given to Prussia, Spain, and Sardinia, and how peace was to
+be wrenched by France from England and Holland. The sea countries
+still, as of old, bore the expenses of the war, which however now fell
+chiefly upon England. Marshal Saxe, who commanded the French in
+Flanders throughout this war, summed up the situation in half a dozen
+words to his king. "Sire," said he, "peace is within the walls of
+Maestricht." This strong city opened the course of the Meuse and the
+way for the French army into the United Provinces from the rear; for
+the English fleet, in conjunction with that of Holland, prevented an
+attack from the sea. By the end of 1746, despite the efforts of the
+allies, nearly all Belgium was in the hands of the French; but up to
+this time, although Dutch subsidies were supporting the Austrian
+government, and Dutch troops in the Netherlands were fighting for it,
+there was nominal peace between the United Provinces and France. In
+April, 1747, "the King of France invaded Dutch Flanders, announcing
+that he was obliged to send his army into the territory of the
+republic, to arrest the protection granted by the States-General to
+the Austrian and English troops; but that he had no intention of
+breaking with it, and that the places and provinces occupied would be
+restored to the United Provinces as soon as they gave proof that they
+had ceased to succor the enemies of France." This was actual, but not
+formal, war. Numerous places fell during the year, and the successes
+of the French inclined both Holland and England to come to terms.
+Negotiations went on during the winter; but in April, 1748, Saxe
+invested Maestricht. This forced a peace.
+
+Meanwhile, though languishing, the sea war was not wholly uneventful.
+Two encounters between English and French squadrons happened during the
+year 1747, completing the destruction of the French fighting navy. In
+both cases the English were decidedly superior; and though there was
+given opportunity for some brilliant fighting by particular captains,
+and for the display of heroic endurance on the part of the French,
+greatly outnumbered but resisting to the last, only one tactical lesson
+is afforded. This lesson is, that when an enemy, either as the result
+of battle or from original inequality, is greatly inferior in force,
+obliged to fly without standing on the order of his flying, the regard
+otherwise due to order must be in a measure at least dismissed, and a
+general chase ordered. The mistake of Tourville in this respect after
+Beachy Head has already been noted. In the first of the cases now under
+discussion, the English Admiral Anson had fourteen ships against eight
+French, weaker individually as well as in total number; in the second,
+Sir Edward Hawke had fourteen against nine, the latter being somewhat
+larger, ship for ship, than the English. In both cases the signal was
+made for a general chase, and the action which resulted was a _mêlée_.
+There was no opportunity for anything else; the one thing necessary was
+to overtake the running enemy, and that can only certainly be done by
+letting the fleetest or best situated ships get ahead, sure that the
+speed of the fastest pursuers is better than that of the slowest of
+the pursued, and that therefore either the latter must be abandoned or
+the whole force brought to bay. In the second case the French
+commander, Commodore l'Étenduère, did not have to be followed far. He
+had with him a convoy of two hundred and fifty merchant-ships;
+detaching one ship-of-the-line to continue the voyage with the convoy,
+he placed himself with the other eight between it and the enemy,
+awaiting the attack under his topsails. As the English came up one
+after another they divided on either side of the French column, which
+was thus engaged on both sides. After an obstinate resistance, six of
+the French ships were taken, but the convoy was saved. The English had
+been so roughly handled that the two remaining French men-of-war got
+back safely to France. If, therefore, Sir Edward Hawke showed in his
+attack the judgment and dash which always distinguished that remarkable
+officer, it may be claimed for Commodore l'Étenduère that fortune, in
+assigning him the glorious disadvantage of numbers, gave him also the
+leading part in the drama, and that he filled it nobly. A French
+officer justly remarks that "he defended his convoy as on shore a
+position is defended, when the aim is to save an army corps or to
+assure an evolution; he gave himself to be crushed. After an action
+that lasted from mid-day till eight P.M. the convoy was saved, thanks
+to the obstinacy of the defence; two hundred and fifty ships were saved
+to their owners by the devotion of L'Étenduère and of the captains
+under his orders. This devotion cannot be questioned, for eight ships
+had but few chances of surviving an action with fourteen; and not only
+did the commander of the eight accept an action which he might possibly
+have avoided, but he knew how to inspire his lieutenants with trust in
+him; for all supported the strife with honor, and yielded at last,
+showing the most indisputable proofs of their fine and energetic
+defence. Four ships were entirely dismasted, two had only the foremast
+standing."[90] The whole affair, as conducted on both sides, affords an
+admirable study of how to follow up an advantage, original or
+acquired, and of the results that may be obtained by a gallant, even
+hopeless defence, for the furtherance of a particular object. It may be
+added that Hawke, disabled from further pursuit himself, sent a sloop
+of war express to the West Indies, with information of the approach of
+the convoy,--a step which led to the capture of part of it, and gives a
+touch of completeness to the entire transaction, which cannot fail to
+be gratifying to a military student interested in seeing the actors in
+history fully alive to and discharging to the utmost their important
+tasks.
+
+Before bringing to a close the story of this war and mentioning the
+peace settlement, an account must be given of the transactions in
+India, where France and England were then on equal terms. It has been
+said that affairs there were controlled by the East India companies of
+either nation; and that the French were represented in the peninsula
+by Dupleix, in the islands by La Bourdonnais. The latter was appointed
+to his post in 1735, and his untiring genius had been felt in all the
+details of administration, but especially in converting the Isle of
+France into a great naval station,--a work which had to be built up
+from the foundations. Everything was wanting; everything was by him in
+greater or less measure supplied,--storehouses, dock-yards,
+fortifications, seamen. In 1740, when war between France and England
+became probable, he obtained from the East India Company a squadron,
+though smaller than he asked, with which he proposed to ruin the
+English commerce and shipping; but when war actually began in 1744, he
+received orders not to attack the English, the French company hoping
+that neutrality might exist between the companies in that distant
+region, though the nations were at war. The proposition does not seem
+absurd in view of the curious relations of Holland to France,
+nominally at peace while sending troops to the Austrian army; but it
+was much to the advantage of the English, who were inferior in the
+Indian seas. Their company accepted the proffer, while saying that it
+of course could bind neither the home government nor the royal navy.
+The advantage won by the forethought of La Bourdonnais was thus lost;
+though first, and long alone, on the field, his hand was stayed.
+Meanwhile the English admiralty sent out a squadron and began to seize
+French ships between India and China; not till then did the company
+awake from its illusion. Having done this part of its work, the
+English squadron sailed to the coast of India, and in July, 1745,
+appeared off Pondicherry, the political capital of French India,
+prepared to sustain an attack which the governor of Madras was about
+to make by land. La Bourdonnais' time was now come.
+
+Meanwhile, on the mainland of the Indian peninsula, Dupleix had been
+forming wide views and laying broad foundations for the establishment
+of French preponderance. Having entered the service of their company
+at first in a subordinate clerical position, his ability had raised
+him by rapid steps to be head of the commercial establishments at
+Chandernagore, to which he gave a very great enlargement, seriously
+affecting, it is said even destroying, parts of the English trade. In
+1742 he was made governor-general, and as such removed to Pondicherry.
+Here he began to develop his policy, which aimed at bringing India
+under the power of France. He saw that through the progress and
+extension of the European races over the seas of the whole world the
+time had come when the Eastern peoples must be brought into
+ever-increasing contact with them; and he judged that India, so often
+conquered before, was now about to be conquered by Europeans. He meant
+that France should win the prize, and saw in England the only rival.
+His plan was to meddle in Indian politics: first, as head of a foreign
+and independent colony, which he already was; and second, as a vassal
+of the Great Mogul, which he intended to become. To divide and
+conquer, to advance the French lines and influence by judicious
+alliances, to turn wavering scales by throwing in on one side or the
+other the weight of French courage and skill,--such were his aims.
+Pondicherry, though a poor harbor, was well adapted for his political
+plans; being far distant from Delhi, the capital of the Mogul,
+aggressive extension might go on unmarked, until strong enough to
+bear the light. Dupleix's present aim, therefore, was to build up a
+great French principality in southeast India, around Pondicherry,
+while maintaining the present positions in Bengal.
+
+Let it be noted, however,--and the remark is necessary in order to
+justify the narration of these plans in connection with our subject, a
+connection perhaps not at first evident,--that the kernel of the
+question now before Dupleix was not how to build up an empire out of
+the Indian provinces and races, but how to get rid of the English, and
+that finally. The wildest dreams of sovereignty he may have
+entertained could not have surpassed the actual performance of England
+a few years later. European qualities were bound to tell, if not
+offset by the opposition of other Europeans; and such opposition on
+the one side or the other depended upon the control of the sea. In a
+climate so deadly to the white races the small numbers whose heroism
+bore up the war against fearful odds on many a field must be
+continually renewed. As everywhere and always, the action of sea power
+was here quiet and unperceived; but it will not be necessary to
+belittle in the least the qualities and career of Clive the English
+hero of this time and the founder of their empire, in order to prove
+the decisive influence which it exerted, despite the inefficiency of
+the English naval officers first engaged, and the lack of conclusive
+results in such naval battles as were fought.[91] If during the twenty
+years following 1743, French fleets instead of English had controlled
+the coasts of the peninsula and the seas between it and Europe, can it
+be believed that the schemes of Dupleix would have utterly failed?
+"Naval inferiority," justly says a French historian, "was the
+principal cause that arrested the progress of Dupleix. The French
+royal navy did not make its appearance in the East Indies" in his day.
+It remains to tell the story briefly.
+
+The English, in 1745, made preparations to besiege Pondicherry, in
+which the royal navy was to support the land forces; but the effects
+of Dupleix's political schemes were at once seen. The Nabob of the
+Carnatic threatened to attack Madras, and the English desisted. The
+following year La Bourdonnais appeared on the scene, and an action
+took place between his squadron and that under Commodore Peyton; after
+which, although it had been a drawn fight, the English officer
+deserted the coast, taking refuge in Ceylon, and leaving the control
+at sea with the French. La Bourdonnais anchored at Pondicherry, where
+quarrels between him and Dupleix soon arose, and were aggravated by
+the conflicting tone of their instructions from home. In September he
+went to Madras, attacked by land and sea, and took the place, but made
+with the governor the stipulation that it might be ransomed; and a
+ransom of two million dollars was accordingly paid. When Dupleix heard
+of this he was very angry, and claimed to annul the terms of
+capitulation on the ground that, once taken, the place was within his
+jurisdiction. La Bourdonnais resented this attempt as dishonorable to
+him after the promise given. While the quarrel was going on, a violent
+cyclone wrecked two of his ships and dismasted the rest. He soon after
+returned to France, where his activity and zeal were repaid by three
+years' imprisonment under charges, from the effects of which treatment
+he died. After his departure Dupleix broke the capitulation, seized
+and kept Madras, drove out the English settlers, and went on to
+strengthen the fortifications. From Madras he turned against Fort St.
+David, but the approach of an English squadron compelled him to raise
+the siege in March, 1747.
+
+During this year the disasters to the French navy in the Atlantic,
+already related, left the English undisturbed masters of the sea. In
+the following winter they sent to India the greatest European fleet
+yet seen in the East, with a large land force, the whole under the
+command of Admiral Boscawen, who bore a general's commission in
+addition to his naval rank. The fleet appeared off the Coromandel
+coast in August, 1748. Pondicherry was attacked by land and sea, but
+Dupleix made a successful resistance. The English fleet in its turn
+suffered from a hurricane, and the siege was raised in October.
+Shortly after came the news of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, which
+ended the European war. Dupleix, with his home communications
+restored, could now resume his subtle and persevering efforts to
+secure a territorial base which should, as far as possible, shelter
+him from the chances of sea war. Pity that so much genius and patience
+should have been spent in an effort wholly vain; nothing could protect
+against that sea attack but a naval aid, which the home government
+could not give. One of the conditions of the peace was that Madras
+should be restored to the English in exchange for Louisburg, the prize
+won by the North American colonists and released by them as
+reluctantly as Madras was by Dupleix. This was indeed illustrating
+Napoleon's boast that he would reconquer Pondicherry on the bank of
+the Vistula; yet, although the maritime supremacy of England made
+Louisburg in her hands much stronger than Madras, or any other
+position in India, when held by the French, the gain by the exchange
+was decidedly on the side of Great Britain. The English colonists were
+not men to be contented with this action; but they knew the naval
+power of England, and that they could do again what they had done
+once, at a point not far distant from their own shores. They
+understood the state of the case. Not so with Madras. How profound
+must have been the surprise of the native princes at this surrender,
+how injurious to the personality of Dupleix and the influence he had
+gained among them, to see him, in the very hour of victory, forced, by
+a power they could not understand, to relinquish his spoil! They were
+quite right; the mysterious power which they recognized by its
+working, though they saw it not, was not in this or that man, king or
+statesman, but in that control of the sea which the French government
+knew forbade the hope of maintaining that distant dependency against
+the fleets of England. Dupleix himself saw it not; for some years more
+he continued building, on the sand of Oriental intrigues and lies, a
+house which he vainly hoped would stand against the storms that must
+descend upon it.
+
+The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, ending this general war, was signed
+April 30, 1748, by England, France, and Holland, and finally by all
+the powers in October of the same year. With the exception of certain
+portions shorn off the Austrian Empire,--Silesia for Prussia, Parma
+for the Infante Philip of Spain, and some Italian territory to the
+east of Piedmont for the King of Sardinia,--the general tenor of the
+terms was a return to the status before the war. "Never, perhaps, did
+any war, after so many great events, and so large a loss of blood and
+treasure, end in replacing the nations engaged in it so nearly in the
+same situation as they held at first." In truth, as regarded France,
+England, and Spain, the affair of the Austrian succession, supervening
+so soon upon the outbreak of war between the two latter, had wholly
+turned hostilities aside from their true direction and postponed for
+fifteen years the settlement of disputes which concerned them much
+more nearly than the accession of Maria Theresa. In the distress of
+her old enemy, the House of Austria, France was easily led to renew
+her attacks upon it, and England as easily drawn to oppose the
+attempts of the French to influence or dictate in German affairs,--a
+course the more readily followed from the German interests of the
+king. It may be questioned whether the true policy for France was to
+direct the war upon the heart of the Austrian Empire, by way of the
+Rhine and Germany, or, as she finally did, upon the remote possessions
+of the Netherlands. In the former case she rested on friendly
+territory in Bavaria, and gave a hand to Prussia, whose military
+power was now first felt. Such was the first theatre of the war. On
+the other hand, in the Netherlands, whither the chief scene of
+hostilities shifted later, France struck not only at Austria, but also
+at the sea powers, always jealous of her intrusion there. They were
+the soul of the war against her, by their subsidies to her other
+enemies and by the losses inflicted on her commerce and that of Spain.
+The misery of France was alleged to the King of Spain by Louis XV., as
+forcing him to conclude peace; and it is evident that the suffering
+must have been great to induce him to yield such easy terms as he did,
+when he already held the Netherlands and parts of Holland itself by
+force of arms. But while so successful on the continent, his navy was
+annihilated and communication with the colonies thus cut off; and
+though it may be doubted whether the French government of that day
+cherished the colonial ambitions ascribed to it by some, it is certain
+French commerce was suffering enormously.
+
+While this was the condition of France, impelling her to peace,
+England in 1747 found that, from disputes about trade in Spanish
+America and through the inefficient action of her navy, she had been
+led away into a continental war, in which she had met with disaster,
+incurred nearly £80,000,000 of debt, and now saw her ally Holland
+threatened with invasion. The peace itself was signed under a threat
+by the French envoy that the slightest delay would be the signal for
+the French to destroy the fortifications of the captured towns and at
+once begin the invasion. At the same time her own resources were
+drained, and Holland, exhausted, was seeking to borrow from her.
+"Money," we are told, "was never so scarce in the city, and cannot be
+had at twelve per cent." Had France, therefore, at this time had a
+navy able to make head against that of England, even though somewhat
+inferior in strength, she might, with her grip on the Netherlands and
+Maestricht, have exacted her own conditions. England, on the other
+hand, though driven to the wall on the continent, was nevertheless
+able to obtain peace on equal terms, through the control of the sea by
+her navy.
+
+The commerce of all three nations had suffered enormously, but the
+balance of prizes in favor of Great Britain was estimated at
+£2,000,000. Stated in another way, it is said that the combined losses
+of French and Spanish commerce amounted during the war to 3,434 ships,
+the English to 3,238; but in considering such figures, the relation
+they bear to the total merchant shipping of either nation must not be
+forgotten. A thousand vessels were a very much larger fraction of
+French shipping than of English, and meant more grievous loss.
+
+ "After the disaster to the squadron of L'Étenduère," says a
+ French writer, "the French flag did not appear at sea.
+ Twenty-two ships-of-the-line composed the navy of France, which
+ sixty years before had one hundred and twenty. Privateers made
+ few prizes; followed everywhere, unprotected, they almost always
+ fell a prey to the English. The British naval forces, without
+ any rivals, passed unmolested over the seas. In one year they
+ are said to have taken from French commerce £7,000,000 sterling.
+ Yet this sea power, which might have seized French and Spanish
+ colonies, made few conquests from want of unity and persistence
+ in the direction given them."[92]
+
+To sum up, France was forced to give up her conquests for want of a
+navy, and England saved her position by her sea power, though she had
+failed to use it to the best advantage.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[88] Martin: History of France
+
+[89] There is not in modern naval history a more striking warning to
+the officers of every era, than this battle of Toulon. Coming as it
+did after a generation of comparative naval inactivity, it tried men's
+reputation as by fire. The lesson, in the judgment of the author, is
+the danger of disgraceful failure to men who have neglected to keep
+themselves prepared, not only in knowledge of their profession, but in
+the sentiment of what war requires. The average man is not a coward;
+but neither is he endowed by nature only with the rare faculty of
+seizing intuitively the proper course at a critical moment. He gains
+it, some more, some less, by experience or by reflection. If both have
+been lacking to him, indecision will follow; either from not knowing
+what to do, or from failure to realize that utter self-devotion of
+himself and his command are required. Of one of the captains cashiered
+it is said: "No man had ever lived with a fairer or more honorable
+character previous to the unfortunate event which did such irreparable
+injury to his reputation. Many of his contemporaries, men in the
+highest popular estimation, who knew him well, could scarcely credit
+what were indisputably established as facts, and declared, with the
+utmost astonishment, 'they believed it next to impossible for Captain
+Burrish to behave otherwise than as a man of gallantry and
+intrepidity.'" He had been twenty-five years in service, and eleven
+afloat as a captain (Charnock's Biographia Navalis). Others of the
+condemned men bore fair characters; and even Richard Norris, who
+absconded to avoid trial, had been of respectable repute.
+
+[90] Troude: Batailles Navales de la France
+
+[91] "Notwithstanding the extraordinary effort made by the French in
+sending out M. Lally with a considerable force last year, I am
+confident before the end of this [1759] they will be near their last
+gasp in the Carnatic unless some very unforeseen event interpose in
+their favor. The _superiority of our squadron_ and the plenty of money
+and supplies of all kinds which our friends on that coast will be
+furnished with from this province [Bengal], while the enemy are in
+total want of everything, without any visible means of redress, are
+such advantages as, if properly attended to, cannot fail of wholly
+effecting their ruin in that as well as in every other part of India"
+(Letter of Clive to Pitt, Calcutta, January 7, 1759; Gleig's Life of
+Lord Clive). It will be remembered that the control and use of Bengal,
+upon which Clive here counts, had only lately been acquired by the
+English; in the days of Dupleix they did not possess them. As will be
+seen later, Clive's predictions in this letter were wholly fulfilled.
+
+[92] Lapeyrouse-Bonfils: Hist. de la Marine Française.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+ SEVEN YEARS' WAR, 1756-1763.--ENGLAND'S OVERWHELMING POWER AND
+ CONQUESTS ON THE SEAS, IN NORTH AMERICA, EUROPE, AND EAST AND
+ WEST INDIES.--SEA BATTLES: BYNG OFF MINORCA; HAWKE AND CONFLANS;
+ POCOCK AND D'ACHÉ IN EAST INDIES.
+
+
+The urgency with which peace was desired by the principal parties to
+the War of the Austrian Succession may perhaps be inferred from the
+neglect to settle definitely and conclusively many of the questions
+outstanding between them, and notably the very disputes about which
+the war between England and Spain began. It seems as though the powers
+feared to treat thoroughly matters that contained the germs of future
+quarrels, lest the discussion should prolong the war that then
+existed. England made peace because the fall of Holland was otherwise
+inevitable, not because she had enforced, or surrendered, her claims
+of 1739 against Spain. The right of uninterrupted navigation in West
+Indian seas, free from any search, was left undetermined, as were
+other kindred matters. Not only so, but the boundaries between the
+English and French colonies in the valley of the Ohio, toward Canada,
+and on the land side of the Nova Scotian peninsula, remained as vague
+as they had before been. It was plain that peace could not last; and
+by it, if she had saved Holland, England surrendered the control of
+the sea which she had won. The true character of the strife, shrouded
+for a moment by the continental war, was revealed by the so-called
+peace; though formally allayed, the contention continued in every part
+of the world.
+
+In India, Dupleix, no longer able to attack the English openly, sought
+to undermine their power by the line of policy already described.
+Mingling adroitly in the quarrels of surrounding princes, and
+advancing his own power while so doing, he attained by rapid steps to
+the political control, in 1751, of the southern extremity of India,--a
+country nearly as large as France. Given the title of Nabob, he now
+had a place among the princes of the land. "A merely commercial policy
+was in his eyes a delusion; there could be no middle course between
+conquest and abandonment." In the course of the same year further
+grants extended the French power through extensive regions to the
+north and east, embracing all the coast of Orissa, and made Dupleix
+ruler of a third of India. To celebrate his triumphs, perhaps also in
+accordance with his policy of impressing the native mind, he now
+founded a town and put up a pillar setting forth his successes. But
+his doings caused the directors of the company only disquietude;
+instead of the reinforcements he asked for they sent him exhortations
+to peace; and at about this time Robert Clive, then but twenty-six
+years old, began to show his genius. The success of Dupleix and his
+allies became checkered with reverses; the English under Clive's
+leadership supported the native opponents of the French. The company
+at home was but little interested in his political schemes, and was
+annoyed at the failure of dividends. Negotiations were opened at
+London for a settlement of difficulties, and Dupleix was summoned
+home; the English government, it is said, making his recall an
+absolute condition of continued peace. Two days after his departure,
+in 1754, his successor signed a treaty with the English governor,
+wholly abandoning his policy, stipulating that neither company should
+interfere in the internal politics of India, and that all possessions
+acquired during the war in the Carnatic should be given back to the
+Mogul. What France thus surrendered was in extent and population an
+empire, and the mortification of French historians has branded the
+concession as ignominious; but how could the country have been held,
+with the English navy cutting off the eagerly desired reinforcements?
+
+In North America, the declaration of peace was followed by renewed
+agitation, which sprang from and betokened the deep feeling and keen
+sense of the situation had by the colonists and local authorities on
+either side. The Americans held to their points with the stubbornness
+of their race. "There is no repose for our thirteen colonies," wrote
+Franklin, "so long as the French are masters of Canada." The rival
+claims to the central unsettled region, which may accurately enough be
+called the valley of the Ohio, involved, if the English were
+successful, the military separation of Canada from Louisiana; while on
+the other hand, occupation by the French, linking the two extremes of
+their acknowledged possessions, would shut up the English colonists
+between the Alleghany Mountains and the sea. The issues were apparent
+enough to leading Americans of that day, though they were more
+far-reaching than the wisest of them could have foreseen; there is
+room for curious speculation as to the effect, not only upon America,
+but upon the whole world, if the French government had had the will,
+and the French people the genius, effectively to settle and hold the
+northern and western regions which they then claimed. But while
+Frenchmen upon the spot saw clearly enough the coming contest and the
+terrible disadvantage of unequal numbers and inferior navy under which
+Canada must labor, the home government was blind alike to the value of
+the colony and to the fact that it must be fought for; while the
+character and habits of the French settlers, lacking in political
+activity and unused to begin and carry through measures for the
+protection of their own interests, did not remedy the neglect of the
+mother-country. The paternal centralizing system of French rule had
+taught the colonists to look to the mother-country, and then failed to
+take care of them. The governors of Canada of that day acted as
+careful and able military men, doing what they could to supply defects
+and weaknesses; it is possible that their action was more consistent
+and well-planned than that of the English governors; but with the
+carelessness of both home governments, nothing in the end could take
+the place of the capacity of the English colonists to look out for
+themselves. It is odd and amusing to read the conflicting statements
+of English and French historians as to the purposes and aims of the
+opposing statesmen in these years when the first murmurings of the
+storm were heard; the simple truth seems to be that one of those
+conflicts familiarly known to us as irrepressible was at hand, and
+that both governments would gladly have avoided it. The boundaries
+might be undetermined; the English colonists were not.
+
+The French governors established posts where they could on the
+debatable ground, and it was in the course of a dispute over one of
+these, in 1754, that the name of Washington first appears in history.
+Other troubles occurred in Nova Scotia, and both home governments then
+began to awake. In 1755 Braddock's disastrous expedition was directed
+against Fort Duquesne, now Pittsburg, where Washington had surrendered
+the year before. Later in the year another collision between the
+English and French colonists happened near Lake George. Although
+Braddock's expedition had been first to start, the French government
+was also moving. In May of the same year a large squadron of
+ships-of-war, mostly armed _en flûte_[93], sailed from Brest with
+three thousand troops, and a new governor, De Vaudreuil, for Canada.
+Admiral Boscawen had already preceded this fleet, and lay in wait for
+it off the mouth of the St. Lawrence. There was as yet no open war,
+and the French were certainly within their rights in sending a
+garrison to their own colonies; but Boscawen's orders were to stop
+them. A fog which scattered the French squadron also covered its
+passage; but two of the ships were seen by the English fleet and
+captured, June 8, 1755. As soon as this news reached Europe, the
+French ambassador to London was recalled, but still no declaration of
+war followed. In July, Sir Edward Hawke was sent to sea with orders to
+cruise between Ushant and Cape Finisterre, and to seize any French
+ships-of-the-line he might see; to which were added in August further
+orders to take all French ships of every kind, men-of-war, privateers,
+and merchantmen, and to send them into English ports. Before the end
+of the year, three hundred trading vessels, valued at six million
+dollars, had been captured, and six thousand French seamen were
+imprisoned in England,--enough to man nearly ten ships-of-the-line.
+All this was done while nominal peace still existed. War was not
+declared until six months later.
+
+France still seemed to submit, but she was biding her time, and
+preparing warily a severe stroke for which she had now ample
+provocation. Small squadrons, or detachments of ships, continued to be
+sent to the West Indies and to Canada, while noisy preparations were
+made in the dock-yard of Brest, and troops assembled upon the shores
+of the Channel. England saw herself threatened with invasion,--a
+menace to which her people have been peculiarly susceptible. The
+government of the day, weak at best, was singularly unfit for waging
+war, and easily misled as to the real danger. Besides, England was
+embarrassed, as always at the beginning of a war, not only by the
+numerous points she had to protect in addition to her commerce, but
+also by the absence of a large number of her seamen in trading-vessels
+all over the world. The Mediterranean was therefore neglected; and the
+French, while making loud demonstrations on the Channel, quietly
+equipped at Toulon twelve ships-of-the-line, which sailed on the 10th
+of April, 1756, under Admiral la Galissonière, convoying one hundred
+and fifty transports with fifteen thousand troops, commanded by the
+Duke of Richelieu. A week later the army was safely landed in Minorca,
+and Port Mahon invested, while the fleet established itself in
+blockade before the harbor.
+
+Practically this was a complete surprise; for though the suspicions of
+the English government had been at last aroused, its action came too
+late. The garrison had not been reinforced, and numbered a scant three
+thousand men, from which thirty-five officers were absent on leave,
+among them the governor and the colonels of all the regiments.
+Admiral Byng sailed from Portsmouth with ten ships-of-the-line only
+three days before the French left Toulon. Six weeks later, when he
+reached the neighborhood of Port Mahon, his fleet had been increased
+to thirteen ships-of-the-line, and he had with him four thousand
+troops. It was already late; a practicable breach had been made in the
+fortress a week before. When the English fleet came in sight, La
+Galissonière stood out to meet it and bar the entrance to the harbor.
+
+The battle that followed owes its historical celebrity wholly to the
+singular and tragic event which arose from it. Unlike Matthews's
+battle off Toulon, it does afford some tactical instruction, though
+mainly applicable to the obsolete conditions of warfare under sail;
+but it is especially linked to the earlier action through the effect
+produced upon the mind of the unfortunate Byng by the sentence of the
+court-martial upon Matthews. During the course of the engagement he
+repeatedly alluded to the censure upon that admiral for leaving the
+line, and seems to have accepted the judgment as justifying, if not
+determining, his own course. Briefly, it may be said that the two
+fleets, having sighted each other on the morning of the 20th of May,
+were found after a series of manoeuvres both on the port tack, with an
+easterly wind, heading southerly, the French to leeward, between the
+English and the harbor. Byng ran down in line ahead off the wind, the
+French remaining by it, so that when the former made the signal to
+engage, the fleets were not parallel, but formed an angle of from
+thirty to forty degrees (Plate VIIa. A, A). The attack which Byng by
+his own account meant to make, each ship against its opposite in the
+enemy's line, difficult to carry out under any circumstances, was here
+further impeded by the distance between the two rears being much
+greater than that between the vans; so that his whole line could not
+come into action at the same moment. When the signal was made, the van
+ships kept away in obedience to it, and ran down for the French so
+nearly head-on (B, B) as to sacrifice their artillery fire in great
+measure; they received three raking broadsides, and were seriously
+dismantled aloft. The sixth English ship, counting from the van, had
+her foretopmast shot away, flew up into the wind, and came aback,
+stopping and doubling up the rear of the line. Then undoubtedly was
+the time for Byng, having committed himself to the fight, to have set
+the example and borne down, just as Farragut did at Mobile when his
+line was confused by the stopping of the next ahead; but according to
+the testimony of the flag-captain, Matthews's sentence deterred him.
+"You see, Captain Gardiner, that the signal for the line is out, and
+that I am ahead of the ships 'Louisa' and 'Trident' [which in the
+order should have been ahead of him]. You would not have me, as the
+admiral of the fleet, run down as if I were going to engage a single
+ship. It was Mr. Matthews's misfortune to be prejudiced by not
+carrying down his force together, which I shall endeavor to avoid."
+The affair thus became entirely indecisive; the English van was
+separated from the rear and got the brunt of the fight (C). One French
+authority blames Galissonière for not tacking to windward of the
+enemy's van and crushing it. Another says he ordered the movement, but
+that it could not be made from the damage to the rigging; but this
+seems improbable, as the only injury the French squadron underwent
+aloft was the loss of one topsail yard, whereas the English suffered
+very badly. The true reason is probably that given and approved by one
+of the French authorities on naval warfare. Galissonière considered
+the support of the land attack on Mahon paramount to any destruction
+of the English fleet, if he thereby exposed his own. "The French navy
+has always preferred the glory of assuring or preserving a conquest to
+that more brilliant perhaps, but actually less real, of taking some
+ships, and therein has approached more nearly the true end that has
+been proposed in war."[94] The justice of this conclusion depends upon
+the view that is taken of the true end of naval war. If it is merely
+to assure one or more positions ashore, the navy becomes simply a
+branch of the army for a particular occasion, and subordinates its
+action accordingly; but if the true end is to preponderate over the
+enemy's navy and so control the sea, then the enemy's ships and fleets
+are the true objects to be assailed on all occasions. A glimmer of
+this view seems to have been present to Morogues when he wrote that at
+sea there is no field of battle to be held, nor places to be won. If
+naval warfare is a war of posts, then the action of the fleets must be
+subordinate to the attack and defence of the posts; if its object is
+to break up the enemy's power on the sea, cutting off his
+communications with the rest of his possessions, drying up the sources
+of his wealth in his commerce, and making possible a closure of his
+ports, then the object of attack must be his organized military forces
+afloat; in short, his navy. It is to the latter course, for whatever
+reason adopted, that England owed a control of the sea that forced the
+restitution of Minorca at the end of this war. It is to the former
+that France owed the lack of prestige in her navy. Take this very case
+of Minorca; had Galissonière been beaten, Richelieu and his fifteen
+thousand troops must have been lost to France, cooped up in Minorca,
+as the Spaniards, in 1718, were confined to Sicily. The French navy
+therefore assured the capture of the island; but so slight was the
+impression on the ministry and the public, that a French naval officer
+tells us: "Incredible as it may seem, the minister of marine, after
+the glorious affair off Mahon, instead of yielding to the zeal of an
+enlightened patriotism and profiting by the impulse which this victory
+gave to France to build up the navy, saw fit to sell the ships and
+rigging which we still had in our ports. We shall soon see the
+deplorable consequences of this cowardly conduct on the part of our
+statesmen."[95] Neither the glory nor the victory is very apparent;
+but it is quite conceivable that had the French admiral thought less
+of Mahon and used the great advantage luck had given him to take, or
+sink, four or five of the enemy, the French people would have
+anticipated the outbreak of naval enthusiasm which appeared too late,
+in 1760. During the remainder of this war the French fleets, except
+in the East Indies, appear only as the pursued in a general chase.
+
+The action imposed upon the French fleets was, however, consistent
+with the general policy of the French government; and John Clerk was
+probably right in saying that there is apparent in this action off
+Minorca a tactics too well defined to be merely accidental,--a tactics
+essentially defensive in its scope and aim.[96] In assuming the
+lee-gage the French admiral not only covered Mahon, but took a good
+defensive position, imposing upon his enemy the necessity of attacking
+with all the consequent risks. Clerk seems to bring evidence enough to
+prove that the leading French ships did, after roughly handling their
+assailants, astutely withdraw (C) thus forcing the latter to attack
+again with like results. The same policy was repeatedly followed
+during the American war twenty years later, and with pretty uniform
+success; so much so that, although formal avowal of the policy is
+wanting, it may be concluded that circumspection, economy, defensive
+war, remained the fixed purpose of the French authorities, based
+doubtless upon the reasons given by Admiral Grivel, of that navy:--
+
+ "If two maritime powers are at strife, the one that has the
+ fewest ships must always avoid doubtful engagements; it must run
+ only those risks necessary for carrying out its missions, avoid
+ action by manoeuvring, or at worst, if forced to engage, assure
+ itself of favorable conditions. The attitude to be taken should
+ depend radically upon the power of your opponent. Let us not
+ tire of repeating, according as she has to do with an inferior
+ or superior power, France has before her two distinct
+ strategies, radically opposite both in means and ends,--Grand
+ War and Cruising War."
+
+Such a formal utterance by an officer of rank must be received with
+respect, and the more so when it expresses a consistent policy
+followed by a great and warlike nation; yet it may be questioned
+whether a sea power worthy of the name can thus be secured. Logically,
+it follows from the position assumed, that combats between equal
+forces are to be discouraged, because the loss to you is greater than
+the loss to your opponent. "In fact," says Ramatuelle, upholding the
+French policy, "of what consequence to the English would be the loss
+of a few ships?" But the next inevitable step in the argument is that
+it is better not to meet the enemy. As another Frenchman,[97]
+previously quoted, says, it was considered a mishap to their ships to
+fall in with a hostile force, and, if one was met, their duty was to
+avoid action if possible to do so honorably. They had ulterior objects
+of more importance than fighting the enemy's navy. Such a course
+cannot be consistently followed for years without affecting the spirit
+and tone of the officers charged with it; and it led directly to as
+brave a man as ever commanded a fleet, the Comte de Grasse, failing to
+crush the English under Rodney when he had the chance, in 1782. On the
+9th of April of that year, being chased by the English among the
+Windward Islands, it happened to him to have sixteen of their fleet
+under his lee while the main body was becalmed under Dominica. Though
+greatly superior to the separated ships, during the three hours that
+this state of things lasted, De Grasse left them undisturbed, except
+by a distant cannonade by his own van; and his action was justified by
+the court which tried him, in which were many officers of high rank
+and doubtless of distinction, as being "an act of prudence on the part
+of the admiral, dictated to him by the ulterior projects of the
+cruise." Three days later he was signally beaten by the fleet he had
+failed to attack at disadvantage, and all the ulterior projects of the
+cruise went down with him.
+
+To return to Minorca; after the action of the 20th, Byng called a
+council of war, which decided that nothing more could be done, and
+that the English fleet should go to Gibraltar and cover that place
+from an attack. At Gibraltar, Byng was relieved by Hawke and sent home
+to be tried. The court-martial, while expressly clearing him of
+cowardice or disaffection, found him guilty of not doing his utmost
+either to defeat the French fleet or to relieve the garrison at
+Mahon; and, as the article of war prescribed death with no
+alternative punishment for this offence, it felt compelled to sentence
+him to death. The king refused to pardon, and Byng was accordingly
+shot.
+
+The expedition against Minorca was begun while nominal peace still
+lasted. On the 17th of May, three days before Byng's battle, England
+declared war, and France replied on the 20th of June. On the 28th,
+Port Mahon surrendered, and Minorca passed into the hands of France.
+
+The nature of the troubles between the two nations, and the scenes
+where they occurred, pointed out clearly enough the proper theatre of
+the strife, and we should by rights now be at the opening of a sea
+war, illustrated by great naval actions and attended with great
+modifications in the colonial and foreign possessions of the two
+powers. Of the two, England alone recognized the truth; France was
+again turned aside from the sea by causes which will shortly be given.
+Her fleets scarcely appeared; and losing the control of the sea, she
+surrendered one by one her colonies and all her hopes in India. Later
+in the struggle she drew in Spain as her ally, but it was only to
+involve that country in her own external ruin. England, on the other
+hand, defended and nourished by the sea, rode it everywhere in
+triumph. Secure and prosperous at home, she supported with her money
+the enemies of France. At the end of seven years the kingdom of Great
+Britain had become the British Empire.
+
+It is far from certain that France could have successfully contended
+with England on the sea, without an ally. In 1756 the French navy had
+sixty-three ships-of-the-line, of which forty-five were in fair
+condition; but equipments and artillery were deficient. Spain had
+forty-six ships-of-the-line; but from the previous and subsequent
+performances of the Spanish navy, it may well be doubted if its worth
+were equal to its numbers. England at this time had one hundred and
+thirty ships-of-the-line; four years later she had one hundred and
+twenty actually in commission. Of course when a nation allows its
+inferiority, whether on land or sea, to become as great as that of
+France now was, it cannot hope for success.
+
+Nevertheless, she obtained advantages at first. The conquest of
+Minorca was followed in November of the same year by the acquisition
+of Corsica. The republic of Genoa surrendered to France all the
+fortified harbors of the island. With Toulon, Corsica, and Port Mahon,
+she now had a strong grip on the Mediterranean. In Canada, the
+operations of 1756, under Montcalm, were successful despite the
+inferiority of numbers. At the same time an attack by a native prince
+in India took from the English Calcutta, and gave an opportunity to
+the French.
+
+Yet another incident offered a handle for French statesmanship to
+strengthen her position on the ocean. The Dutch had promised France
+not to renew their alliance with England, but to remain neutral.
+England retaliated by declaring "all the ports of France in a state of
+blockade, and all vessels bound to those ports liable to seizure as
+lawful prize." Such a violation of the rights of neutrals can only be
+undertaken by a nation that feels it has nothing to fear from their
+rising against it. The aggressiveness, born of the sense of power,
+which characterized England might have been used by France to draw
+Spain and possibly other States into alliance against her.
+
+Instead of concentrating against England, France began another
+continental war, this time with a new and extraordinary alliance. The
+Empress of Austria, working on the religious superstitions of the king
+and upon the anger of the king's mistress, who was piqued at sarcasms
+uttered against her by Frederick the Great, drew France into an
+alliance with Austria against Prussia. This alliance was further
+joined by Russia, Sweden and Poland. The empress urged that the two
+Roman Catholic powers should unite to take Silesia away from a
+Protestant king, and expressed her willingness to give to France a
+part of her possessions in the Netherlands, which France had always
+desired.
+
+Frederick the Great, learning the combination against him, instead of
+waiting for it to develop, put his armies in motion and invaded
+Saxony, whose ruler was also King of Poland. This movement, in
+October, 1756, began the Seven Years' War; which, like the War of the
+Austrian Succession, but not to the same extent, drew some of the
+contestants off from the original cause of difference. But while
+France, having already on hand one large quarrel with her neighbor
+across the Channel, was thus needlessly entering upon another
+struggle, with the avowed end of building up that Austrian empire
+which a wiser policy had long striven to humble, England this time saw
+clearly where her true interests lay. Making the continental war
+wholly subsidiary, she turned her efforts upon the sea and the
+colonies; at the same time supporting Frederick both with money and
+cordial sympathy in the war for the defence of his kingdom, which so
+seriously diverted and divided the efforts of France. England thus had
+really but one war on hand. In the same year the direction of the
+struggle was taken from the hands of a weak ministry and given into
+those of the bold and ardent William Pitt, who retained his office
+till 1761, by which time the ends of the war had practically been
+secured.
+
+In the attack upon Canada there were two principal lines to be
+chosen,--that by the way of Lake Champlain, and that by the way of the
+St. Lawrence. The former was entirely inland, and as such does not
+concern our subject, beyond noting that not till after the fall of
+Quebec, in 1759, was it fairly opened to the English. In 1757 the
+attempt against Louisburg failed; the English admiral being unwilling
+to engage sixteen ships-of-the-line he found there, with the fifteen
+under his own command, which were also, he said, of inferior metal.
+Whether he was right in his decision or not, the indignation felt in
+England clearly shows the difference of policy underlying the action
+of the French and English governments. The following year an admiral
+of a higher spirit, Boscawen, was sent out accompanied with twelve
+thousand troops, and, it must in fairness be said, found only five
+ships in the port. The troops were landed, while the fleet covered
+the siege from the only molestation it could fear, and cut off from
+the besieged the only line by which they could look for supplies. The
+island fell in 1758, opening the way by the St. Lawrence to the heart
+of Canada, and giving the English a new base both for the fleet and
+army.
+
+The next year the expedition under Wolfe was sent against Quebec. All
+his operations were based upon the fleet, which not only carried his
+army to the spot, but moved up and down the river as the various
+feints required. The landing which led to the decisive action was made
+directly from the ships. Montcalm, whose skill and determination had
+blocked the attacks by way of Lake Champlain the two previous years,
+had written urgently for reinforcements; but they were refused by the
+minister of war, who replied that in addition to other reasons it was
+too probable that the English would intercept them on the way, and
+that the more France sent, the more England would be moved to send. In
+a word, the possession of Canada depended upon sea power.
+
+Montcalm, therefore, in view of the certain attack upon Quebec by the
+river, was compelled to weaken his resistance on the Champlain route;
+nevertheless, the English did not get farther than the foot of the
+lake that year, and their operations, though creditable, had no effect
+upon the result at Quebec.
+
+In 1760, the English, holding the course of the St. Lawrence, with
+Louisburg at one end and Quebec at the other, seemed firmly seated.
+Nevertheless, the French governor, De Vaudreuil, still held out at
+Montreal, and the colonists still hoped for help from France. The
+English garrison at Quebec, though inferior in numbers to the forces
+of the Canadians, was imprudent enough to leave the city and meet them
+in the open field. Defeated there, and pursued by the enemy, the
+latter nearly entered Quebec pell-mell with the English troops, and
+trenches were opened against the city. A few days later an English
+squadron came in sight, and the place was relieved. "Thus," says the
+old English chronicler of the navy, "the enemy saw what it was to be
+inferior at sea; for, had a French squadron got the start of the
+English in sailing up the river, Quebec must have fallen." Wholly cut
+off now, the little body of Frenchmen that remained in Montreal was
+surrounded by three English armies, which had come, one by way of Lake
+Champlain, the others from Oswego and from Quebec. The surrender of
+the city on the 8th of September, 1760, put an end forever to the
+French possession of Canada.
+
+In all other quarters of the world, after the accession of Pitt to
+power, the same good fortune followed the English arms, checkered only
+at the first by some slight reverses. It was not so on the continent,
+where the heroism and skill of Frederick the Great maintained with
+difficulty his brilliant struggle against France, Austria, and Russia.
+The study of the difficulties of his position, of the military and
+political combinations attending it, do not belong to our subject. Sea
+power does not appear directly in its effects upon the struggle, but
+indirectly it was felt in two ways,--first, by the subsidies which the
+abundant wealth and credit of England enabled her to give Frederick,
+in whose thrifty and able hands they went far; and second, in the
+embarrassment caused to France by the attacks of England upon her
+colonies and her own sea-coast, in the destruction of her commerce,
+and in the money--all too little, it is true, and grudgingly
+given--which France was forced to bestow on her navy. Stung by the
+constant lashing of the Power of the sea, France, despite the
+blindness and unwillingness of the rulers, was driven to undertake
+something against it. With a navy much inferior, unable to cope in all
+quarters of the world, it was rightly decided to concentrate upon one
+object; and the object chosen was Great Britain itself, whose shores
+were to be invaded. This decision, soon apprehended by the fears of
+the English nation, caused the great naval operations to centre for
+some years around the coast of France and in the Channel. Before
+describing them, it will be well to sum up the general plan by which
+England was guided in the use of her overwhelming sea power.
+
+Besides the operations on the North American continent already
+described, this plan was fourfold:--
+
+1. The French Atlantic ports were watched in force, especially Brest,
+so as to keep the great fleets or small squadrons from getting out
+without fighting.
+
+2. Attacks were made upon the Atlantic and Channel coasts with flying
+squadrons, followed at times by the descent of small bodies of troops.
+These attacks, the direction of which could not be foreseen by the
+enemy, were chiefly intended to compel him to keep on hand forces at
+many points, and so to diminish the army acting against the King of
+Prussia. While the tendency would certainly be that way, it may be
+doubted whether the actual diversion in favor of Frederick was of much
+consequence. No particular mention will be made of these operations,
+which had but little visible effect upon the general course of the
+war.
+
+3. A fleet was kept in the Mediterranean and near Gibraltar to prevent
+the French Toulon fleet from getting round to the Atlantic. It does
+not appear that any attempt was seriously made to stop communications
+between France and Minorca. The action of the Mediterranean fleet,
+though an independent command, was subsidiary to that in the Atlantic.
+
+4. Distant foreign expeditions were sent against the French colonies
+in the West India Islands and on the coast of Africa, and a squadron
+was maintained in the East Indies to secure the control of those seas,
+thereby supporting the English in the Peninsula, and cutting off the
+communications of the French. These operations in distant waters,
+never intermitted, assumed greater activity and larger proportions
+after the destruction of the French navy had relieved England from the
+fear of invasion, and when the ill-advised entrance of Spain into the
+war, in 1762, offered yet richer prizes to her enterprise.
+
+The close blockade of the enemy's fleet in Brest, which was first
+systematically carried out during this war, may be considered rather a
+defensive than an offensive operation; for though the intention
+certainly was to fight if opportunity offered, the chief object was to
+neutralize an offensive weapon in the enemy's hands; the destruction
+of the weapon was secondary. The truth of this remark is shown by the
+outburst of fear and anger which swept over England when an
+unavoidable absence of the blockading fleet in 1759 allowed the French
+to escape. The effect of the blockade in this and after wars was to
+keep the French in a state of constant inferiority in the practical
+handling of their ships, however fair-showing their outward appearance
+or equal their numerical force. The position of the port of Brest was
+such that a blockaded fleet could not get out during the heavy
+westerly gales that endangered the blockaders; the latter, therefore,
+had the habit of running away from them to Torbay or Plymouth, sure,
+with care, of getting back to their station with an east wind before a
+large and ill-handled fleet could get much start of them.
+
+In the latter part of 1758, France, depressed by the sense of failure
+upon the continent, mortified and harassed by English descents upon
+her coasts, which had been particularly annoying that year, and seeing
+that it was not possible to carry on both the continental and sea wars
+with her money resources, determined to strike directly at England.
+Her commerce was annihilated while the enemy's throve. It was the
+boast of London merchants that under Pitt commerce was united with and
+made to flourish by war;[98] and this thriving commerce was the soul
+also of the land struggle, by the money it lavished on the enemy of
+France.
+
+At this time a new and active-minded minister, Choiseul, was called
+into power by Louis XV. From the beginning of 1759, preparations were
+made in the ocean and Channel ports. Flat-boats to transport troops
+were built at Havre, Dunkirk, Brest, and Rochefort. It was intended to
+embark as many as fifty thousand men for the invasion of England,
+while twelve thousand were to be directed upon Scotland. Two squadrons
+were fitted out, each of respectable strength, one at Toulon, the
+other at Brest. The junction of these two squadrons at Brest was the
+first step in the great enterprise.
+
+It was just here that it broke down, through the possession of
+Gibraltar by the English, and their naval superiority. It seems
+incredible that even the stern and confident William Pitt should, as
+late as 1757, have offered to surrender to Spain the watch-tower from
+which England overlooks the road between the Mediterranean and the
+Atlantic, as the price of her help to recover Minorca. Happily for
+England, Spain refused. In 1759, Admiral Boscawen commanded the
+English Mediterranean fleet. In making an attack upon French frigates
+in Toulon roads, some of his ships were so damaged that he sailed with
+his whole squadron to Gibraltar to refit; taking the precaution,
+however, to station lookout frigates at intervals, and to arrange
+signals by guns to notify him betimes of the enemy's approach. Taking
+advantage of his absence, and in obedience to orders, the French
+commodore, De la Clue, left Toulon with twelve ships-of-the-line on
+the 5th of August, and on the 17th found himself at the Straits of
+Gibraltar, with a brisk east wind carrying him out into the Atlantic.
+Everything seemed propitious, a thick haze and falling night
+concealing the French ships from the land, while not preventing their
+sight of each other, when an English frigate loomed up in the near
+distance. As soon as she saw the fleet, knowing they must be enemies,
+she hauled in for the land and began firing signal-guns. Pursuit was
+useless; flight alone remained. Hoping to elude the chase he knew must
+follow, the French commodore steered west-northwest for the open sea,
+putting out all lights; but either from carelessness or
+disaffection,--for the latter is hinted by one French naval
+officer,--five out of the twelve ships headed to the northward and put
+into Cadiz when on the following morning they could not see the
+commodore. The latter was dismayed when at daylight he saw his forces
+thus diminished. At eight o'clock some sails made their appearance,
+and for a few minutes he hoped they were the missing ships. Instead
+of that, they were the lookouts of Boscawen's fleet, which, numbering
+fourteen ships-of-the-line, was in full pursuit. The French formed
+their order on one of the close-hauled lines, and fled; but of course
+their fleet-speed was less than that of the fastest English ships. The
+general rule for all chases where the pursuer is decidedly superior,
+namely, that order must be observed only so far as to keep the leading
+ships within reasonable supporting distance of the slower ones, so
+that they may not be singly overpowered before the latter can come up,
+was by this time well understood in the English navy, and that is
+certainly the fitting time for a _mélêe_. Boscawen acted accordingly.
+The rear ship of the French, on the other hand, nobly emulated the
+example of L'Étenduère when he saved his convoy. Overtaken at two
+o'clock by the leading English ship, and soon after surrounded by four
+others, her captain made for five hours a desperate resistance, from
+which he could hope, not to save himself, but to delay the enemies
+long enough for the better sailers to escape. He so far succeeded
+that--thanks to the injury done by him and their better speed--they
+did that day escape action at close quarters, which could only have
+ended in their capture. When he hauled down his flag, his three
+topmasts were gone, the mizzen-mast fell immediately after, and the
+hull was so full of water that the ship was with difficulty kept
+afloat. M. de Sabran--his name is worthy to be remembered--had
+received eleven wounds in this gallant resistance, by which he
+illustrated so signally the duty and service of a rearguard in
+retarding pursuit. That night two of the French ships hauled off to
+the westward, and so escaped. The other four continued their flight as
+before; but the next morning the commodore, despairing of escape,
+headed for the Portuguese coast, and ran them all ashore between Lagos
+and Cape St. Vincent. The English admiral followed and attacked them,
+taking two and burning the others, without regard to the neutrality of
+Portugal. For this insult no amend was made beyond a formal apology;
+Portugal was too dependent upon England to be seriously considered.
+Pitt, writing to the English minister to Portugal about the affair,
+told him that while soothing the susceptibilities of the Portuguese
+government he must not allow it to suppose that either the ships would
+be given up or the distinguished admiral censured.[99]
+
+The destruction or dispersal of the Toulon fleet stopped the invasion
+of England, though the five ships that got into Cadiz remained a
+matter of anxiety to Sir Edward Hawke, who cruised before Brest.
+Choiseul, balked of his main object, still clung to the invasion of
+Scotland. The French fleet at Brest, under Marshal de Conflans, a sea
+officer despite his title, numbered twenty sail-of-the-line, besides
+frigates. The troops to be embarked are variously stated at fifteen to
+twenty thousand. The original purpose was to escort the transports
+with only five ships-of-the-line, besides smaller vessels. Conflans
+insisted that the whole fleet ought to go. The minister of the navy
+thought that the admiral was not a sufficiently skilful tactician to
+be able to check the advance of an enemy, and so insure the safe
+arrival of the convoy at its destination near the Clyde without
+risking a decisive encounter. Believing therefore that there would be
+a general action, he considered that it would be better to fight it
+before the troops sailed; for if disastrous, the convoy would not be
+sacrificed, and if decisively victorious, the road would then be
+clear. The transports were assembled, not at Brest, but in the ports
+to the southward as far as the mouth of the Loire. The French fleet
+therefore put to sea with the expectation and purpose of fighting the
+enemy; but it is not easy to reconcile its subsequent course with that
+purpose, nor with the elaborate fighting instructions[100] issued by
+the admiral before sailing.
+
+About the 5th or 6th of November there came on a tremendous westerly
+gale. After buffeting it for three days, Hawke bore up and ran into
+Torbay, where he waited for the wind to shift, keeping his fleet in
+readiness to sail at once. The same gale, while keeping back the
+French already in Brest, gave the chance to a small squadron under M.
+Bompart, which was expected from the West Indies, to slip in during
+Hawke's absence. Conflans made his preparations with activity,
+distributed Bompart's crews among his own ships, which were not very
+well manned, and got to sea with an easterly wind on the 14th. He
+stood at once to the southward, flattering himself that he had escaped
+Hawke. The latter, however, had sailed from Torbay on the 12th; and
+though again driven back, sailed a second time on the 14th, the same
+day that Conflans left Brest. He soon readied his station, learned
+that the enemy had been seen to the southward steering east, and
+easily concluding that they were bound to Quiberon Bay, shaped his own
+course for the same place under a press of sail. At eleven P.M. of the
+19th the French admiral estimated his position to be seventy miles
+southwest by west from Belle Isle;[101] and the wind springing up
+fresh from the westward, he stood for it under short sail, the wind
+continuing to increase and hauling to west-northwest. At daybreak
+several ships were seen ahead, which proved to be the English squadron
+of Commodore Duff, blockading Quiberon. The signal was made to chase;
+and the English, taking flight, separated into two divisions,--one
+going off before the wind, the other hauling up to the southward. The
+greater part of the French fleet continued its course after the former
+division, that is, toward the coast; but one ship hauled up for the
+second. Immediately after, the rear French ships made signal of sails
+to windward, which were also visible from aloft on board the
+flag-ship. It must have been about the same moment that the lookout
+frigate in advance of the English fleet informed her admiral of sails
+to leeward. Hawke's diligence had brought him up with Conflans, who,
+in his official reports, says he had considered it impossible that the
+enemy could have in that neighborhood forces superior or even equal to
+his own. Conflans now ordered his rear division to haul its wind in
+support of the ship chasing to the southward and eastward. In a few
+moments more it was discovered that the fleet to windward numbered
+twenty-three ships-of-the-line to the French twenty-one, and among
+them some three-deckers. Conflans then called in the chasing ships and
+got ready for action. It remained to settle his course under
+circumstances which he had not foreseen. It was now blowing hard from
+the west-northwest, with every appearance of heavy weather, the fleet
+not far from a lee shore, with an enemy considerably superior in
+numbers; for besides Hawke's twenty-three of the line, Duff had four
+fifty-gun ships. Conflans therefore determined to run for it and lead
+his squadron into Quiberon Bay, trusting and believing that Hawke
+would not dare to follow, under the conditions of the weather, into a
+bay which French authorities describe as containing banks and shoals,
+and lined with reefs which the navigator rarely sees without fright
+and never passes without emotion. It was in the midst of these ghastly
+dangers that forty-four large ships were about to engage pell-mell;
+for the space was too contracted for fleet manoeuvres. Conflans
+flattered himself that he would get in first and be able to haul up
+close under the western shore of the bay, forcing the enemy, if he
+followed, to take position between him and the beach, six miles to
+leeward. None of his expectations were fulfilled. In the retreat he
+took the head of his fleet; a step not unjustifiable, since only by
+leading in person could he have shown just what he wanted to do, but
+unfortunate for his reputation with the public, as it placed the
+admiral foremost in the flight. Hawke was not in the least, nor for
+one moment, deterred by the dangers before him, whose full extent he,
+as a skilful seaman, entirely realized; but his was a calm and
+steadfast as well as a gallant temper, that weighed risks justly,
+neither dissembling nor exaggerating. He has not left us his
+reasoning, but he doubtless felt that the French, leading, would serve
+partially as pilots, and must take the ground before him; he believed
+the temper and experience of his officers, tried by the severe school
+of the blockade, to be superior to those of the French; and he knew
+that both the government and the country demanded that the enemy's
+fleet should not reach another friendly port in safety. On the very
+day that he was thus following the French, amid dangers and under
+conditions that have made this one of the most dramatic of sea fights,
+he was being burnt in effigy in England for allowing them to escape.
+As Conflans, leading his fleet, was rounding the Cardinals,--as the
+southernmost rocks at the entrance of Quiberon Bay are called,--the
+leading English ships brought the French rear to action. It was
+another case of a general chase ending in a _mêlée_, but under
+conditions of exceptional interest and grandeur from the surrounding
+circumstances of the gale of wind, the heavy sea, the lee shore, the
+headlong speed, shortened canvas, and the great number of ships
+engaged. One French seventy-four, closely pressed and outnumbered,
+ventured to open her lower-deck ports; the sea sweeping in carried her
+down with all on board but twenty men. Another was sunk by the fire of
+Hawke's flag-ship. Two others, one of which carried a commodore's
+pennant, struck their colors. The remainder were dispersed. Seven fled
+to the northward and eastward, and anchored off the mouth of the
+little river Vilaine, into which they succeeded in entering at the top
+of high water in two tides,--a feat never before performed. Seven
+others took refuge to the southward and eastward in Rochefort. One,
+after being very badly injured, ran ashore and was lost near the mouth
+of the Loire. The flag-ship bearing the same name as that of Tourville
+burned at La Hougue, the "Royal Sun," anchored at nightfall off
+Croisic, a little to the northward of the Loire, where she rode in
+safety during the night. The next morning the admiral found himself
+alone, and, somewhat precipitately it would seem, ran the ship ashore
+to keep her out of English hands. This step has been blamed by the
+French, but needlessly, as Hawke would never have let her get away.
+The great French fleet was annihilated; for the fourteen ships not
+taken or destroyed were divided into two parts, and those in the
+Vilaine only succeeded in escaping, two at a time, between fifteen
+months and two years later. The English lost two ships which ran upon
+a shoal (a), and were hopelessly wrecked; their losses in action were
+slight. At nightfall Hawke anchored his fleet and prizes in the
+position shown in the plate (b).
+
+ [Illustration: Pl. VIII.]
+
+All possibility of an invasion of England passed away with the
+destruction of the Brest fleet. The battle of November 20, 1759, was
+the Trafalgar of this war; and though a blockade was maintained over
+the fractions that were laid up in the Vilaine and at Rochefort, the
+English fleets were now free to act against the colonies of France,
+and later of Spain, on a grander scale than ever before. The same year
+that saw this great sea fight and the fall of Quebec witnessed also
+the capture of Guadeloupe in the West Indies, of Goree on the west
+coast of Africa, and the abandonment of the East Indian seas by the
+French flag after three indecisive actions between their commodore,
+D'Aché, and Admiral Pocock,--an abandonment which necessarily led to
+the fall of the French power in India, never again to rise. In this
+year also the King of Spain died, and his brother succeeded, under the
+title of Charles III. This Charles had been King of Naples at the time
+when an English commodore had allowed one hour for the court to
+determine to withdraw the Neapolitan troops from the Spanish army. He
+had never forgotten this humiliation, and brought to his new throne a
+heart unfriendly to England. With such feelings on his part, France
+and Spain drew more readily together. Charles's first step was to
+propose mediation, but Pitt was averse to it. Looking upon France as
+the chief enemy of England, and upon the sea and the colonies as the
+chief source of power and wealth, he wished, now that he had her down,
+to weaken her thoroughly for the future as well as the present, and to
+establish England's greatness more firmly upon the wreck. Later on he
+offered certain conditions; but the influence of Louis's mistress,
+attached to the Empress of Austria, prevailed to except Prussia from
+the negotiations, and England would not allow the exception. Pitt,
+indeed, was not yet ready for peace. A year later, October 25, 1760,
+George II. died, and Pitt's influence then began to wane, the new
+king being less bent on war. During these years, 1759 and 1760,
+Frederick the Great still continued the deadly and exhausting strife
+of his small kingdom against the great States joined against him. At
+one moment his case seemed so hopeless that he got ready to kill
+himself; but the continuance of the war diverted the efforts of France
+from England and the sea.
+
+The hour was fast approaching for the great colonial expeditions,
+which made the last year of the war illustrious by the triumph of the
+sea power of England over France and Spain united. It is first
+necessary to tell the entirely kindred story of the effect of that sea
+power in the East Indian peninsula.
+
+The recall of Dupleix and the entire abandonment of his policy, which
+resulted in placing the two East India companies on equal terms, have
+already been told. The treaty stipulations of 1754 had not, however,
+been fully carried out. The Marquis de Bussy, a brave and capable
+soldier who had been a second to Dupleix, and was wholly in accord
+with his policy and ambitions, remained in the Deccan,--a large region
+in the southern central part of the peninsula, over which Dupleix had
+once ruled. In 1756, troubles arose between the English and the native
+prince in Bengal. The nabob of that province had died, and his
+successor, a young man of nineteen, attacked Calcutta. The place fell,
+after a weak resistance, in June, and the surrender was followed by
+the famous tragedy known as that of the Black Hole of Calcutta. The
+news reached Madras in August, and Clive, whose name has already been
+mentioned, sailed with the fleet of Admiral Watson, after a long and
+vexatious delay. The fleet entered the river in December and appeared
+before Calcutta in January, when the place fell into English hands
+again as easily as it had been lost.
+
+The nabob was very angry, and marched against the English; sending
+meanwhile an invitation to the French at Chandernagore to join him.
+Although it was now known that England and France were at war, the
+French company, despite the experience of 1744, weakly hoped that
+peace might be kept between it and the English. The native invitation
+was therefore refused, and offers of neutrality made to the other
+company. Clive marched out, met the Indian forces and defeated them,
+and the nabob at once asked for peace, and sought the English
+alliance, yielding all the claims on the strength of which he had
+first attacked Calcutta. After some demur his offers were accepted.
+Clive and Watson then turned upon Chandernagore and compelled the
+surrender of the French settlement.
+
+The nabob, who had not meant to allow this, took umbrage, and entered
+into correspondence with Bussy in the Deccan. Clive had full knowledge
+of his various intrigues, which were carried on with the vacillation
+of a character as weak as it was treacherous; and seeing no hope of
+settled peace or trade under the rule of this man, entered into an
+extensive conspiracy for his dethronement, the details of which need
+not be given. The result was that war broke out again, and that Clive
+with three thousand men, one third of whom were English, met the nabob
+at the head of fifteen thousand horse and thirty-five thousand foot.
+The disproportion in artillery was nearly as great. Against these odds
+was fought and won the battle of Plassey, on the 23d of June,
+1757,--the date from which, by common consent, the British empire in
+India is said to begin. The overthrow of the nabob was followed by
+placing in power one of the conspirators against him, a creature of
+the English, and dependent upon them for support. Bengal thus passed
+under their control, the first-fruits of India. "Clive," says a French
+historian, "had understood and applied the system of Dupleix."
+
+This was true; yet even so it may be said that the foundation thus
+laid could never have been kept nor built upon, had the English nation
+not controlled the sea. The conditions of India were such that a few
+Europeans, headed by men of nerve and shrewdness, dividing that they
+might conquer, and advancing their fortunes by judicious alliances,
+were able to hold their own, and more too, amidst overwhelming
+numerical odds; but it was necessary that they should not be opposed
+by men of their own kind, a few of whom could turn the wavering
+balance the other way. At the very time that Clive was acting in
+Bengal, Bussy invaded Orissa, seized the English factories, and made
+himself master of much of the coast regions between Madras and
+Calcutta; while a French squadron of nine ships, most of which,
+however, belonged to the East India Company and were not first-rate
+men-of-war, was on its way to Pondicherry with twelve hundred regular
+troops,--an enormous European army for Indian operations of that day.
+The English naval force on the coast, though fewer in numbers, may be
+considered about equal to the approaching French squadron. It is
+scarcely too much to say that the future of India was still uncertain,
+and the first operations showed it.
+
+The French division appeared off the Coromandel coast to the southward
+of Pondicherry on the 26th of April, 1758, and anchored on the 28th
+before the English station called Fort St. David. Two ships kept on to
+Pondicherry, having on board the new governor, Comte de Lally, who
+wished to go at once to his seat of government. Meanwhile, the English
+admiral, Pocock, having news of the enemy's coming, and fearing
+specially for this post, was on his way to it, and appeared on the
+29th of April, before the two ships with the governor were out of
+sight. The French at once got under way and stood out to sea on the
+starboard tack (Plate Va.), heading to the northward and eastward, the
+wind being southeast, and signals were made to recall the ship and
+frigate (a) escorting Lally; but they were disregarded by the latter's
+order, an act which must have increased, if it did not originate, the
+ill-will between him and Commodore d'Aché, through which the French
+campaign in India miscarried. The English, having formed to windward
+on the same tack as the French, made their attack in the then usual
+way, and with the usual results. The seven English ships were ordered
+to keep away together for the French eight, and the four leading
+ships, including the admiral's, came into action handsomely; the last
+three, whether by their own fault or not, were late in doing so, but
+it will be remembered that this was almost always the case in such
+attacks. The French commodore, seeing this interval between the van
+and the rear, formed the plan of separating them, and made signal to
+wear together, but in his impatience did not wait for an answer.
+Putting his own helm up, he wore round, and was followed in succession
+by the rear ships, while the van stood on. The English admiral, who
+had good reason to know, gives D'Aché more credit than the French
+writers, for he describes this movement thus:--
+
+ "At half-past four P.M. the rear of the French line had drawn
+ pretty close up to their flag-ship. Our three rear ships were
+ signalled to engage closer. Soon after, M. d'Aché broke the
+ line, and put before the wind; his second astern, who had kept
+ on the 'Yarmouth's' [English flag-ship] quarter most part of the
+ action, then came up alongside, gave his fire, and then bore
+ away; and a few minutes after, the enemy's van bore away also."
+
+By this account, which is by no means irreconcilable with the French,
+the latter effected upon the principal English ship a movement of
+concentration by defiling past her. The French now stood down to their
+two separated ships, while the English vessels that had been engaged
+were too much crippled to follow. This battle prevented the English
+fleet from relieving Fort St. David, which surrendered on the 2d of
+June.
+
+After the fall of this place, the two opposing squadrons having
+refitted at their respective ports and resumed their station, a second
+action was fought in August, under nearly the same conditions and in
+much the same fashion. The French flag-ship met with a series of
+untoward accidents, which determined the commodore to withdraw from
+action; but the statement of his further reasons is most suggestive of
+the necessary final overthrow of the French cause. "Prudence," a
+writer of his own country says, "commanded him not to prolong a
+contest from which his ships could not but come out with injuries very
+difficult to repair in a region where it was impossible to supply the
+almost entire lack of spare stores." This want of so absolute a
+requisite for naval efficiency shows in a strong light the fatal
+tendency of that economy which always characterized French operations
+at sea, and was at once significant and ominous.
+
+Returning to Pondicherry, D'Aché found that, though the injuries to
+the masts and rigging could for this time be repaired, there was lack
+of provisions, and that the ships needed calking. Although his orders
+were to remain on the coast until October 15, he backed himself with
+the opinion of a council of war which decided that the ships could not
+remain there longer, because, in case of a third battle, there was
+neither rigging nor supplies remaining in Pondicherry; and
+disregarding the protests of the governor, Lally, he sailed on the 2d
+of September for the Isle of France. The underlying motive of D'Aché,
+it is known, was hostility to the governor, with whom he quarrelled
+continually. Lally, deprived of the help of the squadron, turned his
+arms inland instead of against Madras.
+
+Upon arriving at the islands, D'Aché found a state of things which
+again singularly illustrates the impotence and short-sightedness
+characteristic of the general naval policy of the French at this time.
+His arrival there was as unwelcome as his departure from India had
+been to Lally. The islands were then in a state of the most complete
+destitution. The naval division, increased by the arrival of three
+ships-of-the-line from home, so exhausted them that its immediate
+departure was requested of the commodore. Repairs were pushed ahead
+rapidly, and in November several of the ships sailed to the Cape of
+Good Hope, then a Dutch colony, to seek provisions; but these were
+consumed soon after being received, and the pressure for the departure
+of the squadron was renewed. The situation of the ships was no less
+precarious than that of the colony; and accordingly the commodore
+replied by urging his entire lack of food and supplies. The condition
+was such that, a little later, it was necessary to make running
+rigging out of the cables, and to put some of the ships on the bottom,
+so as to give their materials to others. Before returning to India,
+D'Aché wrote to the minister of the navy that he "was about to leave,
+only to save the crews from dying of hunger, and that nothing need be
+expected from the squadron if supplies were not sent, for both men and
+things were in a deplorable state."
+
+Under these circumstances D'Aché sailed from the islands in July,
+1759, and arrived off the Coromandel coast in September. During his
+year of absence Lally had besieged Madras for two months, during the
+northeast monsoon. Both squadrons were absent, that season being unfit
+for naval operations on this coast; but the English returned first,
+and are said by the French to have caused, by the English to have
+hastened, the raising of the siege. D'Aché, upon his return, was much
+superior in both number and size of ships; but when the fleets met,
+Pocock did not hesitate to attack with nine against eleven. This
+action, fought September 10, 1759, was as indecisive as the two
+former; but D'Aché retreated, after a very bloody contest. Upon it
+Campbell, in his "Lives of the Admirals," makes a droll, but seemingly
+serious, comment: "Pocock had reduced the French ships to a very
+shattered condition, and killed a great many of their men; but what
+shows the singular talents of both admirals, they had fought three
+pitched battles in eighteen months without the loss of a ship on
+either side." The fruits of victory, however, were with the weaker
+fleet; for D'Aché returned to Pondicherry and thence sailed on the 1st
+of the next month for the islands, leaving India to its fate. From
+that time the result was certain. The English continued to receive
+reinforcements from home, while the French did not; the men opposed to
+Lally were superior in ability; place after place fell, and in
+January, 1761, Pondicherry itself surrendered, surrounded by land and
+cut off from the sea. This was the end of the French power in India;
+for though Pondicherry and other possessions were restored at the
+peace, the English tenure there was never again shaken, even under the
+attacks of the skilful and bold Suffren, who twenty years later met
+difficulties as great as D'Aché's with a vigor and conduct which the
+latter at a more hopeful moment failed to show.
+
+France having thus lost both Canada and India by the evident failure
+of her power to act at a distance by sea, it would seem scarcely
+possible that Spain, with her own weak navy and widely scattered
+possessions, would choose this moment for entering the war. Yet so it
+was. The maritime exhaustion of France was plain to all, and is
+abundantly testified to by her naval historians. "The resources of
+France were exhausted," says one; "the year 1761 saw only a few single
+ships leave her ports, and all of them were captured. The alliance
+with Spain came too late. The occasional ships that went to sea in
+1762 were taken, and the colonies still remaining to France could not
+be saved."[102] Even as early as 1758, another Frenchman writes, "want
+of money, the depression of commerce given over to English cruisers,
+the lack of good ships, the lack of supplies, etc., compelled the
+French ministry, unable to raise large forces, to resort to
+stratagems, to replace the only rational system of war, Grand War, by
+the smallest of petty wars,--by a sort of game in which the great aim
+is not to be caught. Even then, the arrival of four ships-of-the-line
+at Louisburg, by avoiding the enemy, was looked on as a very fortunate
+event.... In 1759 the lucky arrival of the West India convoy caused as
+much surprise as joy to the merchants. We see how rare had become such
+a chance in seas ploughed by the squadrons of England."[103] This was
+before the disasters of La Clue and Conflans. The destruction of
+French commerce, beginning by the capture of its merchant-ships, was
+consummated by the reduction of the colonies. It can hardly,
+therefore, be conceded that the Family Compact now made between the
+two courts, containing, as it did, not only an agreement to support
+each other in any future war, but also a secret clause binding Spain
+to declare war against England within a year, if peace were not made,
+"was honorable to the wisdom of the two governments." It is hard to
+pardon, not only the Spanish government, but even France for alluring
+a kindred people into such a bad bargain. It was hoped, however, to
+revive the French navy and to promote an alliance of neutral powers;
+many of which, besides Spain, had causes of complaint against England.
+"During the war with France," confesses an English historian, "the
+Spanish flag had not always been respected by British cruisers."[104]
+"During 1758," says another, "not less than one hundred and
+seventy-six neutral vessels, laden with the rich produce of the French
+colonies or with military or naval stores, fell into the hands of the
+English."[105] The causes were already at work which twenty years
+later gave rise to the "armed neutrality" of the Baltic powers,
+directed against the claims of England on the sea. The possession of
+unlimited power, as the sea power of England then really was, is
+seldom accompanied by a profound respect for the rights of others.
+Without a rival upon the ocean, it suited England to maintain that
+enemy's property was liable to capture on board neutral ships, thus
+subjecting these nations not only to vexatious detentions, but to loss
+of valuable trade; just as it had suited her earlier in the war to
+establish a paper blockade of French ports. Neutrals of course chafed
+under these exactions; but the year 1761 was ill-chosen for an armed
+protest, and of all powers Spain risked most by a war. England had
+then one hundred and twenty ships-of-the-line in commission, besides
+those in reserve, manned by seventy thousand seamen trained and
+hardened by five years of constant warfare afloat, and flushed with
+victory. The navy of France, which numbered seventy-seven
+ships-of-the-line in 1758, lost as prizes to the English in 1759
+twenty-seven, besides eight destroyed and many frigates lost; indeed,
+as has been seen, their own writers confess that the navy was ruined,
+root and branch. The Spanish navy contained about fifty ships; but the
+personnel, unless very different from the days before and after, must
+have been very inferior. The weakness of her empire, in the absence of
+an efficient navy, has before been pointed out. Neutrality, too,
+though at times outraged, had been of great advantage to her,
+permitting her to restore her finances and trade and to re-establish
+her internal resources; but she needed a still longer period of it.
+Nevertheless, the king, influenced by family feeling and resentment
+against England, allowed himself to be drawn on by the astute
+Choiseul, and the Family Compact between the two crowns was signed on
+the 15th of August, 1761. This compact, into which the King of Naples
+was also to enter, guaranteed their mutual possessions by the whole
+power of both kingdoms. This in itself was a weighty undertaking; but
+the secret clause further stipulated that Spain should declare war
+against England on the 1st of May, 1762, if peace with France had not
+then been made. Negotiations of this character could not be kept
+wholly secret, and Pitt learned enough to convince him that Spain was
+becoming hostile in intention. With his usual haughty resolve, he
+determined to forestall her by declaring war; but the influence
+against him in the councils of the new king was too strong. Failing to
+carry the ministry with him, he resigned on the 5th of October, 1761.
+His prevision was quickly justified; Spain had been eager in
+professing good-will until the treasure-ships from America should
+arrive laden with the specie so needed for carrying on war. On the
+21st of September the Flota of galleons anchored safely in Cadiz; and
+on the 2d of November the British ambassador announced to his
+government that "two ships had safely arrived with very extraordinary
+rich cargoes from the West Indies, so that all the wealth that was
+expected from Spanish America is now safe in old Spain," and in the
+same despatch reports a surprising change in the words of the Spanish
+minister, and the haughty language now used.[106] The grievences and
+claims of Spain were urged peremptorily, and the quarrel grew so fast
+that even the new English ministry, though ardently desiring peace,
+recalled their ambassador before the end of the year, and declared war
+on the 4th of January, 1762; thus adopting Pitt's policy, but too late
+to reap the advantages at which he had aimed.
+
+However, no such delay on the part of England could alter the
+essential inequality, in strength and preparation, between the two
+nations. The plans formed by Pitt were in the main adopted by his
+successor, and carried out with a speed which the readiness of the
+English navy permitted. On the 5th of March, Pocock, who had returned
+from the East Indies, sailed from Portsmouth, convoying a fleet of
+transports to act against Havana; in the West Indies he was reinforced
+from the forces in that quarter, so that his command contained
+nineteen ships-of-the-line besides smaller vessels, and ten thousand
+soldiers.
+
+In the previous January, the West India fleet, under the well-known
+Rodney, had acted with the land forces in the reduction of Martinique,
+the gem and tower of the French islands and the harbor of an extensive
+privateering system. It is said that fourteen hundred English
+merchantmen were taken during this war in the West Indian seas by
+cruisers whose principal port was Fort Royal in Martinique. With this
+necessary base fell also the privateering system resting upon it.
+Martinique was surrendered February 12, and the loss of this chief
+commercial and military centre was immediately followed by that of the
+smaller islands, Grenada, Sta. Lucia, St. Vincent. By these
+acquisitions the English colonies at Antigua, St. Kitts, and Nevis, as
+well as the ships trading to those islands, were secured against the
+enemy, the commerce of England received large additions, and all the
+Lesser Antilles, or Windward Islands, became British possessions.
+
+Admiral Pocock was joined off Cape St. Nicholas by the West Indian
+reinforcement on the 27th of May, and as the season was so far
+advanced, he took his great fleet through the old Bahama channel
+instead of the usual route around the south side of Cuba. This was
+justly considered a great feat in those days of poor surveys, and was
+accomplished without an accident. Lookout and sounding vessels went
+first, frigates followed, and boats or sloops were anchored on shoals
+with carefully arranged signals for day or night. Having good weather,
+the fleet got through in a week and appeared before Havana. The
+operations will not be given in detail. After a forty days' siege the
+Moro Castle was taken on the 30th of July, and the city surrendered on
+the 10th of August. The Spaniards lost not only the city and port, but
+twelve ships-of-the-line, besides £3,000,000 in money and merchandise
+belonging to the Spanish king. The importance of Havana was not to be
+measured only by its own size, or its position as centre of a large
+and richly cultivated district; it was also the port commanding the
+only passage by which the treasure and other ships could sail from the
+Gulf of Mexico to Europe in those days. With Havana in an enemy's
+hands it would be necessary to assemble them at Cartagena and from
+there beat up against the trade-winds,--an operation always difficult,
+and which would keep ships long in waters where they were exposed to
+capture by English cruisers. Not even an attack upon the isthmus would
+have been so serious a blow to Spain. This important result could only
+be achieved by a nation confident of controlling the communications by
+its sea power, to which the happy issue must wholly be ascribed, and
+which had another signal illustration in the timely conveying of four
+thousand American troops to reinforce the English ranks, terribly
+wasted by battle and fever. It is said that only twenty-five hundred
+serviceable fighting men remained on foot when the city fell.
+
+While the long reach and vigor of England's sea power was thus felt in
+the West Indies, it was receiving further illustration in Portugal and
+in the far East. The allied crowns in the beginning had invited
+Portugal to join their alliance against those whom they had taken to
+calling the "tyrants of the seas," reminding her how the English
+monopoly of her trade was draining the country of gold, and recalling
+the deliberate violation of her neutrality by the fleet under
+Boscawen. The Portuguese minister of the day well knew all this, and
+keenly felt it; but though the invitation was accompanied by the plain
+statement that Portugal would not be allowed to continue a neutrality
+she could not enforce, he judged rightly that the country had more to
+fear from England and her fleet than from the Spanish army. The allies
+declared war and invaded Portugal. They were for a time successful;
+but the "tyrants of the seas" answered Portugal's call, sent a fleet
+and landed at Lisbon eight thousand soldiers, who drove the Spaniards
+over the frontiers, and even carried the war into Spain itself.
+
+Simultaneous with these significant events, Manila was attacked. With
+so much already on hand, it was found impossible to spare troops or
+ships from England. The successes in India and the absolute security
+of the establishments there, with the control of the sea, allowed the
+Indian officials themselves to undertake this colonial expedition. It
+sailed in August, 1762, and reaching Malacca on the 19th, was supplied
+at that neutral port with all that was needed for the siege about to
+be undertaken; the Dutch, though jealous of the English advance, not
+venturing to refuse their demands. The expedition, which depended
+entirely upon the fleet, resulted in the whole group of Philippine
+Islands surrendering in October and paying a ransom of four million
+dollars. At about the same time the fleet captured the Acapulco
+galleon having three million dollars on board, and an English squadron
+in the Atlantic took a treasure-ship from Lima with four million
+dollars in silver for the Spanish government.
+
+ "Never had the colonial empire of Spain received such blows.
+ Spain, whose opportune intervention might have modified the fate
+ of the war, entered it too late to help France, but in time to
+ share her misfortunes. There was reason to fear yet more. Panama
+ and San Domingo were threatened, and the Anglo-Americans were
+ preparing for the invasion of Florida and Louisiana.... The
+ conquest of Havana had in great measure interrupted the
+ communications between the wealthy American colonies of Spain
+ and Europe. The reduction of the Philippine Islands now excluded
+ her from Asia. The two together severed all the avenues of
+ Spanish trade and cut off all intercourse between the parts of
+ their vast but disconnected empire."[107]
+
+The selection of the points of attack, due to the ministry of Pitt,
+was strategically good, cutting effectually the sinews of the enemy's
+strength; and if his plans had been fully carried out and Panama also
+seized, the success would have been yet more decisive. England had
+lost also the advantage of the surprise he would have effected by
+anticipating Spain's declaration of war; but her arms were triumphant
+during this short contest, through the rapidity with which her
+projects were carried into execution, due to the state of efficiency
+to which her naval forces and administration had been brought.
+
+With the conquest of Manila ended the military operations of the war.
+Nine months, counting from the formal declaration by England in
+January, had been sufficient to shatter the last hope of France, and
+to bring Spain to a peace in which was conceded every point on which
+she had based her hostile attitude and demands. It seems scarcely
+necessary, after even the brief summary of events that has been given,
+to point out that the speed and thoroughness with which England's work
+was done was due wholly to her sea power, which allowed her forces to
+act on distant points, widely apart as Cuba, Portugal, India, and the
+Philippines, without a fear of serious break in their communications.
+
+Before giving the terms of peace which ought to summarize the results
+of the war, but do so imperfectly, owing to the weak eagerness of the
+English ministry to conclude it, it is necessary to trace in outline
+the effect of the war upon commerce, upon the foundations of sea power
+and national prosperity.
+
+One prominent feature of this war may be more strongly impressed upon
+the mind by a startling, because paradoxical, statement that the
+prosperity of the English is shown by the magnitude of their losses.
+
+ "From 1756 to 1760," states a French historian, "French
+ privateers captured from the English more than twenty-five
+ hundred merchantmen. In 1761, though France had not, so to
+ speak, a single ship-of-the-line at sea, and though the English
+ had taken two hundred and forty of our privateers, their
+ comrades still took eight hundred and twelve English vessels.
+ The explanation of the number of these prizes lies in the
+ prodigious growth of the English shipping. In 1760 it is claimed
+ that the English had at sea eight thousand sail; of these the
+ French captured nearly one tenth, despite escorts and cruisers.
+ In the four years from 1756 to 1760 the French lost only nine
+ hundred and fifty vessels."[108]
+
+But this discrepancy is justly attributed by an English writer "to the
+diminution of the French commerce and the dread of falling into the
+hands of the English, which kept many of their trading-vessels from
+going to sea;" and he goes on to point out that the capture of vessels
+was not the principal benefit resulting from the efficiency of
+England's fleets. "Captures like Duquesne, Louisburg, Prince Edward's
+Island, the reduction of Senegal, and later on of Guadeloupe and
+Martinique, were events no less destructive to French commerce and
+colonies than advantageous to those of England."[109] The
+multiplication of French privateers was indeed a sad token to an
+instructed eye, showing behind them merchant shipping in enforced
+idleness, whose crews and whose owners were driven to speculative
+pillage in order to live. Nor was this risk wholly in vain. The same
+Englishman confesses that in 1759 the losses of merchantmen showed a
+worse balance than the ships-of-war. While the French were striving in
+vain to regain equality upon the sea and repair their losses, but to
+no purpose, for "in building and arming vessels they labored only for
+the English fleet," yet, "notwithstanding the courage and vigilance of
+English cruisers, French privateers so swarmed that in this year they
+took two hundred and forty British vessels, chiefly coasters and small
+craft." In 1760 the same authority gives the British loss in
+trading-vessels at over three hundred, and in 1761 at over eight
+hundred, three times that of the French; but he adds: "It would not
+have been wonderful had they taken more and richer ships. While their
+commerce was nearly destroyed, and they had few merchant-ships at
+sea, the trading-fleets of England covered the seas. Every year her
+commerce was increasing; the money which the war carried out was
+returned by the produce of her industry. Eight thousand vessels were
+employed by the traders of Great Britain." The extent of her losses is
+attributed to three causes, of which the first only was preventable:
+(1) The inattention of merchant-ships to the orders of the convoying
+vessels; (2) The immense number of English ships in all seas; (3) The
+enemy's venturing the whole remains of his strength in privateering.
+During the same year, 1761, the navy lost one ship-of-the-line, which
+was retaken, and one cutter. At the same time, notwithstanding the
+various exchanges, the English still held twenty-five thousand French
+prisoners, while the English prisoners in France were but twelve
+hundred. These were the results of the sea war.
+
+Finally, in summing up the commercial condition of the kingdom at the
+end of the war, after mentioning the enormous sums of specie taken
+from Spain, the writer says:--
+
+ "These strengthened trade and fostered industry. The remittances
+ for foreign subsidies were in great part paid by bills on
+ merchants settled abroad, who had the value of the drafts in
+ British manufactures. The trade of England increased gradually
+ every year, and such a scene of national prosperity while waging
+ a long, costly, and bloody war, was never before shown by any
+ people in the world."
+
+No wonder, with such results to her commerce and such unvarying
+success attending her arms, and seeing the practical annihilation of
+the French navy, that the union of France and Spain, which was then
+lowering on her future and had once excited the fears of all Europe,
+was now beheld by Great Britain alone without the smallest fear or
+despondency. Spain was by her constitution and the distribution of her
+empire peculiarly open to the attack of a great sea people; and
+whatever the views of the government of the day, Pitt and the nation
+saw that the hour had come, which had been hoped for in vain in 1739,
+because then years of peace and the obstinate bias of a great
+minister had relaxed the muscles of her fleet. Now she but reached
+forth her hand and seized what she wished; nor could there have been
+any limit to her prey, had not the ministry again been untrue to the
+interests of the country.
+
+The position of Portugal with reference to Great Britain has been
+alluded to, but merits some special attention as instancing an element
+of sea power obtained not by colonies, but by alliance, whether
+necessary or prudential. The commercial connection before spoken of
+"was strengthened by the strongest political ties. The two kingdoms
+were so situated as to have little to fear from each other, while they
+might impart many mutual advantages. The harbors of Portugal gave
+shelter as well as supplies to the English fleet, while the latter
+defended the rich trade of Portugal with Brazil. The antipathy between
+Portugal and Spain made it necessary for the former to have an ally,
+strong yet distant. None is so advantageous in that way as England,
+which in her turn might, and always has, derived great advantages from
+Portugal in a war with any of the southern powers of Europe."
+
+This is an English view of a matter which to others looks somewhat
+like an alliance between a lion and a lamb. To call a country with a
+fleet like England's "distant" from a small maritime nation like
+Portugal is an absurdity. England is, and yet more in those days was,
+wherever her fleet could go. The opposite view of the matter, showing
+equally the value of the alliance, was well set forth in the memorial
+by which, under the civil name of an invitation, the crowns of France
+and Spain ordered Portugal to declare against England.
+
+The grounds of that memorial--namely, the unequal benefit to Portugal
+from the connection and the disregard of Portuguese neutrality--have
+already been given. The King of Portugal refused to abandon the
+alliance, for the professed reason that it was ancient and wholly
+defensive. To this the two crowns replied:--
+
+ "The defensive alliance is actually an offensive one by the
+ situation of the Portuguese dominions and the nature of the
+ English power. The English squadrons cannot in all seasons keep
+ the sea, nor cruise on the principal coasts of France and Spain
+ for cutting off the navigation of the two countries, without the
+ ports and assistance of Portugal; and these islanders could not
+ insult all maritime Europe, if the whole riches of Portugal did
+ not pass through their hands, which furnishes them with the
+ means to make war and renders the alliance truly and properly
+ offensive."
+
+Between the two arguments the logic of situation and power prevailed.
+Portugal found England nearer and more dangerous than Spain, and
+remained for generations of trial true to the alliance. This
+relationship was as useful to England as any of her colonial
+possessions, depending of course upon the scene of the principal
+operations at any particular time.
+
+The preliminaries of peace were signed at Fontainebleau, November 3,
+1762; the definitive treaty on the 10th of the following February, at
+Paris, whence the peace takes its name.
+
+By its terms France renounced all claims to Canada, Nova Scotia, and
+all the islands of the St. Lawrence; along with Canada she ceded the
+valley of the Ohio and all her territory on the east side of the
+Mississippi, except the city of New Orleans. At the same time Spain,
+as an equivalent for Havana, which England restored, yielded Florida,
+under which name were comprised all her continental possessions east
+of the Mississippi. Thus England obtained a colonial empire embracing
+Canada, from Hudson's Bay, and all of the present United States east
+of the Mississippi. The possibilities of this vast region were then
+only partially foreseen, and as yet there was no foreshadowing of the
+revolt of the thirteen colonies.
+
+In the West Indies, England gave back to France the important islands
+of Guadeloupe and Martinique. The four so-called neutral islands of
+the Lesser Antilles were divided between the two powers; Sta. Lucia
+going to France, St. Vincent, Tobago, and Dominica to England, which
+also retained Grenada.
+
+Minorca was given back to England; and as the restoration of the
+island to Spain had been one of the conditions of the alliance with
+the latter, France, unable to fulfil her stipulation, ceded to Spain
+Louisiana west of the Mississippi.
+
+In India, France recovered the possessions she had held before Dupleix
+began his schemes of aggrandizement; but she gave up the right of
+erecting fortifications or keeping troops in Bengal, and so left the
+station at Chandernagore defenceless. In a word, France resumed her
+facilities for trading, but practically abandoned her pretensions to
+political influence. It was tacitly understood that the English
+company would keep all its conquests.
+
+The right of fishing upon the coasts of Newfoundland and in parts of
+the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which France had previously enjoyed, was
+conceded to her by this treaty; but it was denied to Spain, who had
+claimed it for her fishermen. This concession was among those most
+attacked by the English opposition.
+
+The nation at large and Pitt, the favorite of the nation, were
+bitterly opposed to the terms of the treaty. "France," said Pitt, "is
+chiefly formidable to us as a maritime and commercial power. What we
+gain in this respect is valuable to us above all through the injury to
+her which results from it. You leave to France the possibility of
+reviving her navy." In truth, from the point of view of sea power and
+of the national jealousies which the spirit of that age sanctioned,
+these words, though illiberal, were strictly justifiable. The
+restoration to France of her colonies in the West Indies and her
+stations in India, together with the valuable right of fishery in her
+former American possessions, put before her the possibility and the
+inducement to restore her shipping, her commerce, and her navy, and
+thus tended to recall her from the path of continental ambition which
+had been so fatal to her interests, and in the same proportion
+favorable to the unprecedented growth of England's power upon the
+ocean. The opposition, and indeed some of the ministry, also thought
+that so commanding and important a position as Havana was poorly paid
+for by the cession of the yet desolate and unproductive region called
+Florida. Porto Rico was suggested, Florida accepted. There were other
+minor points of difference, into which it is unnecessary to enter. It
+could scarcely be denied that with the commanding military control of
+the sea held by England, grasping as she now did so many important
+positions, with her navy overwhelmingly superior in numbers, and her
+commerce and internal condition very thriving, more rigorous terms
+might easily have been exacted and would have been prudent. The
+ministry defended their eagerness and spirit of concession on the
+ground of the enormous growth of the debt, which then amounted to
+£122,000,000, a sum in every point of view much greater then than now;
+but while this draft upon the future was fully justified by the
+success of the war, it also imperatively demanded that the utmost
+advantages which the military situation made attainable should be
+exacted. This the ministry failed to do. As regards the debt, it is
+well observed by a French writer that "in this war, and for years
+afterward, England had in view nothing less than the conquest of
+America and the progress of her East India Company. By these two
+countries her manufactures and commerce acquired more than sufficient
+outlets, and repaid her for the numerous sacrifices she had made.
+Seeing the maritime decay of Europe,--its commerce annihilated, its
+manufactures so little advanced,--how could the English nation feel
+afraid of a future which offered so vast a perspective?" Unfortunately
+the nation needed an exponent in the government; and its chosen
+mouthpiece, the only man, perhaps, able to rise to the level of the
+great opportunity, was out of favor at court.
+
+Nevertheless, the gains of England were very great, not only in
+territorial increase, nor yet in maritime preponderance, but in the
+prestige and position achieved in the eyes of the nations, now fully
+opened to her great resources and mighty power. To these results, won
+by the sea, the issue of the continental war offered a singular and
+suggestive contrast. France had already withdrawn, along with
+England, from all share in that strife, and peace between the other
+parties to it was signed five days after the Peace of Paris. The terms
+of the peace were simply the _status quo ante bellum_. By the estimate
+of the King of Prussia, one hundred and eighty thousand of his
+soldiers had fallen or died in this war, out of a kingdom of five
+million souls; while the losses of Russia, Austria, and France
+aggregated four hundred and sixty thousand men. The result was simply
+that things remained as they were.[110] To attribute this only to a
+difference between the possibilities of land and sea war is of course
+absurd. The genius of Frederick, backed by the money of England, had
+proved an equal match for the mismanaged and not always hearty efforts
+of a coalition numerically overwhelming. What does seem a fair
+conclusion is, that States having a good seaboard, or even ready
+access to the ocean by one or two outlets, will find it to their
+advantage to seek prosperity and extension by the way of the sea and
+of commerce, rather than in attempts to unsettle and modify existing
+political arrangements in countries where a more or less long
+possession of power has conferred acknowledged rights, and created
+national allegiance or political ties. Since the Treaty of Paris in
+1763, the waste places of the world have been rapidly filled; witness
+our own continent, Australia, and even South America. A nominal and
+more or less clearly defined political possession now generally exists
+in the most forsaken regions, though to this statement there are some
+marked exceptions; but in many places this political possession is
+little more than nominal, and in others of a character so feeble that
+it cannot rely upon itself alone for support or protection. The
+familiar and notorious example of the Turkish Empire, kept erect only
+by the forces pressing upon it from opposing sides, by the mutual
+jealousies of powers that have no sympathy with it, is an instance of
+such weak political tenure; and though the question is wholly
+European, all know enough of it to be aware that the interest and
+control of the sea powers is among the chief, if not the first, of the
+elements that now fix the situation; and that they, if intelligently
+used, will direct the future inevitable changes. Upon the western
+continents the political condition of the Central American and
+tropical South American States is so unstable as to cause constant
+anxiety about the maintenance of internal order, and seriously to
+interfere with commerce and with the peaceful development of their
+resources. So long as--to use a familiar expression--they hurt no one
+but themselves, this may go on; but for a long time the citizens of
+more stable governments have been seeking to exploit their resources,
+and have borne the losses arising from their distracted condition.
+North America and Australia still offer large openings to immigration
+and enterprise; but they are filling up rapidly, and as the
+opportunities there diminish, the demand must arise for a more settled
+government in those disordered States, for security to life and for
+reasonable stability of institutions enabling merchants and others to
+count upon the future. There is certainly no present hope that such a
+demand can be fulfilled from the existing native materials; if the
+same be true when the demand arises, no theoretical positions, like
+the Monroe doctrine, will prevent interested nations from attempting
+to remedy the evil by some measure, which, whatever it may be called,
+will be a political interference. Such interferences must produce
+collisions, which may be at times settled by arbitration, but can
+scarcely fail at other times to cause war. Even for a peaceful
+solution, that nation will have the strongest arguments which has the
+strongest organized force. It need scarcely be said that the
+successful piercing of the Central American Isthmus at any point may
+precipitate the moment that is sure to come sooner or later. The
+profound modification of commercial routes expected from this
+enterprise, the political importance to the United States of such a
+channel of communication between her Atlantic and Pacific seaboards,
+are not, however, the whole nor even the principal part of the
+question. As far as can be seen, the time will come when stable
+governments for the American tropical States must be assured by the
+now existing powerful and stable States of America or Europe. The
+geographical position of those States, the climatic conditions, make
+it plain at once that sea power will there, even more than in the case
+of Turkey, determine what foreign State shall predominate,--if not by
+actual possession, by its influence over the native governments. The
+geographical position of the United States and her intrinsic power
+give her an undeniable advantage; but that advantage will not avail if
+there is a great inferiority of organized brute-force, which still
+remains the last argument of republics as of kings. Herein lies to us
+the great and still living interest of the Seven Years' War. In it we
+have seen and followed England, with an army small as compared with
+other States, as is still her case to-day, first successfully
+defending her own shores, then carrying her arms in every direction,
+spreading her rule and influence over remote regions, and not only
+binding them to her obedience, but making them tributary to her
+wealth, her strength, and her reputation. As she loosens the grasp and
+neutralizes the influence of France and Spain in regions beyond the
+sea, there is perhaps seen the prophecy of some other great nation in
+days yet to come, that will incline the balance of power in some
+future sea war, whose scope will be recognized afterward, if not by
+contemporaries, to have been the political future and the economical
+development of regions before lost to civilization; but that nation
+will not be the United States if the moment find her indifferent, as
+now, to the empire of the seas.
+
+The direction then given to England's efforts, by the instinct of the
+nation and the fiery genius of Pitt, continued after the war, and has
+profoundly influenced her subsequent policy. Mistress now of North
+America, lording it in India, through the company whose territorial
+conquests had been ratified by native princes, over twenty millions of
+inhabitants,--a population larger than that of Great Britain and
+having a revenue respectable alongside of that of the home
+government,--England, with yet other rich possessions scattered far
+and wide over the globe, had ever before her eyes, as a salutary
+lesson, the severe chastisement which the weakness of Spain had
+allowed her to inflict upon that huge disjointed empire. The words of
+the English naval historian of that war, speaking about Spain, apply
+with slight modifications to England in our own day.
+
+ "Spain is precisely that power against which England can always
+ contend with the fairest prospect of advantage and honor. That
+ extensive monarchy is exhausted at heart, her resources lie at a
+ great distance, and whatever power commands the sea, may command
+ the wealth and commerce of Spain. The dominions from which she
+ draws her resources, lying at an immense distance from the
+ capital and from one another, make it more necessary for her
+ than for any other State to temporize, until she can inspire
+ with activity all parts of her enormous but disjointed
+ empire."[111]
+
+It would be untrue to say that England is exhausted at heart; but her
+dependence upon the outside world is such as to give a certain
+suggestiveness to the phrase.
+
+This analogy of positions was not overlooked by England. From that
+time forward up to our own day, the possessions won for her by her sea
+power have combined with that sea power itself to control her policy.
+The road to India--in the days of Clive a distant and perilous voyage
+on which she had not a stopping-place of her own--was reinforced as
+opportunity offered by the acquisition of St. Helena, of the Cape of
+Good Hope, of the Mauritius. When steam made the Red Sea and
+Mediterranean route practicable, she acquired Aden, and yet later has
+established herself at Socotra. Malta had already fallen into her
+hands during the wars of the French Revolution, and her commanding
+position, as the corner-stone upon which the coalitions against
+Napoleon rested, enabled her to claim it at the Peace of 1815. Being
+but a short thousand miles from Gibraltar, the circles of military
+command exercised by these two places intersect. The present day has
+seen the stretch from Malta to the Isthmus of Suez, formerly without a
+station, guarded by the cession to her of Cyprus. Egypt, despite the
+jealousy of France, has passed under English control. The importance
+of that position to India, understood by Napoleon and Nelson, led the
+latter at once to send an officer overland to Bombay with the news of
+the battle of the Nile and the downfall of Bonaparte's hopes. Even
+now, the jealousy with which England views the advance of Russia in
+Central Asia is the result of those days in which her sea power and
+resources triumphed over the weakness of D'Aché and the genius of
+Suffren, and wrenched the peninsula of India from the ambition of the
+French.
+
+ "For the first time since the Middle Ages," says M. Martin,
+ speaking of the Seven Years' War, "England had conquered France
+ single-handed almost without allies, France having powerful
+ auxiliaries. She had conquered solely by the superiority of her
+ government."
+
+Yes! but by the superiority of her government using the tremendous
+weapon of her sea power. This made her rich, and in turn protected the
+trade by which she had her wealth. With her money she upheld her few
+auxiliaries, mainly Prussia and Hanover, in their desperate strife.
+Her power was everywhere that her ships could reach, and there was
+none to dispute the sea to her. Where she would she went, and with her
+went her guns and her troops. By this mobility her forces were
+multiplied, those of her enemies distracted. Ruler of the seas, she
+everywhere obstructed its highways. The enemies' fleets could not
+join; no great fleet could get out, or if it did, it was only to meet
+at once, with uninured officers and crews, those who were veterans in
+gales and warfare. Save in the case of Minorca, she carefully held her
+own sea-bases and eagerly seized those of the enemy. What a lion in
+the path was Gibraltar to the French squadrons of Toulon and Brest!
+What hope for French succor to Canada, when the English fleet had
+Louisburg under its lee?
+
+The one nation that gained in this war was that which used the sea in
+peace to earn its wealth, and ruled it in war by the extent of its
+navy, by the number of its subjects who lived on the sea or by the
+sea, and by its numerous bases of operations scattered over the globe.
+Yet it must be observed that these bases themselves would have lost
+their value if their communications remained obstructed. Therefore the
+French lost Louisburg, Martinique, Pondicherry; so England herself
+lost Minorca. The service between the bases and the mobile force
+between the ports and the fleets is mutual.[112] In this respect the
+navy is essentially a light corps; it keeps open the communications
+between its own ports, it obstructs those of the enemy; but it sweeps
+the sea for the service of the land, it controls the desert that man
+may live and thrive on the habitable globe.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[93] That is, with the guns on board, but for the most part not
+mounted on their carriages, in order to give increased accommodation
+for troops. When the troops were landed, the guns were mounted.
+
+[94] Ramatuelle: Tactique Navale.
+
+[95] Lapeyrouse-Bonfils: Hist. de la Marine.
+
+[96] Clerk: Naval Tactics.
+
+[97] Jurien de la Gravière: Guerres Maritimes.
+
+[98] Mahon: History of England.
+
+[99] Mahon: History of England.
+
+[100] For these, see Troude: Batailles Navales.
+
+[101] See Plate VIII.
+
+[102] Troude: Batailles Navales de la France.
+
+[103] Lapeyrouse-Bonfils.
+
+[104] Mahon: History of England.
+
+[105] Campbell: Lives of the Admirals.
+
+[106] Mahon: History of England.
+
+[107] Martin: History of France.
+
+[108] Martin: History of France.
+
+[109] Campbell: Lives of the Admirals.
+
+[110] See Annual Register, 1762, p. 63
+
+[111] Campbell: Lives of the Admirals.
+
+[112] These remarks, always true, are doubly so now since the
+introduction of steam. The renewal of coal is a want more frequent,
+more urgent, more peremptory, than any known to the sailing-ship. It
+is vain to look for energetic naval operations distant from coal
+stations. It is equally vain to acquire distant coaling stations
+without maintaining a powerful navy; they will but fall into the hands
+of the enemy. But the vainest of all delusions is the expectation of
+bringing down an enemy by commerce-destroying alone, with no coaling
+stations outside the national boundaries.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+ COURSE OF EVENTS FROM THE PEACE OF PARIS TO 1778.--MARITIME WAR
+ CONSEQUENT UPON THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.--SEA BATTLE OFF USHANT.
+
+
+If England had reason to complain that she had not reaped from the
+Treaty of Paris all the advantages that her military achievements and
+position entitled her to expect, France had every cause for discontent
+at the position in which the war left her. The gain of England was
+nearly measured by her losses; even the cession of Florida, made to
+the conqueror by Spain, had been bought by France at the price of
+Louisiana. Naturally the thoughts of her statesmen and of her people,
+as they bent under the present necessity to bear the burden of the
+vanquished, turned to the future with its possibilities of revenge and
+compensation. The Duc de Choiseul, able though imperious, remained for
+many years more at the head of affairs, and worked persistently to
+restore the power of France from the effects of the treaty. The
+Austrian alliance had been none of his seeking; it was already made
+and working when he came to office in 1758; but he had even at the
+first recognized that the chief enemy was England, and tried as far as
+could be to direct the forces of the nation against her. The defeat of
+Conflans having thwarted his projects of invasion, he next sought, in
+entire consistency with his main purpose, to stir up Spain and gain
+her alliance. The united efforts of the two kingdoms with their fine
+seaboards could, under good administration and with time for
+preparation, put afloat a navy that would be a fair counterpoise to
+that of England. It was also doubtless true that weaker maritime
+States, if they saw such a combination successfully made and working
+efficiently, would pluck up heart to declare against a government
+whose greatness excited envy and fear, and which acted with the
+disregard to the rights and welfare of others common to all
+uncontrolled power. Unhappily for both France and Spain, the alliance
+came too late. The virtual annihilation of the French fleet in 1759
+was indeed followed by an outburst of national enthusiasm for the
+navy, skilfully fostered and guided by Choiseul. "Popular feeling took
+up the cry, from one end of France to the other, 'The navy must be
+restored.' Gifts of cities, corporations, and private individuals
+raised funds. A prodigious activity sprang up in the lately silent
+ports; everywhere ships were building and repairing." The minister
+also recognized the need of restoring the discipline and tone, as well
+as the material of the navy. The hour, however, was too late; the
+middle of a great and unsuccessful war is no time to begin
+preparations. "Better late than never" is not so safe a proverb as "In
+time of peace prepare for war." The condition of Spain was better.
+When war broke out, the English naval historian estimates that she had
+one hundred ships of all sizes; of these, probably sixty were of the
+line. Nevertheless, although the addition of Spain to her numerous
+enemies might make the position of England seem critical, the
+combination in her favor of numbers, skill, experience, and prestige,
+was irresistible. With seventy thousand veteran seamen, she had only
+to maintain a position already won. The results we know.
+
+After the peace, Choiseul wisely remained faithful to his own first
+ideas. The restoration of the navy continued, and was accompanied and
+furthered by a spirit of professional ambition and of desire to excel,
+among the officers of the navy, which has been before mentioned, and
+which, in the peculiar condition of the United States navy at the
+present day, may be commended as a model. The building of ships-of-war
+continued with great activity and on a large scale. At the end of the
+war, thanks to the movement begun in 1761, there were forty
+ships-of-the-line in good condition. In 1770, when Choiseul was
+dismissed, the royal navy numbered sixty-four of the line and fifty
+frigates afloat. The arsenals and storehouses were filled, and a stock
+of ship-timber laid up. At the same time the minister tried to improve
+the efficiency of the officers by repressing the arrogant spirit of
+those of noble birth, which showed itself both toward superiors and
+toward another order of officers, not of the nobility, whose abilities
+made them desired on board the fleet. This class-feeling carried with
+it a curious sentiment of equality among officers of very different
+grades, which injuriously affected the spirit of subordination.
+Members, all, of a privileged social order, their equality as such was
+more clearly recognized than their inequality as junior and senior.
+The droll story told by Marryatt of the midshipman, who represented to
+his captain that a certain statement had been made in confidence,
+seems to have had a realization on the French quarter-deck of that
+day. "Confidence!" cried the captain; "who ever heard of confidence
+between a post-captain and a midshipman!" "No sir," replied the
+youngster, "not between a captain and a midshipman, but between two
+gentlemen." Disputes, arguments, suggestions, between two gentlemen,
+forgetful of their relative rank, would break out at critical moments,
+and the feeling of equality, which wild democratic notions spread
+throughout the fleets of the republic, was curiously forestalled by
+that existing among the members of a most haughty aristocracy. "I saw
+by his face," says one of Marryatt's heroes, "that the first
+lieutenant did not agree with the captain; but he was too good an
+officer to say so at such a moment." The phrase expresses one of the
+deepest-rooted merits of the English system, the want of which is
+owned by French writers:--
+
+ "Under Louis XVI. the intimacy and fellowship existing between
+ the chief and the subordinate led the latter to discuss the
+ orders which were given him.... The relaxation of discipline and
+ the spirit of independence were due also to another cause than
+ that pointed out; they can be partly attributed to the
+ regulation of the officers' messes. Admiral, captain, officers,
+ midshipmen, ate together; everything was in common. They
+ thee-and-thou'd each other like chums. In handling the ship, the
+ inferior gave his opinion, argued, and the chief, irritated,
+ often preferred to yield rather than make enemies. Facts of this
+ kind are asserted by witnesses whose truthfulness is above
+ suspicion."[113]
+
+Insubordination of this character, to which weaker men gave way,
+dashed in vain against the resolute and fiery temper of Suffren; but
+the spirit of discontent rose almost to the height of mutiny, causing
+him to say in his despatches to the minister of the navy, after his
+fourth battle: "My heart is pierced by the most general defection. It
+is frightful to think that I might four times have destroyed the
+English fleet, and that it still exists." Choiseul's reforms broke
+against this rock, which only the uprising of the whole nation finally
+removed; but in the personnel of the crews a great improvement was
+made. In 1767 he reorganized the artillery of the fleet, forming a
+body of ten thousand gunners, who were systematically drilled once a
+week during the ten years still to intervene before the next war with
+England.
+
+Losing sight of no part of his plans, Choiseul, while promoting the
+naval and military power of France, paid special attention to the
+alliance with Spain and judiciously encouraged and furthered the
+efforts of that country in the path of progress under Charles III.,
+the best of her kings of the Bourbon line. The Austrian alliance still
+existing was maintained, but his hopes were chiefly fixed upon Spain.
+The wisdom and insight which had at once fastened upon England as the
+centre of enmity to France had been justified and further enlightened
+by the whole course of the Seven Years' War. In Spain was the surest,
+and, with good administration, the most powerful ally. The close
+proximity of the two countries, the relative positions of their ports,
+made the naval situation particularly strong; and the alliance which
+was dictated by sound policy, by family ties, and by just fear of
+England's sea power, was further assured to France by recent and still
+existing injuries that must continue to rankle with Spain. Gibraltar,
+Minorca, and Florida were still in the hands of England; no Spaniard
+could be easy till this reproach was wiped out.
+
+It may be readily believed, as is asserted by French historians, that
+England viewed with disquietude the growth of the French navy, and
+would gladly have nipped it betimes; but it is more doubtful whether
+she would have been willing to force a war for that purpose. During
+the years succeeding the Peace of Paris a succession of short
+ministries, turning mainly upon questions of internal policy or
+unimportant party arrangement, caused her foreign policy to present a
+marked contrast to the vigorous, overbearing, but straightforward path
+followed by Pitt. Internal commotions, such as are apt to follow great
+wars, and above all the controversy with the North American colonies,
+which began as early as 1765 with the well-known Stamp Act, conspired
+with other causes to stay the hand of England. Twice at least during
+the years of Choiseul's ministry there occurred opportunities which a
+resolute, ready, and not too scrupulous government might easily have
+converted into a cause of war; the more so as they involved that sea
+power which is to England above all other nations the object of just
+and jealous concern. In 1764 the Genoese, weary of their unsuccessful
+attempts to control Corsica, again asked France to renew the
+occupation of the ports which had been garrisoned by her in 1756. The
+Corsicans also sent an ambassador to France in order to solicit
+recognition of the independence of the island, in consideration of a
+tribute equivalent to that which they had formerly paid to Genoa. The
+latter, feeling its inability to reconquer the island, at length
+decided practically to cede it. The transaction took the shape of a
+formal permission for the King of France to exercise all the rights of
+sovereignty over all the places and harbors of Corsica, as security
+for debts owing to him by the republic. This cession, disguised under
+the form of a security in order to palliate the aggrandizement of
+France in the eyes of Austria and England, recalls the conditional and
+thinly veiled surrender of Cyprus to England nine years ago,--a
+transfer likely to be as final and far-reaching as that of Corsica.
+England then remonstrated and talked angrily; but though Burke said,
+"Corsica as a province of France is terrible to me," only one member
+of the House of Commons, the veteran admiral Sir Charles Saunders, was
+found to say "that it would be better to go to war with France than
+consent to her taking possession of Corsica."[114] Having in view the
+then well-recognized interests of England in the Mediterranean, it is
+evident that an island so well situated as Corsica for influencing the
+shores of Italy and checking the naval station at Minorca, would not
+have been allowed to go into the hands of a strong master, if the
+nation had felt ready and willing for war.
+
+Again, in 1770, a dispute arose between England and Spain relative to
+the possession of the Falkland Islands. It is not material to state
+the nature of either claim to what was then but a collection of barren
+islands, destitute of military as well as of natural advantages. Both
+England and Spain had had a settlement, on which the national colors
+were flying; and at the English station a captain in the navy
+commanded. Before this settlement, called Port Egmont, there suddenly
+appeared, in June, 1770, a Spanish expedition, fitted out in Buenos
+Ayres, of five frigates and sixteen hundred soldiers. To such a force
+the handful of Englishmen could make no serious resistance; so after a
+few shots, exchanged for the honor of the flag, they capitulated.
+
+The news of this transaction, which reached England in the following
+October, showed by its reception how much more serious is an insult
+than an injury, and how much more bitterly resented. The transfer of
+Corsica had scarcely occasioned a stir outside the offices of
+statesmen; the attack on Port Egmont roused the people and Parliament.
+The minister to Madrid was ordered to demand the immediate restoration
+of the islands, with a disavowal of the action of the officer who had
+ordered the attack. Without waiting for a reply, ships were ordered
+into commission, press-gangs swept the streets, and in a short time a
+powerful fleet was ready at Spithead to revenge the insult. Spain,
+relying upon the Bourbon family compact and the support of France, was
+disposed to stand firm; but the old king, Louis XV., was averse to
+war, and Choiseul, among whose enemies at court was the last mistress,
+was dismissed. With his fall disappeared the hopes of Spain, which at
+once complied with the demands of England, reserving, however, the
+question as to the rights of sovereignty. This conclusion shows
+clearly that England, though still wielding an effective sea power
+able to control Spain, was not eager for a war merely in order to
+break down the rival navies.
+
+It is not wholly alien to the question of sea power to note, without
+dwelling upon it, a great event which now happened, seemingly utterly
+removed from all relation to the sea. The first partition of Poland
+between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, carried out in 1772, was made
+easier by the preoccupation of Choiseul with his naval policy and the
+Spanish alliance. The friendship and support of Poland and Turkey, as
+checks upon the House of Austria, were part of the tradition received
+from Henry IV. and Richelieu; the destruction of the former was a
+direct blow to the pride and interest of France. What Choiseul would
+have done had he been in office, cannot be known; but if the result of
+the Seven Years' War had been different, France might have interfered
+to some purpose.
+
+On the 10th of May, 1774, Louis XV. died, at the time when the
+troubles in the North American colonies were fast coming to a head.
+Under his youthful successor, Louis XVI., the policy of peace on the
+continent, of friendly alliance with Spain, and of building up the
+navy in numbers and efficiency, was continued. This was the foreign
+policy of Choiseul, directed against the sea power of England as the
+chief enemy, and toward the sea power of France as the chief support,
+of the nation. The instructions which, according to a French naval
+author, the new king gave to his ministers show the spirit with which
+his reign up to the Revolution was inspired, whether or not they
+originated with the king himself:--
+
+ "To watch all indications of approaching danger; to observe by
+ cruisers the approaches to our islands and the entrance to the
+ Gulf of Mexico; to keep track of what was passing on the banks
+ of Newfoundland, and to follow the tendencies of English
+ commerce; to observe in England the state of the troops and
+ armaments, the public credit and the ministry; to meddle
+ adroitly in the affairs of the British colonies; to give the
+ insurgent colonists the means of obtaining supplies of war,
+ while maintaining the strictest neutrality; to develop actively,
+ but noiselessly, the navy; to repair our ships of war; to fill
+ our storehouses and to keep on hand the means for rapidly
+ equipping a fleet at Brest and at Toulon, while Spain should be
+ fitting one at Ferrol; finally, at the first serious fear of
+ rupture, to assemble numerous troops upon the shores of Brittany
+ and Normandy, and get everything ready for an invasion of
+ England, so as to force her to concentrate her forces, and thus
+ restrict her means of resistance at the extremities of the
+ empire."[115]
+
+Such instructions, whether given all at once as a symmetrical,
+well-thought-out plan, or from time to time, as occasion arose, showed
+that an accurate forecast of the situation had been made, and breathed
+a conviction which, if earlier felt, would have greatly modified the
+history of the two countries. The execution was less thorough than the
+conception.
+
+In the matter of developing the navy, however, fifteen years of peace
+and steady work showed good results. When war openly broke out in
+1778, France had eighty ships-of-the-line in good condition, and
+sixty-seven thousand seamen were borne on the rolls of the maritime
+conscription. Spain, when she entered the war in 1779 as the ally of
+France, had in her ports nearly sixty ships-of-the-line. To this
+combination England opposed a total number of two hundred and
+twenty-eight ships of all classes, of which about one hundred and
+fifty were of the line. The apparent equality in material which would
+result from these numbers was affected, to the disadvantage of
+England, by the superior size and artillery of the French and
+Spaniards; but on the other hand her strength was increased by the
+unity of aim imparted by belonging to one nation. The allies were
+destined to feel the proverbial weakness of naval coalitions, as well
+as the degenerate administration of Spain, and the lack of habit--may
+it not even be said without injustice, of aptitude for the sea--of
+both nations. The naval policy with which Louis XVI. began his reign
+was kept up to the end; in 1791, two years after the assembly of the
+States-General, the French navy numbered eighty-six ships-of-the-line,
+generally superior, both in dimensions and model, to English ships of
+the same class.
+
+We have come, therefore, to the beginning of a truly maritime war;
+which, as will be granted by those who have followed this narrative,
+had not been seen since the days of De Ruyter and Tourville. The
+magnificence of sea power and its value had perhaps been more clearly
+shown by the uncontrolled sway, and consequent exaltation, of one
+belligerent; but the lesson thus given, if more striking, is less
+vividly interesting than the spectacle of that sea power meeting a foe
+worthy of its steel, and excited to exertion by a strife which
+endangered, not only its most valuable colonies, but even its own
+shores. Waged, from the extended character of the British Empire, in
+all quarters of the world at once, the attention of the student is
+called now to the East Indies and now to the West; now to the shores
+of the United States and thence to those of England; from New York and
+Chesapeake Bay to Gibraltar and Minorca, to the Cape Verde Islands,
+the Cape of Good Hope, and Ceylon. Fleets now meet fleets of equal
+size, and the general chase and the _mêlée_, which marked the actions
+of Hawke, Boscawen, and Anson, though they still occur at times, are
+for the most part succeeded by wary and complicated manoeuvres, too
+often barren of decisive results as naval battles, which are the
+prevailing characteristic of this coming war. The superior tactical
+science of the French succeeded in imparting to this conflict that
+peculiar feature of their naval policy, which subordinated the control
+of the sea by the destruction of the enemy's fleets, of his organized
+naval forces, to the success of particular operations, the retention
+of particular points, the carrying out of particular ulterior
+strategic ends. It is not necessary to endeavor to force upon others
+the conviction of the present writer that such a policy, however
+applicable as an exception, is faulty as a rule; but it is most
+desirable that all persons responsible for the conduct of naval
+affairs should recognize that the two lines of policy, in direct
+contradiction to each other, do exist. In the one there is a strict
+analogy to a war of posts; while in the other the objective is that
+force whose destruction leaves the posts unsupported and therefore
+sure to fall in due time. These opposing policies being recognized,
+consideration should also be had of the results of the two as
+exemplified in the history of England and France.
+
+It was not, however, with such cautious views that the new king at
+first sought to impress his admirals. In the instructions addressed to
+the Count d'Orvilliers, commanding the first fleet sent out from
+Brest, the minister, speaking in the name of the king, says:--
+
+ "Your duty now is to restore to the French flag the lustre with
+ which it once shone; past misfortunes and faults must be buried
+ out of sight; only by the most illustrious actions can the navy
+ hope to succeed in doing this. His Majesty has the right to
+ expect the greatest efforts from his officers.... Under whatever
+ circumstances the king's fleet may be placed, his Majesty's
+ orders, which he expressly charges me to impress upon you, as
+ well as upon all officers in command, are that his ships attack
+ with the greatest vigor, and defend themselves, on all
+ occasions, to the last extremity."
+
+More follows to the same effect; upon which a French officer, who has
+not before been quoted in connection with this phase of French naval
+policy, says:--
+
+ "How different this language from that held to our admirals
+ during the last war; for it would be an error to believe that
+ they followed by choice and temper the timid and defensive
+ system which predominated in the tactics of the navy. The
+ government, always finding the expenses exacted by the
+ employment of the navy excessive, too often prescribed to its
+ admirals to keep the sea as long as possible without coming to
+ pitched battles, or even to brushes, generally very expensive,
+ and from which might follow the loss of ships difficult to
+ replace. Often they were enjoined, if driven to accept action,
+ carefully to avoid compromising the fate of their squadron by
+ too decisive encounters. They thought themselves, therefore,
+ obliged to retreat as soon as an engagement took too serious a
+ turn. Thus they acquired the unhappy habit of voluntarily
+ yielding the field of battle as soon as an enemy, even inferior,
+ boldly disputed it with them. Thus to send a fleet to meet the
+ enemy, only to retire shamefully from his presence; to receive
+ action instead of offering it; to begin battles only to end them
+ with the semblance of defeat; to ruin moral force in order to
+ save physical force,--that was the spirit which, as has been
+ very judiciously said by M. Charles Dupin, guided the French
+ ministry of that epoch. The results are known."[116]
+
+The brave words of Louis XVI. were followed almost immediately by
+others, of different and qualifying tenor, to Admiral d'Orvilliers
+before he sailed. He was informed that the king, having learned the
+strength of the English fleet, relied upon his prudence as to the
+conduct to be followed at a moment when he had under his orders all
+the naval force of which France could dispose. As a matter of fact the
+two fleets were nearly equal; it would be impossible to decide which
+was the stronger, without detailed information as to the armament of
+every ship. D'Orvilliers found himself, as many a responsible man has
+before, with two sets of orders, on one or the other of which he was
+sure to be impaled, if unlucky; while the government, in the same
+event, was sure of a scape-goat.
+
+The consideration of the relative force of the two navies, material
+and moral, has necessarily carried us beyond the date of the opening
+of the American Revolutionary War. Before beginning with that
+struggle, it may be well to supplement the rough estimate of England's
+total naval force, given, in lack of more precise information, by the
+statement of the First Lord of the Admiralty made in the House of
+Lords in November, 1777, a very few months before the war with France
+began. Replying to a complaint of the opposition as to the smallness
+of the Channel fleet, he said:--
+
+ "We have now forty-two ships-of-the-line in commission in Great
+ Britain (without counting those on foreign service), thirty-five
+ of which are completely manned, and ready for sea at a moment's
+ warning.... I do not believe that either France or Spain
+ entertains any hostile disposition toward us; but from what I
+ have now submitted to you, I am authorized to affirm that our
+ navy is more than a match for that of the whole House of
+ Bourbon."[117]
+
+It must, however, be said that this pleasing prospect was not realized
+by Admiral Keppel when appointed to command in the following March,
+and looking at his fleet with (to use his own apt expression) "a
+seaman's eye;"[118] and in June he went to sea with only twenty ships.
+
+It is plainly undesirable to insert in a narrative of this character
+any account of the political questions which led to the separation of
+the United States from the British Empire. It has already been
+remarked that the separation followed upon a succession of blunders by
+the English ministry,--not unnatural in view of the ideas generally
+prevalent at that day as to the relations of colonies to the
+mother-country. It needed a man of commanding genius to recognize, not
+only the substantial justice of the American claims,--many did
+that,--but also the military strength of their situation, as before
+indicated. This lay in the distance of the colonies from home, their
+nearness to each other independently of the command of the sea, the
+character of the colonists,--mainly of English and Dutch stock,--and
+the probable hostility of France and Spain. Unfortunately for England,
+the men most able to cope with the situation were in the minority and
+out of office.
+
+It has been said before that, had the thirteen colonies been islands,
+the sea power of Great Britain would have so completely isolated them
+that their fall, one after the other, must have ensued. To this it may
+be added that the narrowness of the strip then occupied by civilized
+man, and the manner in which it was intersected by estuaries of the
+sea and navigable rivers, practically reduced to the condition of
+islands, so far as mutual support went, great sections of the
+insurgent country, which were not large enough to stand alone, yet too
+large for their fall not to have been a fatal blow to the common
+cause. The most familiar case is that of the line of the Hudson, where
+the Bay of New York was held from the first by the British, who also
+took the city in September, 1776, two months after the Declaration of
+Independence. The difficulties in the way of moving up and down such a
+stream were doubtless much greater to sailing vessels than they now
+are to steamers; yet it seems impossible to doubt that active and
+capable men wielding the great sea power of England could so have held
+that river and Lake Champlain with ships-of-war at intervals and
+accompanying galleys as to have supported a sufficient army moving
+between the head-waters of the Hudson and the lake, while themselves
+preventing any intercourse by water between New England and the States
+west of the river. This operation would have closely resembled that by
+which in the Civil War the United States fleets and armies gradually
+cut in twain the Southern Confederacy by mastering the course of the
+Mississippi, and the political results would have been even more
+important than the military; for at that early stage of the war the
+spirit of independence was far more general and bitter in the section
+that would have been cut off,--in New England,--than in New York and
+New Jersey, perhaps than anywhere except in South Carolina.[119]
+
+In 1777 the British attempted to accomplish this object by sending
+General Burgoyne from Canada to force his way by Lake Champlain to the
+Hudson. At the same time Sir Henry Clinton moved north from New York
+with three thousand men, and reached West Point, whence he sent by
+shipping a part of his force up the river to within forty miles of
+Albany. Here the officer in command learned of the surrender of
+Burgoyne at Saratoga, and returned; but what he did at the head of a
+detachment from a main body of only three thousand, shows what might
+have been done under a better system. While this was happening on the
+Hudson, the English commander-in-chief of the troops acting in America
+had curiously enough made use of the sea power of his nation to
+transport the bulk of his army--fourteen thousand men--from New York
+to the head of Chesapeake Bay, so as to take Philadelphia in the rear.
+This eccentric movement was successful as regarded its objective,
+Philadelphia; but it was determined by political considerations,
+because Philadelphia was the seat of Congress, and was contrary to
+sound military policy. The conquest therefore was early lost; but it
+was yet more dearly won, for by this diversion of the British forces
+the different corps were placed out of mutual support, and the control
+of the water-line of the Hudson was abandoned. While Burgoyne, with
+seven thousand regular troops, besides auxiliaries, was moving down to
+seize the head-waters of the river, fourteen thousand men were removed
+from its mouth to the Chesapeake. The eight thousand left in or near
+New York were consequently tied to the city by the presence of the
+American army in New Jersey. This disastrous step was taken in August;
+in October Burgoyne, isolated and hemmed in, surrendered. In the
+following May the English evacuated Philadelphia, and after a painful
+and perilous march through New Jersey, with Washington's army in close
+pursuit, regained New York.
+
+This taking of the British fleet to the head of the Chesapeake,
+coupled with the ascent of the Potomac in 1814 by English
+sailing-frigates, shows another weak line in the chain of the American
+colonies; but it was not, like that of the Hudson and Champlain, a
+line both ends of which rested in the enemy's power,--in Canada on the
+one hand, on the sea on the other.
+
+As to the sea warfare in general, it is needless to enlarge upon the
+fact that the colonists could make no head against the fleets of Great
+Britain, and were consequently forced to abandon the sea to them,
+resorting only to a cruising warfare, mainly by privateers, for which
+their seamanship and enterprise well fitted them, and by which they
+did much injury to English commerce. By the end of 1778 the English
+naval historian estimates that American privateers had taken nearly a
+thousand merchant-ships, valued at nearly £2,000,000; he claims,
+however, that the losses of the Americans were heavier. They should
+have been; for the English cruisers were both better supported and
+individually more powerful, while the extension of American commerce
+had come to be the wonder of the statesmen of the mother-country. When
+the war broke out, it was as great as that of England herself at the
+beginning of the century.
+
+An interesting indication of the number of the seafaring population of
+North America at that time is given by the statement in Parliament by
+the First Lord of the Admiralty, "that the navy had lost eighteen
+thousand of the seamen employed in the last war by not having
+America,"[120]--no inconsiderable loss to a sea power, particularly if
+carried over to the ranks of the enemy.
+
+The course of warfare on the sea gave rise, as always, to grievances
+of neutrals against the English for the seizures of their ships in the
+American trade. Such provocation, however, was not necessary to
+excite the enmity and the hopes of France in the harassed state of the
+British government. The hour of reckoning, of vengeance, at which the
+policy of Choiseul had aimed, seemed now at hand. The question was
+early entertained at Paris what attitude should be assumed, what
+advantage drawn from the revolt of the colonies. It was decided that
+the latter should receive all possible support short of an actual
+break with England; and to this end a Frenchman named Beaumarchais was
+furnished with money to establish a business house which should supply
+the colonists with warlike stores. France gave a million francs, to
+which Spain added an equal sum, and Beaumarchais was allowed to buy
+from government arsenals. Meanwhile agents were received from the
+United States, and French officers passed into its service with little
+real hindrance from their government. Beaumarchais' house was started
+in 1776; in December of that year Benjamin Franklin landed in France,
+and in May, 1777, Lafayette came to America. Meanwhile the
+preparations for war, especially for a sea war, were pushed on; the
+navy was steadily increased, and arrangements were made for
+threatening an invasion from the Channel, while the real scene of the
+war was to be in the colonies. There France was in the position of a
+man who has little to lose. Already despoiled of Canada, she had every
+reason to believe that a renewal of war, with Europe neutral and the
+Americans friends instead of enemies, would not rob her of her
+islands. Recognizing that the Americans, who less than twenty years
+before had insisted upon the conquest of Canada, would not consent to
+her regaining it, she expressly stipulated that she would have no such
+hopes, but exacted that in the coming war she should retain any
+English West Indian possessions which she could seize. Spain was
+differently situated. Hating England, wanting to regain Gibraltar,
+Minorca, and Jamaica,--no mere jewels in her crown, but
+foundation-stones of her sea power,--she nevertheless saw that the
+successful rebellion of the English colonists against the hitherto
+unrivalled sea power of the mother-country would be a dangerous
+example to her own enormous colonial system, from which she yearly
+drew so great subsidies. If England with her navy should fail, what
+could Spain achieve? In the introductory chapter it was pointed out
+that the income of the Spanish government was drawn, not as a light
+tax upon a wealthy sea power, built upon the industry and commerce of
+the kingdom, but from a narrow stream of gold and silver trickling
+through a few treasure-ships loaded with the spoils of colonies
+administered upon the narrowest system. Spain had much to lose, as
+well as to gain. It was true still, as in 1760, that she was the power
+with which England could war to the greatest advantage. Nevertheless,
+existing injuries and dynastic sympathy carried the day. Spain entered
+upon the secretly hostile course pursued by France.
+
+To this explosive condition of things the news of Burgoyne's surrender
+acted as a spark. The experience of former wars had taught France the
+worth of the Americans as enemies, and she was expecting to find in
+them valuable helpers in her schemes of revenge; now it seemed that
+even alone they might be able to take care of themselves, and reject
+any alliance. The tidings reached Europe on the 2d of December, 1777;
+on the 16th the French foreign minister informed the commissioners of
+Congress that the king was ready to recognize the independence of the
+United States, and to make with them a commercial treaty and
+contingent defensive alliance. The speed with which the business was
+done shows that France had made up her mind; and the treaty, so
+momentous in its necessary consequences, was signed on the 6th of
+February, 1778.
+
+It is not necessary to give the detailed terms of the treaty; but it
+is important to observe, first, that the express renunciation of
+Canada and Nova Scotia by France foreshadowed that political theory
+which is now known as the Monroe doctrine, the claims of which can
+scarcely be made good without an adequate sea-force; and next, that
+the alliance with France, and subsequently with Spain, brought to the
+Americans that which they above all needed,--a sea power to
+counterbalance that of England. Will it be too much for American
+pride to admit that, had France refused to contest the control of the
+sea with England, the latter would have been able to reduce the
+Atlantic seaboard? Let us not kick down the ladder by which we
+mounted, nor refuse to acknowledge what our fathers felt in their hour
+of trial.
+
+Before going on with the story of this maritime war, the military
+situation as it existed in the different parts of the world should be
+stated.
+
+The three features which cause it to differ markedly from that at the
+opening of the Seven Years' War, in 1756, are--(1) the hostile
+relation of America to England; (2) the early appearance of Spain as
+the ally of France; and (3) the neutrality of the other continental
+States, which left France without preoccupation on the land side.
+
+On the North American continent the Americans had held Boston for two
+years. Narragansett Bay and Rhode Island were occupied by the English,
+who also held New York and Philadelphia. Chesapeake Bay and its
+entrance, being without strong posts, were in the power of any fleet
+that appeared against them. In the South, since the unsuccessful
+attack upon Charlestown in 1776, no movement of importance had been
+made by the English; up to the declaration of war by France the chief
+events of the war had been north of the Chesapeake (of Baltimore). In
+Canada, on the other hand, the Americans had failed, and it remained
+to the end a firm base to the English power.
+
+In Europe the most significant element to be noted is the state of
+preparedness of the French navy, and to some extent of the Spanish, as
+compared with previous wars. England stood wholly on the defensive,
+and without allies; while the Bourbon kings aimed at the conquest of
+Gibraltar and Port Mahon, and the invasion of England. The first two,
+however, were the dear objects of Spain, the last of France; and this
+divergence of aims was fatal to the success of this maritime
+coalition. In the introductory chapter allusion was made to the
+strategic question raised by these two policies.
+
+In the West Indies the grip of the two combatants on the land was in
+fact about equal, though it should not have been so. Both France and
+England were strongly posted in the Windward Islands,--the one at
+Martinique, the other at Barbadoes. It must be noted that the position
+of the latter, to windward of all others of the group, was a decided
+strategic advantage in the days of sail. As it happened, the fighting
+was pretty nearly confined to the neighborhood of the Lesser Antilles.
+Here, at the opening of the struggle, the English island of Dominica
+lay between the French Martinique and Guadeloupe; it was therefore
+coveted and seized. Next south of Martinique lay Sta. Lucia, a French
+colony. Its strong harbor on the lee side, known as Gros Ilot Bay, was
+a capital place from which to watch the proceedings of the French navy
+in Fort Royal, Martinique. The English captured the island, and from
+that safe anchorage Rodney watched and pursued the French fleet before
+his famous action in 1782. The islands to the southward were of
+inferior military consequence. In the greater islands, Spain should
+have outweighed England, holding as she did Cuba, Porto Rico, and,
+with France, Hayti, as against Jamaica alone. Spain, however, counted
+here for nothing but a dead-weight; and England had elsewhere too much
+on her hands to attack her. The only point in America where the
+Spanish arms made themselves felt was in the great region east of the
+Mississippi, then known as Florida, which, though at that time an
+English possession, did not join the revolt of the colonies.
+
+In the East Indies it will be remembered that France had received back
+her stations at the peace of 1763; but the political predominance of
+the English in Bengal was not offset by similar control of the French
+in any part of the peninsula. During the ensuing years the English had
+extended and strengthened their power, favored in so doing by the
+character of their chief representatives, Clive and Warren Hastings.
+Powerful native enemies had, however, risen against them in the south
+of the peninsula, both on the east and west, affording an excellent
+opportunity for France to regain her influence when the war broke out;
+but her government and people remained blind to the possibilities of
+that vast region. Not so England. The very day the news of the
+outbreak of war reached Calcutta, July 7, 1778, Hastings sent orders
+to the governor of Madras to attack Pondicherry, and set the example
+by seizing Chandernagore. The naval force of each nation was
+insignificant; but the French commodore, after a brief action, forsook
+Pondicherry, which surrendered after a siege by land and sea of
+seventy days. The following March, 1779, Mahé, the last French
+settlement, fell, and the French flag again disappeared; while at the
+same time there arrived a strong English squadron of six
+ships-of-the-line under Admiral Hughes. The absence of any similar
+French force gave the entire control of the sea to the English until
+the arrival of Suffren, nearly three years later. In the mean while
+Holland had been drawn into the war, and her stations, Negapatam on
+the Coromandel coast, and the very important harbor of Trincomalee in
+Ceylon, were both captured, the latter in January, 1782, by the joint
+forces of the army and navy. The successful accomplishment of these
+two enterprises completed the military situation in Hindostan at the
+time when the arrival of Suffren, just one month later, turned the
+nominal war into a desperate and bloody contest. Suffren found himself
+with a decidedly stronger squadron, but without a port, either French
+or allied, on which to base his operations against the English.
+
+Of these four chief theatres of the war, two, North America and the
+West Indies, as might be expected from their nearness, blend and
+directly affect each other. This is not so obviously the case with the
+struggles in Europe and India. The narrative therefore naturally falls
+into three principal divisions, which may to some extent be treated
+separately. After such separate consideration their mutual influence
+will be pointed out, together with any useful lessons to be gathered
+from the goodness or badness, the success or failure, of the grand
+combinations, and from the part played by sea power.
+
+On the 13th of March, 1778, the French ambassador at London notified
+the English government that France had acknowledged the independence
+of the United States, and made with them a treaty of commerce and
+defensive alliance. England at once recalled her ambassador; but
+though war was imminent and England at disadvantage, the Spanish king
+offered mediation, and France wrongly delayed to strike. In June,
+Admiral Keppel sailed from Portsmouth, with twenty ships, on a cruise.
+Falling in with two French frigates, his guns, to bring them to,
+opened the war. Finding from their papers that thirty-two French ships
+lay in Brest, he at once returned for reinforcements. Sailing again
+with thirty ships, he fell in with the French fleet under D'Orvilliers
+to the westward of Ushant, and to windward, with a westerly wind. On
+the 27th of July was fought the first fleet action of the war,
+generally known as the battle of Ushant.
+
+This battle, in which thirty ships-of-the-line fought on either side,
+was wholly indecisive in its results. No ship was taken or sunk; both
+fleets, after separating, returned to their respective ports. The
+action nevertheless obtained great celebrity in England from the
+public indignation at its lack of result, and from the storm of naval
+and political controversy which followed. The admiral and the officer
+third in command belonged to different political parties; they made
+charges, one against the other, and in the following courts-martial
+all England divided, chiefly on party lines. Public and naval
+sentiment generally favored the commander-in-chief, Keppel.
+
+ [Illustration: Pl. IX. KEPPEL OFF USHANT JULY 27, 1778.]
+
+Tactically, the battle presents some interesting features, and
+involves one issue which is still living to-day. Keppel was to leeward
+and wished to force an action; in order to do this he signalled a
+general chase to windward, so that his fastest ships might overtake
+the slower ones of the enemy. Granting equal original fleet-speed,
+this was quite correct. D'Orvilliers, to windward, had no intention of
+fighting except on his own terms. As will generally be the case, the
+fleet acting on the offensive obtained its wish. At daybreak of the
+27th both fleets were on the port tack, heading west-northwest, with
+a steady breeze at southwest (Plate IX., A, A, A).[121] The English
+rear (R) had fallen to leeward,[122] and Keppel consequently made
+signal to six of its ships to chase to windward, so as to place them
+in a better position to support the main body if it could get into
+action. D'Orvilliers observed this movement, and construed it to show
+an intention to attack his rear with a superior force. The two fleets
+being then from six to eight miles apart, he wore his fleet in
+succession (French A to B), by which he lost ground to leeward, but
+approached the enemy, and was able to see them better (Positions B, B,
+B). At the completion of this evolution the wind hauled to the
+southward, favoring the English; so Keppel, instead of going about,
+stood on for half an hour more (English B to C), and then tacked
+together in wake of the French. This confirmed D'Orvilliers'
+suspicions, and as the wind, which certainly favored the English that
+morning, now hauled back again to the westward, permitting them to lay
+up for the French rear, he wore his fleet together (B to C), thus
+bringing the rest to aid the rear, now become the van, and preventing
+Keppel from concentrating on or penetrating it. The two fleets thus
+passed on opposite tacks (C),[123] exchanging ineffective broadsides,
+the French running free to windward and having the power to attack,
+but not using it. D'Orvilliers then made the signal for his van,
+formerly the rear, to wear to leeward of the English rear, which was
+to leeward of its own main body, intending himself to remain to
+windward and so attack it on both sides; but the commander of that
+division, a prince of the blood royal, did not obey, and the possible
+advantage was lost. On the English side the same manoeuvre was
+attempted. The admiral of the van and some of his ships tacked, as
+soon as out of fire (D),[124] and stood after the French rear; but for
+the most part the damage to rigging prevented tacking, and wearing was
+impossible on account of the ships coming up behind. The French now
+stood to leeward and formed line again, but the English were not in
+condition to attack. This was the end of the battle.
+
+It has been said that there are some interesting points about this
+resultless engagement. One is, that Keppel's conduct was approved
+throughout, on oath before the court-martial, by one of the most
+distinguished admirals England has brought forth, Sir John Jervis, who
+commanded a ship in the fleet. It does not indeed appear what he could
+have done more; but his lack of tactical understanding is shown by a
+curious remark in his defence. "If the French admiral really meant to
+come to action," says he, "I apprehend he would never have put his
+fleet on the contrary tack to that on which the British fleet was
+approaching." This remark can only proceed from ignorance or
+thoughtlessness of the danger to which the rear of the French fleet
+would have been exposed, and is the more curious as he himself had
+said the English were lying up for it. Keppel's idea seems to have
+been that the French should have waited for him to come up abreast,
+and then go at it, ship for ship, in what was to him the good old
+style; D'Orvilliers was too highly trained to be capable of such
+action.
+
+The failure of the Duc de Chartres,[125] commanding the French van
+during the firing, to wear in obedience to orders, whether due to
+misunderstanding or misconduct, raises the question, which is still
+debated, as to the proper position for a naval commander-in-chief in
+action. Had D'Orvilliers been in the van, he could have insured the
+evolution he wished. From the centre the admiral has the extremities
+of his fleet equally visible, or invisible, as it may be. At the head
+he enforces his orders by his example. The French toward the end of
+this war solved the question by taking him out of the line altogether
+and putting him on board a frigate, for the avowed reasons that he
+could thus better see the movements of his fleet and of the enemy
+without being blinded by smoke or distracted by the occurrences on
+board his own ship, and that his signals could be better seen.[126]
+This position, resembling somewhat that of a general on shore, being
+remote from personal risk, was also assumed by Lord Howe in 1778; but
+both that officer and the French abandoned the practice later. Nelson
+at Trafalgar, the end of his career, led his column; but it may be
+doubted whether he had any other motive than his ardor for battle. The
+two other great attacks in which he commanded in chief were directed
+against ships at anchor, and in neither did he take the head of the
+column; for the good reason that, his knowledge of the ground being
+imperfect, the leading ship was in most danger of grounding. The
+common practice in the days of broadside sailing-ships, except when a
+general chase was ordered, was for the admiral to be in the line, and
+in the centre of it. The departure from this custom on the part of
+both Nelson and Collingwood, each of whom led his own columns at
+Trafalgar, may have had some reason, and an ordinary man rather
+shrinks from criticising the action of officers of their eminence. The
+danger to which were exposed the two senior officers of the fleet,
+upon whom so much depended, is obvious; and had any serious injury
+befallen their persons, or the head of their columns, the lack of
+their influence would have been seriously felt. As it was, they were
+speedily obliterated, as admirals, in the smoke of the battle, leaving
+to those who came after them no guidance or control except the
+brilliancy of their courage and example. A French admiral has pointed
+out that the practical effect of the mode of attack at Trafalgar, two
+columns bearing down upon a line at right angles to them, was to
+sacrifice the head of the columns in making two breaches in the
+enemy's line. So far, very well; the sacrifice was well worth while;
+and into these breaches came up the rear ships of each column, nearly
+fresh, forming in fact a _reserve_ which fell upon the shattered ships
+of the enemy on either side of the breaks. Now this idea of a reserve
+prompts a thought as to the commander-in-chief. The size of his ship
+was such as precluded its being out of the order; but would it not
+have been well had the admiral of each column been with this reserve,
+keeping in his hands the power of directing it according to the
+chances of the action, making him a reality as well as a name for some
+time longer, and to a very useful purpose? The difficulty of arranging
+any system of signals or light despatch-boats which could take the
+place of the aids or messengers of a general, coupled with the fact
+that ships cannot stand still, as divisions of men do, waiting orders,
+but that they must have steerage-way, precludes the idea of putting an
+admiral of a fleet under way in a light vessel. By so doing he becomes
+simply a spectator; whereas by being in the most powerful ship of the
+fleet he retains the utmost weight possible after action is once
+engaged, and, if this ship be in the reserve, the admiral keeps to the
+latest possible moment the power of commander-in-chief in his own
+hands. "Half a loaf is better than no bread;" if the admiral cannot,
+from the conditions of sea warfare, occupy the calmly watchful
+position of his brother on shore, let there be secured for him as much
+as may be. The practice of Farragut after New Orleans and Vicksburg,
+that is to say, in the latter part of his career, when it may be
+believed experience had determined his views, was to lead in person.
+It is known that he very reluctantly, at the solicitation of various
+officers, yielded his convictions in this matter at Mobile so far as
+to take the second place, and afterward freely expressed his regrets
+for having done so. It may, however, be argued that the character of
+all the actions in which Farragut commanded had a peculiarity,
+differentiating them from battles in the strict sense of the word. At
+New Orleans, at Vicksburg, at Port Hudson, and at Mobile, the task was
+not to engage, but to pass fortifications which the fleet confessedly
+could not stand up to; and the passage was to be made under conditions
+mainly of pilotage upon ground as to which, unlike Nelson, he had good
+knowledge. There was thus imposed upon the commander-in-chief the duty
+of leadership in the literal, as well as the military, sense of the
+term. So leading, he not only pointed out to the fleet the safe road,
+but, drawing continually ahead of the smoke, was better able to see
+and judge the path ahead, and to assume the responsibility of a course
+which he may have prescribed and intended throughout, but from which a
+subordinate might shrink. It has not perhaps been commonly noted, that
+at Mobile the leaders, not only of one but of both columns, at the
+critical point of the road hesitated and doubted as to the admiral's
+purpose; not that they had not received it clearly, but because
+circumstances seemed to them to be different from what he had
+supposed. Not only Alden in the "Brooklyn," but Craven also in the
+"Tecumseh," departed from the admiral's orders and left the course
+dictated to them, with disastrous results. There is no necessity to
+condemn either captain; but the irresistible inference is that
+Farragut was unqualifiedly right in his opinion that the man who alone
+has the highest responsibility should, under the conditions of his
+battles, be in the front. And here it must be remarked that at such
+critical moments of doubt any but the highest order of mind tends to
+throw off the responsibility of decision upon the superior, though
+from the instancy of the case hesitation or delay may be fatal. A man
+who as the commissioned chief would act intelligently, as the mere
+subordinate will balk. Nelson's action at St. Vincent will rarely be
+emulated, a truth which is strongly shown by the fact that
+Collingwood was immediately in his rear that day, and did not imitate
+his action till signalled by the commander-in-chief; yet after
+receiving the authority of the signal, he particularly distinguished
+himself by his judgment and daring.[127] It will be recalled, also, in
+connection with this question of pilot-ground battles, that a central
+position nearly lost the flag-ship at New Orleans, owing to the
+darkness and to the smoke from the preceding ships; the United States
+fleet came near finding itself without its leader after the passage of
+the forts. Now as the mention of a reserve prompted one set of
+considerations, so the name of pilotage suggests certain ideas,
+broader than itself, which modify what has been said of keeping the
+admiral with the reserve. The ease and quickness with which a steam
+fleet can change its formation make it very probable that a fleet
+bearing down to attack may find itself, almost at the very moment of
+collision, threatened with some unlooked-for combination; then where
+would be the happiest position for an admiral? Doubtless in that part
+of his own order where he could most readily pilot his ships into the
+new disposition, or direction, by which he would meet the changed
+conditions; that is, in the position of leading. It would seem that
+there are always two moments of greatest importance in a sea-fight;
+one which determines the method of the main attack, the other the
+bringing up and directing the effort of the reserve. If the first is
+more important, the second perhaps requires the higher order of
+ability; for the former may and should proceed on a before-determined
+plan, while the latter may, and often must, be shaped to meet
+unforeseen exigencies. The conditions of sea-battles of the future
+contain one element that land battles cannot have,--the extreme
+rapidity with which encounters and changes of order can take place.
+However troops may be moved by steam to the field of battle, they will
+there fight on foot or on horseback, and with a gradual development of
+their plan, which will allow the commander-in-chief time to make his
+wishes known (as a rule, of course), in case of a change in the
+enemy's attack. On the other hand, a fleet, comparatively small in
+numbers and with its component units clearly defined, may be
+meditating an important change of which no sign can appear until it
+begins, and which will occupy but a few minutes. So far as these
+remarks are sound, they show the need of a second in command
+thoroughly conversant with not only the plans, but with the leading
+principles of action of his chief,--a need plain enough from the fact
+that the two extremities of the order-of-battle may be necessarily
+remote, and that you want the spirit of the leader at both
+extremities. As he cannot be there in person, the best thing is to
+have an efficient second at one end. As regards Nelson's position at
+Trafalgar, mentioned at the beginning of this discussion, it is to be
+noted that the "Victory" did nothing that another ship could not have
+done as well, and that the lightness of the wind forbade the
+expectation of any sudden change in the enemy's order. The enormous
+risk run by the person of the admiral, on whose ship was concentrated
+the fire of the enemy's line, and which led several captains to
+implore a change, was condemned long before by Nelson himself in one
+of his letters after the battle of the Nile:--
+
+ "I think, if it had pleased God I had not been wounded, not a
+ boat would have escaped to have told the tale; but do not
+ believe that any individual in the fleet is to blame.... I only
+ mean to say that if my experience could in person have directed
+ those individuals, there was every appearance that Almighty God
+ would have continued to bless my endeavors," etc.[128]
+
+Yet, notwithstanding such an expression of opinion based upon
+experience, he took the most exposed position at Trafalgar, and upon
+the loss of the leader there followed a curious exemplification of its
+effects. Collingwood at once, rightly or wrongly, avoidably or
+unavoidably, reversed Nelson's plans, urged with his last breath.
+"Anchor! Hardy, do you anchor!" said the dying chief. "Anchor!" said
+Collingwood. "It is the last thing I should have thought of."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[113] Troude: Batailles Navales.
+
+[114] Mahon: History of England.
+
+[115] Lapeyrouse-Bonfils, vol. iii. p. 5.
+
+[116] Troude, vol. ii. pp. 3-5. For other quotations from French
+authors to the same effect, see _ante_, pages 77, 80, 81.
+
+[117] Mahon: History of England; Gentleman's Magazine, 1777, p. 553.
+
+[118] Keppel's Defence.
+
+[119] "A candid view of our affairs, which I am going to exhibit, will
+make you a judge of the difficulties under which we labor. Almost all
+our supplies of flour and no inconsiderable part of our meat are drawn
+from the States westward of Hudson's River. This renders a secure
+communication across that river indispensably necessary, both to the
+support of your squadron and the army. The enemy, being masters of
+that navigation, would interrupt this essential intercourse between
+the States. They have been sensible of these advantages.... If they
+could by any demonstration in another part draw our attention and
+strength from this important point, and by anticipating our return
+possess themselves of it, the consequences would be fatal. Our
+dispositions must therefore have equal regard to co-operating with you
+[at Boston] in a defensive plan, and securing the North River, which
+the remoteness of the two objects from each other renders peculiarly
+difficult."--WASHINGTON to D'ESTAING, Sept. 11, 1778.
+
+[120] Annual Register, 1778, p. 201.
+
+[121] In this plate the plan followed in every other instance, of
+showing only the characteristic phases of a battle, in succession, but
+disconnected, has been abandoned, and the attempt is to indicate
+_continuously_ the series of manoeuvres and the tracks by which the
+fleets at last came into contact (from A to C). As the _battle_
+consisted merely in the passage by each other of two fleets, moving in
+opposite parallel directions, an encounter always indecisive and
+futile, the previous manoeuvres constitute the chief interest in an
+affair whose historical importance is due to other than tactical
+reasons.
+
+[122] The line drawn through the centre of the English fleet at A
+shows the close-hauled line (south-southeast) on which, by strict
+tactical requirement, the English ships should have borne from each
+other.
+
+[123] The leading ships of the two fleets diverged from each other
+(C), which is, by the French, attributed to the English van keeping
+away; by the English it is said that the French van luffed. The latter
+account is followed in the diagrams.
+
+[124] The position D, separated from the rest of the plan, shows the
+end of the passage by, which began at C. It could not be shown in
+connection with the other tracks without producing confusion.
+
+[125] Afterward Duc d'Orleans; the Philippe Égalité of the French
+Revolution, and father of Louis Philippe.
+
+[126] The capture of the French commander-in-chief on board his
+flag-ship, in the battle of April 12, 1782, was also a motive for this
+new order.
+
+[127] The following incident, occurring during Rodney's chase of De
+Grasse, in April, 1782, shows how far subordination may be carried.
+Hood was one of the finest of the British officers; nor does the
+author undertake to criticise his action. He was some miles from
+Rodney at the time. "The separated French ship in the N.W., having got
+the breeze at the same time as our van division, boldly stood for and
+endeavored to weather the British advanced ships; that being the only
+way to regain her own fleet, then to windward. To such a length did
+she carry her audacity that she compelled the Alfred, the headmost
+ship of Sir Samuel Hood's division, to bear up in order to allow her
+to pass. Every eye was fixed upon the bold Frenchman, excepting those
+who were anxiously looking out on the commander-in-chief to make the
+signal to engage, but who, most likely from not supposing it could be
+an enemy, did not throw out the ardently looked-for signal, and
+therefore not a gun was fired. This is mentioned to show the state of
+discipline on board the ships composing Sir Samuel Hood's division,
+and that he, though second in command, would not fire a single shot
+until directed to do so by his commander-in-chief. 'It is more than
+probable that Sir S. Hood's reason for having waited for the signal to
+engage from his commander-in-chief, ere he would fire, arose from the
+supposition that had he been the occasion of prematurely bringing on
+an action under the above circumstances, he would have been
+responsible for the results.'" (White's Naval Researches, p. 97.)
+
+Hood may have been influenced by Rodney's bearing toward inferiors
+whose initiative displeased him. The relations of the two seem to have
+been strained.
+
+[128] Sir N.H. Nicholas: Despatches and Letters of Lord Nelson.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+ MARITIME WAR IN NORTH AMERICA AND WEST INDIES, 1778-1781.--ITS
+ INFLUENCE UPON THE COURSE OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.--FLEET
+ ACTIONS OFF GRENADA, DOMINICA, AND CHESAPEAKE BAY.
+
+
+On the 15th of April, 1778, Admiral Comte d'Estaing sailed from Toulon
+for the American continent, having under his command twelve
+ships-of-the-line and five frigates. With him went as a passenger a
+minister accredited to Congress, who was instructed to decline all
+requests for subsidies, and to avoid explicit engagements relative to
+the conquest of Canada and other British possessions. "The Cabinet of
+Versailles," says a French historian, "was not sorry for the United
+States to have near them a cause of anxiety, which would make them
+feel the value of the French alliance."[129] While acknowledging the
+generous sympathy of many Frenchmen for their struggle, Americans need
+not blind themselves to the self-interestedness of the French
+government. Neither should they find fault; for its duty was to
+consider French interests first.
+
+D'Estaing's progress was very slow. It is said that he wasted much
+time in drills, and even uselessly. However that may be, he did not
+reach his destination, the Capes of the Delaware, until the 8th of
+July,--making a passage of twelve weeks, four of which were spent in
+reaching the Atlantic. The English government had news of his intended
+sailing; and in fact, as soon as they recalled their ambassador at
+Paris, orders were sent to America to evacuate Philadelphia, and
+concentrate upon New York. Fortunately for them, Lord Howe's
+movements were marked by a vigor and system other than D'Estaing's.
+First assembling his fleet and transports in Delaware Bay, and then
+hastening the embarkation of stores and supplies, he left Philadelphia
+as soon as the army had marched from there for New York. Ten days were
+taken up in reaching the mouth of the bay;[130] but he sailed from it
+the 28th of June, ten days before D'Estaing arrived, though more than
+ten weeks after he had sailed. Once outside, a favoring wind took the
+whole fleet to Sandy Hook in two days. War is unforgiving; the prey
+that D'Estaing had missed by delays foiled him in his attempts upon
+both New York and Rhode Island.
+
+The day after Howe's arrival at Sandy Hook the English army reached
+the heights of Navesink, after an harassing march through New Jersey,
+with Washington's troops hanging upon its rear. By the active
+co-operation of the navy it was carried up to New York by the 5th of
+July; and Howe then went back to bar the entrance to the port against
+the French fleet. As no battle followed, the details of his
+arrangements will not be given; but a very full and interesting
+account by an officer of the fleet can be found in Ekins's "Naval
+Battles." Attention, however, may well be called to the combination of
+energy, thought, skill, and determination shown by the admiral. The
+problem before him was to defend a practicable pass with six
+sixty-four-gun ships and three of fifty, against eight of seventy-four
+guns or over, three sixty-fours, and one fifty,--it may be said
+against nearly double his own force.
+
+D'Estaing anchored outside, south of the Hook, on the 11th of July,
+and there remained until the 22d, engaged in sounding the bar, and
+with every apparent determination to enter. On the 22d a high
+northeast wind, coinciding with a spring tide, raised the water on the
+bar to thirty feet. The French fleet got under way, and worked up to
+windward to a point fair for crossing the bar. Then D'Estaing's heart
+failed him under the discouragement of the pilots; he gave up the
+attack and stood away to the southward.
+
+Naval officers cannot but sympathize with the hesitation of a seaman
+to disregard the advice of pilots, especially on a coast foreign to
+him; but such sympathy should not close their eyes to the highest type
+of character. Let any one compare the action of D'Estaing at New York
+with that of Nelson at Copenhagen and the Nile, or that of Farragut at
+Mobile and Port Hudson, and the inferiority of the Frenchman as a
+military leader, guided only by military considerations, is painfully
+apparent. New York was the very centre of the British power; its fall
+could not but have shortened the war. In fairness to D'Estaing,
+however, it must be remembered that other than military considerations
+had to weigh with him. The French admiral doubtless had instructions
+similar to those of the French minister, and he probably reasoned that
+France had nothing to gain by the fall of New York, which might have
+led to peace between America and England, and left the latter free to
+turn all her power against his own country. Less than that would have
+been enough to decide his wavering mind as to risking his fleet over
+the bar.
+
+Howe was more fortunate than D'Estaing, in having no divided purposes.
+Having escaped from Philadelphia and saved New York by his diligence,
+he had in store the further honor of saving Rhode Island by the like
+rapid movements. Scattered ships-of-war from a fleet despatched from
+England now began to arrive. On the 28th of July Howe was informed
+that the French fleet, which had disappeared to the southward, had
+been seen heading for Rhode Island. In four days his fleet was ready
+for sea, but owing to contrary winds did not reach Point Judith till
+the 9th of August. There he anchored, and learned that D'Estaing had
+run the batteries the day before and anchored between Gould and
+Canonicut Islands;[131] the Seakonnet and Western passages had also
+been occupied by French ships, and the fleet was prepared to sustain
+the American army in an attack upon the British works.
+
+The arrival of Howe, although his reinforcements did not raise the
+English fleet to over two thirds the strength of the French, upset
+D'Estaing's plans. With the prevailing summer southwest breezes
+blowing straight into the bay, he was exposed to any attempts his
+adversary might make. That same night the wind shifted unexpectedly to
+the northward, and D'Estaing at once got under way and stood out to
+sea. Howe, though surprised by this unlooked-for act,--for he had not
+felt himself strong enough to attack,--also made sail to keep the
+weather-gage. The next twenty-four hours passed in manoeuvring for the
+advantage; but on the night of the 11th of August a violent gale of
+wind dispersed the fleets. Great injury was done to the vessels of
+both, and among others the French flag-ship "Languedoc," of ninety
+guns, lost all her masts and her rudder. Immediately after the gale
+two different English fifty-gun ships, in fighting order, fell in, the
+one with the "Languedoc," the other with the "Tonnant," of eighty
+guns, having only one mast standing. Under such conditions both
+English ships attacked; but night coming on, they ceased action,
+intending to begin again in the morning. When morning came, other
+French ships also came, and the opportunity was lost. It is suggestive
+to note that one of the captains was Hotham, who as admiral of the
+Mediterranean fleet, seventeen years later, so annoyed Nelson by his
+cool satisfaction in having taken only two ships: "We must be
+contented; we have done very well." This was the immediate occasion of
+Nelson's characteristic saying, "Had we taken ten sail, and allowed
+the eleventh to escape, being able to get at her, I could never have
+called it well done."
+
+The English fell back on New York. The French rallied again off the
+entrance of Narragansett Bay; but D'Estaing decided that he could not
+remain on account of the damage to the squadron, and accordingly
+sailed for Boston on the 21st of August. Rhode Island was thus left to
+the English, who retained it for a year longer, evacuating then for
+strategic reasons. Howe on his part diligently repaired his ships, and
+sailed again for Rhode Island when he heard of the French being there;
+but meeting on the way a vessel with word of their going to Boston, he
+followed them to that harbor, in which they were too strongly placed
+to be attacked. Taking into consideration his enforced return to New
+York, the necessary repairs, and the fact that he was only four days
+behind the French at Boston, it may be believed that Howe showed to
+the end the activity which characterized the beginning of his
+operations.
+
+Scarcely a shot had been exchanged between the two fleets, yet the
+weaker had thoroughly outgeneralled the stronger. With the exception of
+the manoeuvres for the weather-gage after D'Estaing left Newport, which
+have not been preserved, and of Howe's dispositions to receive the
+expected attack in New York Bay, the lessons are not tactical, but
+strategic, and of present application. Chief among them undoubtedly
+stands the value of celerity and watchfulness, combined with knowledge
+of one's profession. Howe learned of his danger by advices from home
+three weeks after D'Estaing sailed from Toulon. He had to gather in his
+cruisers from the Chesapeake and outside, get his ships-of-the-line
+from New York and Rhode Island, embark the supplies of an army of ten
+thousand men, move down the Delaware,--which unavoidably took ten
+days,--and round to New York again. D'Estaing was ten days behind him
+at the Delaware, twelve days at Sandy Hook, and only one day ahead of
+him in entering Newport, outside which harbor he had lain ten days
+before sailing in. An English narrator in the fleet, speaking of the
+untiring labor between June 30, when the English army reached Navesink,
+and the arrival of the French fleet on the 11th of July, says: "Lord
+Howe attended in person as usual, and by his presence animated the zeal
+and quickened the industry of officers and men." In this quality he was
+a marked contrast to his amiable but indolent brother, General Howe.
+
+The same industry and watchfulness marked his remaining operations. As
+soon as the French ships hauled off to the southward, lookout vessels
+followed them, and preparations continued (notably of fireships) for
+pursuit. The last ship that joined from England crossed the bar at New
+York on the 30th of July. On the 1st of August the fleet was ready for
+sea, with four fire-ships. The accident of the wind delayed his next
+movements; but, as has been seen, he came up only one day after the
+entrance of the enemy into Newport, which his inferior force could not
+have prevented. But the object of the enemy, which he could not
+oppose, was frustrated by his presence. D'Estaing was no sooner in
+Newport than he wished himself out. Howe's position was strategically
+excellent. With his weatherly position in reference to the prevailing
+winds, the difficulty of beating a fleet out through the narrow
+entrance to the harbor would expose the French ships trying it to be
+attacked in detail; while if the wind unluckily came fair, the admiral
+relied upon his own skill to save his squadron.
+
+Cooper, in one of his novels, "The Two Admirals," makes his hero say
+to a cavilling friend that if he had not been in the way of good luck,
+he could not have profited by it. The sortie of the French, the
+subsequent gale, and the resulting damage were all what is commonly
+called luck; but if it had not been for Howe's presence off Point
+Judith threatening them, they would have ridden out the gale at their
+anchors inside. Howe's energy and his confidence in himself as a
+seaman had put him in the way of good luck, and it is not fair to deny
+his active share in bringing it about. But for him the gale would not
+have saved the British force in Newport.[132]
+
+D'Estaing, having repaired his ships, sailed with his whole force for
+Martinique on the 4th of November; on the same day Commodore Hotham
+left New York for Barbadoes, with five sixty-four and fifty-gun ships
+and a convoy of five thousand troops, destined for the conquest of
+Sta. Lucia Island. On the way a heavy gale of wind injured the French
+fleet more than the English, the French flag-ship losing her main and
+mizzen topmasts. The loss of these spars, and the fact that twelve
+unencumbered ships-of-war reached Martinique only one day before the
+convoy of fifty-nine English transports reached Barbadoes, a hundred
+miles farther on, tells badly for the professional skill which then
+and now is a determining feature in naval war.
+
+Admiral Barrington, commanding at Barbadoes, showed the same energy as
+Howe. The transports arrived on the 10th; the troops were kept on
+board; sailed on the morning of the 12th for Sta. Lucia, and anchored
+there at three P.M. the 13th. The same afternoon half the troops were
+landed, and the rest the next morning. They seized at once a better
+port, to which the admiral was about to move the transports when the
+appearance of D'Estaing prevented him. All that night the transports
+were being warped inside the ships-of-war, and the latter anchored
+across the entrance to the bay, especial care being taken to
+strengthen the two extremities of the line, and to prevent the enemy
+from passing inside the weather end, as the English ships in after
+years did at the battle of the Nile. The French was much more than
+double the English fleet; and if the latter were destroyed, the
+transports and troops would be trapped.
+
+D'Estaing stood down along the English order twice from north to
+south, cannonading at long range, but did not anchor. Abandoning then
+his intentions against the fleet, he moved to another bay, landed some
+French soldiers, and assaulted the position of the English troops.
+Failing here also, he retired to Martinique; and the French garrison,
+which had been driven into the interior of the island, surrendered.
+
+It seems scarcely necessary to point out the admirable diligence of
+Admiral Barrington, to which and to the skill of his dispositions he
+owed this valuable strategic success; for such it was. Sta. Lucia was
+the island next south of Martinique, and the harbor of Gros Ilot at
+its northern end was especially adapted to the work of watching the
+French depot at Fort Royal, their principal station in the West
+Indies. Thence Rodney pursued them before his great action in 1782.
+
+The absence of precise information causes hesitation in condemning
+D'Estaing for this mortifying failure. His responsibility depends upon
+the wind, which may have been light under the land, and upon his power
+to anchor. The fact, however, remains that he passed twice along the
+enemy's line within cannon-shot, yet did not force a decisive action.
+His course was unfavorably criticised by the great Suffren, then one
+of his captains.[133]
+
+The English had thus retrieved the capture of Dominica, which had been
+taken on the 8th of September by the French governor of the West India
+Islands. There being no English squadron there, no difficulty had been
+met. The value of Dominica to the French has been pointed out; and it
+is necessary here to use the example of both Dominica and Sta. Lucia
+to enforce what has before been said, that the possession of these
+smaller islands depended solely upon the naval preponderance. Upon the
+grasp of this principle held by any one will depend his criticism upon
+the next action of D'Estaing, to be immediately related.
+
+Six months of almost entire quiet followed the affair of Sta. Lucia.
+The English were reinforced by the fleet of Byron, who took chief
+command; but the French, being joined by ten more ships-of-the-line,
+remained superior in numbers. About the middle of June, Byron sailed
+with his fleet to protect a large convoy of merchant-ships, bound for
+England, till they were clear of the islands. D'Estaing then sent a
+very small expedition which seized St. Vincent, June 16, 1779, without
+difficulty; and on the 30th of June he sailed with his whole fleet to
+attack Grenada. Anchoring off Georgetown on the 2d of July, he landed
+his soldiers, and on the 4th the garrison of seven hundred men
+surrendered the island. Meanwhile Byron, hearing of the loss of St.
+Vincent and probable attack on Grenada, sailed with a large convoy of
+vessels carrying troops, and with twenty-one ships-of-the-line, to
+regain the one and relieve the other. Receiving on the way definite
+information that the French were before Grenada, he kept on for it,
+rounding the northwest point of the island at daybreak of July 6. His
+approach had been reported the day before to D'Estaing, who remained
+at anchor,[134] fearing lest with the currents and light winds he
+might drop too far to leeward if he let go the bottom. When the
+English came in sight, the French got under way; but the confused
+massing of their ships prevented Byron from recognizing at once the
+disparity of numbers, they having twenty-five ships-of-the-line. He
+made signal for a general chase, and as the disorder of the French
+fleet forced it to form on the leewardmost ships, the English easily
+retained the advantage of the wind with which they approached. As the
+action began, therefore, the French were to the westward with a partly
+formed line, on the starboard tack, heading north, the rear in
+disorder, and to windward of the van and centre (Plate X., A.). The
+English stood down with a fair wind, steering south by west on the
+port tack (A), between the island and the enemy, their leading ships
+approaching at a slight angle, but heading more directly for his yet
+unformed rear; while the English convoy was between its own fleet and
+the island, under special charge of three ships (A, a), which were now
+called in. As the signal so far commanded a general chase, the three
+fastest of the English, among which was the flag of the second in
+command, Admiral Barrington, came under fire of the French centre and
+rear, apparently unsupported (b), and suffered much from the
+consequent concentration of fire upon them. When they reached the
+sternmost ships they wore upon the same tack with them and stood
+north, after and to windward of them; and at about the same time
+Byron, who had not before known of the surrender, saw the French flag
+flying over the forts. Signals followed to wear in succession, and for
+the advanced ships to form line for mutual support, ceasing the
+general chase under which the engagement had hitherto been fought.
+While the main body was still standing south on the port tack, three
+ships,--"Cornwall," "Grafton," and "Lion" (c),--obeying literally the
+signal for close action, had passed much to leeward of the others,
+drawing upon themselves most of the fire of the enemy's line. They
+thus suffered very severely in men and spars; and though finally
+relieved by the advanced ships, as these approached from the southward
+on the opposite tack, they were unable, after wearing (B, c', c''), to
+keep up with the fleet, and so dropped astern and toward the French.
+The bulk of the injury sustained by the English fell upon these three,
+upon the three advanced ships under Barrington, and upon two others in
+the rear (A, a), which, seeing the van so heavily engaged, did not
+follow the successive movement, but bore down straight out of the
+order, and took their places at the head of the column (B, a, a'),--an
+act strongly resembling that which won Nelson such high renown at Cape
+St. Vincent, but involving less responsibility.[135]
+
+ [Illustration: Pl. X. D'ESTAING AND BYRON JULY 6, 1779]
+
+So far Byron had conducted his attack, using the initiative permitted
+him by the advantage of the wind and the disorder of the French rear.
+It will be observed that, though it was desirable to lose no time in
+assailing the latter while in confusion, it is questionable whether
+Barrington's three ships should have been allowed to separate as far
+as they seem to have done from the rest of the fleet. A general chase
+is permissible and proper when, from superiority of numbers, original
+or acquired, or from the general situation, the ships first in action
+will not be greatly outnumbered, or subjected to overpowering
+concentration before support comes up, or when there is probability
+that the enemy may escape unless promptly struck. This was not so
+here. Nor should the "Cornwall," "Grafton," and "Lion" have been
+permitted to take a course which allowed, almost compelled, the enemy
+to concentrate rather than diffuse his fire. The details of the affair
+are not precise enough to warrant more comment than naming these
+mistakes, without necessarily attributing them to fault on the part of
+the admiral.
+
+The French had up to this time remained strictly on the defensive, in
+accordance with their usual policy. There was now offered an
+opportunity for offensive action which tested D'Estaing's professional
+qualities, and to appreciate which the situation at the moment must be
+understood. Both fleets were by this on the starboard tack, heading
+north (B, B, B), the French to leeward. The latter had received little
+injury in their motive power, though their line was not in perfect
+order; but the English, owing to the faulty attack, had seven ships
+seriously crippled, four of which--the "Monmouth" (a'), "Grafton,"
+"Cornwall" (c'), and "Lion" (c'')--were disabled. The last three, by
+three P.M., were a league astern and much to leeward of their line,
+being in fact nearer the French than the English; while the speed of
+the English fleet was necessarily reduced to that of the crippled
+ships remaining in line. These conditions bring out strongly the
+embarrassments of a fleet whose injuries are concentrated upon a few
+ships, instead of being distributed among all; the ten or twelve which
+were practically untouched had to conform to the capabilities of the
+others. D'Estaing, with twenty-five ships, now had Byron to windward
+of him with seventeen or eighteen capable of holding together, but
+slower and less handy than their enemies, and saw him tactically
+embarrassed by the care of a convoy to windward and three disabled
+ships to leeward. Under these circumstances three courses were open to
+the French admiral: (1) He might stretch ahead, and, tacking in
+succession, place himself between Byron and the convoy, throwing his
+frigates among the latter; (2) He might tack his fleet together and
+stand up to the English line to bring on a general action; or (3) he
+could, after going about, cut off the three disabled ships, which
+might bring on a general action with less exposure.
+
+None of these did he do. As regards the first, he, knowing the
+criticisms of the fleet, wrote home that his line was too much
+disordered to allow it. Whatever the technical irregularity, it is
+difficult to believe that, with the relative power of motion in the
+two fleets, the attempt was hopeless. The third alternative probably
+presented the greatest advantage, for it insured the separation
+between the enemy's main body and the crippled ships, and might very
+probably exasperate the British admiral into an attack under most
+hazardous conditions. It is stated by English authorities that Byron
+said he would have borne down again, had any attack been made on them.
+At three P.M. D'Estaing tacked all together, forming line on the lee
+ship,[136] and stood to the southward again. The English imitated
+this movement, except the van ship "Monmouth" (a'), which being too
+badly hurt to manoeuvre kept on to the northward, and the three
+separated ships. Two of these (c') kept on north and passed once more
+under the French broadsides; but the "Lion" (c''), unable to keep to
+the wind, kept broad off before it across the bows of the enemy, for
+Jamaica, a thousand miles away. She was not pursued; a single
+transport was the sole maritime trophy of the French. "Had the
+admiral's seamanship equalled his courage," wrote the celebrated
+Suffren, who commanded the French van ship, "we would not have
+suffered four dismasted vessels to escape." "D'Estaing, at the age of
+thirty, had been transferred from the army to the navy with the
+premature rank of rear-admiral. The navy did not credit him with
+nautical ability when the war broke out, and it is safe to say that
+its opinion was justified by his conduct during it."[137] "Brave as
+his sword, D'Estaing was always the idol of the soldier, the idol of
+the seaman; but moral authority over his officers failed him on
+several occasions, notwithstanding the marked protection extended to
+him by the king."[138]
+
+Another cause than incapacity as a seaman has usually been assigned by
+French historians for the impotent action of D'Estaing on this
+occasion. He looked upon Grenada, they say, as the real objective of
+his efforts, and considered the English fleet a very secondary
+concern. Ramatuelle, a naval tactician who served actively in this war
+and wrote under the Empire, cites this case, which he couples with
+that of Yorktown and others, as exemplifying the true policy of naval
+war. His words, which probably reflect the current opinion of his
+service in that day, as they certainly do the policy of French
+governments, call for more than passing mention, as they involve
+principles worthy of most serious discussion:--
+
+ "The French navy has always preferred the glory of assuring or
+ preserving a conquest to that, more brilliant perhaps, but
+ actually less real, of taking a few ships; and in that it has
+ approached more nearly the true end to be proposed in war. What
+ in fact would the loss of a few ships matter to the English? The
+ essential point is to attack them in their possessions, the
+ immediate source of their commercial wealth and of their
+ maritime power. The war of 1778 furnishes examples which prove
+ the devotion of the French admirals to the true interests of the
+ country. The preservation of the island of Grenada, the
+ reduction of Yorktown where the English army surrendered, the
+ conquest of the island of St. Christopher, were the result of
+ great battles in which the enemy was allowed to retreat
+ undisturbed, rather than risk giving him a chance to succor the
+ points attacked."
+
+The issue could not be more squarely raised than in the case of
+Grenada. No one will deny that there are moments when a probable
+military success is to be foregone, or postponed, in favor of one
+greater or more decisive. The position of De Grasse at the Chesapeake,
+in 1781, with the fate of Yorktown hanging in the balance, is in
+point; and it is here coupled with that of D'Estaing at Grenada, as
+though both stood on the same grounds. Both are justified alike; not
+on their respective merits as fitting the particular cases, but upon a
+general principle. Is that principle sound? The bias of the writer
+quoted betrays itself unconsciously, in saying "a few ships." A whole
+navy is not usually to be crushed at a blow; a few ships mean an
+ordinary naval victory. In Rodney's famous battle only five ships were
+taken, though Jamaica was saved thereby.
+
+In order to determine the soundness of the principle, which is claimed
+as being illustrated by these two cases (St. Christopher will be
+discussed later on), it is necessary to examine what was the advantage
+sought, and what the determining factor of success in either case. At
+Yorktown the advantage sought was the capture of Cornwallis's army;
+the objective was the destruction of the enemy's organized military
+force on shore. At Grenada the chosen objective was the possession of
+a piece of territory of no great military value; for it must be
+remarked that all these smaller Antilles, if held in force at all,
+multiplied large detachments, whose mutual support depended wholly
+upon the navy. These large detachments were liable to be crushed
+separately, if not supported by the navy; and if naval superiority is
+to be maintained, the enemy's navy must be crushed. Grenada, near and
+to leeward of Barbadoes and Sta. Lucia, both held strongly by the
+English, was peculiarly weak to the French; but sound military policy
+for all these islands demanded one or two strongly fortified and
+garrisoned naval bases, and dependence for the rest upon the fleet.
+Beyond this, security against attacks by single cruisers and
+privateers alone was needed.
+
+Such were the objectives in dispute. What was the determining factor
+in this strife? Surely the navy, the organized military force afloat.
+Cornwallis's fate depended absolutely upon the sea. It is useless to
+speculate upon the result, had the odds on the 5th of September, 1781,
+in favor of De Grasse, been reversed; if the French, instead of five
+ships more, had had five ships less than the English. As it was, De
+Grasse, when that fight began, had a superiority over the English
+equal to the result of a hard-won fight. The question then was, should
+he risk the almost certain decisive victory over the organized enemy's
+force ashore, for the sake of a much more doubtful advantage over the
+organized force afloat? This was not a question of Yorktown, but of
+Cornwallis and his army; there is a great deal in the way things are
+put.
+
+So stated,--and the statement needs no modifications,--there can be
+but one answer. Let it be remarked clearly, however, that _both_ De
+Grasse's alternatives brought before him the organized forces as the
+objective.
+
+Not so with D'Estaing at Grenada. His superiority in numbers over the
+English was nearly as great as that of De Grasse; his alternative
+objectives were the organized force afloat and a small island,
+fertile, but militarily unimportant. Grenada is said to have been a
+strong position for defence; but intrinsic strength does not give
+importance, if the position has not strategic value. To save the
+island, he refused to use an enormous advantage fortune had given him
+over the fleet. Yet upon the strife between the two navies depended
+the tenure of the islands. Seriously to hold the West India Islands
+required, first, a powerful seaport, which the French had; second, the
+control of the sea. For the latter it was necessary, not to multiply
+detachments in the islands, but to destroy the enemy's navy, which may
+be accurately called the army in the field. The islands were but rich
+towns; and not more than one or two fortified towns, or posts, were
+needed.
+
+It may safely be said that the principle which led to D'Estaing's
+action was not, to say the least, unqualifiedly correct; for it led
+him wrong. In the case of Yorktown, the principle as stated by
+Ramatuelle is not the _justifying_ reason of De Grasse's conduct,
+though it likely enough was the _real_ reason. What justified De
+Grasse was that, the event depending upon the unshaken control of the
+sea, for a short time only, he already had it by his greater numbers.
+Had the numbers been equal, loyalty to the military duty of the hour
+must have forced him to fight, to stop the attempt which the English
+admiral would certainly have made. The destruction of a few ships, as
+Ramatuelle slightingly puts it, gives just that superiority to which
+the happy result at Yorktown was due. As a general principle, this is
+undoubtedly a better objective than that pursued by the French. Of
+course, exceptions will be found; but those exceptions will probably
+be where, as at Yorktown, the military force is struck at directly
+elsewhere, or, as at Port Mahon, a desirable and powerful base of that
+force is at stake; though even at Mahon it is doubtful whether the
+prudence was not misplaced. Had Hawke or Boscawen met with Byng's
+disaster, they would not have gone to Gibraltar to repair it, unless
+the French admiral had followed up his first blow with others,
+increasing their disability.
+
+Grenada was no doubt very dear in the eyes of D'Estaing, because it
+was his only success. After making the failures at the Delaware, at
+New York, and at Rhode Island, with the mortifying affair at Sta.
+Lucia, it is difficult to understand the confidence in him expressed
+by some French writers. Gifted with a brilliant and contagious
+personal daring, he distinguished himself most highly, when an
+admiral, by leading in person assaults upon intrenchments at Sta.
+Lucia and Grenada, and a few months later in the unsuccessful attack
+upon Savannah.
+
+During the absence of the French navy in the winter of 1778-79, the
+English, controlling now the sea with a few of their ships that had
+not gone to the West Indies, determined to shift the scene of the
+continental war to the Southern States, where there was believed to be
+a large number of loyalists. The expedition was directed upon Georgia,
+and was so far successful that Savannah fell into their hands in the
+last days of 1778. The whole State speedily submitted. Operations were
+thence extended into South Carolina, but failed to bring about the
+capture of Charleston.
+
+Word of these events was sent to D'Estaing in the West Indies,
+accompanied by urgent representations of the danger to the Carolinas,
+and the murmurings of the people against the French, who were accused
+of forsaking their allies, having rendered them no service, but on the
+contrary having profited by the cordial help of the Bostonians to
+refit their crippled fleet. There was a sting of truth in the alleged
+failure to help, which impelled D'Estaing to disregard the orders
+actually in his hands to return at once to Europe with certain ships.
+Instead of obeying them he sailed for the American coast with
+twenty-two ships-of-the-line, having in view two objects,--the relief
+of the Southern States and an attack upon New York in conjunction with
+Washington's army.
+
+Arriving off the coast of Georgia on the 1st of September, D'Estaing
+took the English wholly at unawares; but the fatal lack of promptness,
+which had previously marked the command of this very daring man, again
+betrayed his good fortune. Dallying at first before Savannah, the
+fleeting of precious days again brought on a change of conditions, and
+the approach of the bad-weather season impelled him, too slow at
+first, into a premature assault. In it he displayed his accustomed
+gallantry, fighting at the head of his column, as did the American
+general; but the result was a bloody repulse. The siege was raised,
+and D'Estaing sailed at once for France, not only giving up his
+project upon New York, but abandoning the Southern States to the
+enemy. The value of this help from the great sea power of France, thus
+cruelly dangled before the eyes of the Americans only to be withdrawn,
+was shown by the action of the English, who abandoned Newport in the
+utmost haste when they learned the presence of the French fleet.
+Withdrawal had been before decided upon, but D'Estaing's coming
+converted it into flight.
+
+After the departure of D'Estaing, which involved that of the whole
+French fleet,--for the ships which did not go back to France returned
+to the West Indies,--the English resumed the attack upon the Southern
+States, which had for a moment been suspended. The fleet and army left
+New York for Georgia in the last weeks of 1779, and after assembling
+at Tybee, moved upon Charleston by way of Edisto. The powerlessness of
+the Americans upon the sea left this movement unembarrassed save by
+single cruisers, which picked up some stragglers,--affording another
+lesson of the petty results of a merely cruising warfare. The siege of
+Charleston began at the end of March,--the English ships soon after
+passing the bar and Fort Moultrie without serious damage, and
+anchoring within gunshot of the place. Fort Moultrie was soon and
+easily reduced by land approaches, and the city itself was surrendered
+on the 12th of May, after a siege of forty days. The whole State was
+then quickly overrun and brought into military subjection.
+
+The fragments of D'Estaing's late fleet were joined by a reinforcement
+from France under the Comte de Guichen, who assumed chief command in
+the West Indian seas March 22, 1780. The next day he sailed for Sta.
+Lucia, which he hoped to find unprepared; but a crusty, hard-fighting
+old admiral of the traditional English type, Sir Hyde Parker, had so
+settled himself at the anchorage, with sixteen ships, that Guichen
+with his twenty-two would not attack. The opportunity, if it were one,
+did not recur. De Guichen, returning to Martinique, anchored there on
+the 27th; and the same day Parker at Sta. Lucia was joined by the new
+English commander-in-chief, Rodney.
+
+This since celebrated, but then only distinguished, admiral was
+sixty-two years old at the time of assuming a command where he was to
+win an undying fame. Of distinguished courage and professional skill,
+but with extravagant if not irregular habits, money embarrassments had
+detained him in exile in France at the time the war began. A boast of
+his ability to deal with the French fleet, if circumstances enabled
+him to go back to England, led a French nobleman who heard it to
+assume his debts, moved by feelings in which chivalry and national
+pique probably bore equal shares. Upon his return he was given a
+command, and sailed, in January, 1780, with a fleet of twenty
+ships-of-the-line, to relieve Gibraltar, then closely invested. Off
+Cadiz, with a good luck for which he was proverbial, he fell in with a
+Spanish fleet of eleven ships-of-the-line, which awkwardly held their
+ground until too late to fly.[139] Throwing out the signal for a
+general chase, and cutting in to leeward of the enemy, between them
+and their port, Rodney, despite a dark and stormy night, succeeded in
+blowing up one ship and taking six. Hastening on, he relieved
+Gibraltar, placing it out of all danger from want; and then, leaving
+the prizes and the bulk of his fleet, sailed with the rest for his
+station.
+
+Despite his brilliant personal courage and professional skill, which
+in the matter of tactics was far in advance of his contemporaries in
+England, Rodney, as a commander-in-chief, belongs rather to the wary,
+cautious school of the French tacticians than to the impetuous,
+unbounded eagerness of Nelson. As in Tourville we have seen the
+desperate fighting of the seventeenth century, unwilling to leave its
+enemy, merging into the formal, artificial--we may almost say
+trifling--parade tactics of the eighteenth, so in Rodney we shall see
+the transition from those ceremonious duels to an action which, while
+skilful in conception, aimed at serious results. For it would be
+unjust to Rodney to press the comparison to the French admirals of his
+day. With a skill that De Guichen recognized as soon as they crossed
+swords, Rodney meant mischief, not idle flourishes. Whatever
+incidental favors fortune might bestow by the way, the objective from
+which his eye never wandered was the French fleet,--the organized
+military force of the enemy on the sea. And on the day when Fortune
+forsook the opponent who had neglected her offers, when the conqueror
+of Cornwallis failed to strike while he had Rodney at a disadvantage,
+the latter won a victory which redeemed England from the depths of
+anxiety, and restored to her by one blow all those islands which the
+cautious tactics of the allies had for a moment gained, save only
+Tobago.
+
+De Guichen and Rodney met for the first time on the 17th of April,
+1780, three weeks after the arrival of the latter. The French fleet
+was beating to windward in the Channel between Martinique and
+Dominica, when the enemy was made in the southeast. A day was spent in
+manoeuvring for the weather-gage, which Rodney got. The two fleets
+being now well to leeward of the islands[140] (Plate XI.), both on the
+starboard tack heading to the northward and the French on the lee bow
+of the English, Rodney, who was carrying a press of sail, signalled to
+his fleet that he meant to attack the enemy's rear and centre with his
+whole force; and when he had reached the position he thought suitable,
+ordered them to keep away eight points (90°) together (A, A, A). De
+Guichen, seeing the danger of the rear, wore his fleet all together
+and stood down to succor it. Rodney, finding himself foiled, hauled up
+again on the same tack as the enemy, both fleets now heading to the
+southward and eastward.[141] Later, he again made signal for battle,
+followed an hour after, just at noon, by the order (quoting his own
+despatch), "for every ship to bear down and steer for her opposite in
+the enemy's line." This, which sounds like the old story of ship to
+ship, Rodney explains to have meant her opposite at the moment, not
+her opposite in numerical order. His own words are: "In a slanting
+position, that my leading ships might attack the van ships of the
+enemy's centre division, and the whole British fleet be opposed to
+only two thirds of the enemy" (B, B). The difficulty and
+misunderstanding which followed seem to have sprung mainly from the
+defective character of the signal book. Instead of doing as the
+admiral wished, the leading ships (a) carried sail so as to reach
+their supposed station abreast their numerical opposite in the order.
+Rodney stated afterward that when he bore down the second time, the
+French fleet was in a very extended line of battle; and that, had his
+orders been obeyed, the centre and rear must have been disabled before
+the van could have joined.
+
+ [Illustration: Pl. XI. RODNEY & GUICHEN APRIL 17, 1780.]
+
+There seems every reason to believe that Rodney's intentions
+throughout were to double on the French, as asserted. The failure
+sprang from the signal-book and tactical inefficiency of the fleet;
+for which he, having lately joined, was not answerable. But the
+ugliness of his fence was so apparent to De Guichen, that he
+exclaimed, when the English fleet kept away the first time, that six
+or seven of his ships were gone; and sent word to Rodney that if his
+signals had been obeyed he would have had him for his prisoner.[142] A
+more convincing proof that he recognized the dangerousness of his
+enemy is to be found in the fact that he took care not to have the
+lee-gage in their subsequent encounters. Rodney's careful plans being
+upset, he showed that with them he carried all the stubborn courage of
+the most downright fighter; taking his own ship close to the enemy and
+ceasing only when the latter hauled off, her foremast and mainyard
+gone, and her hull so damaged that she could hardly be kept afloat.
+
+An incident of this battle mentioned by French writers and by
+Botta,[143] who probably drew upon French authorities, but not found
+in the English accounts, shows the critical nature of the attack in
+the apprehension of the French. According to them, Rodney, marking a
+gap in their order due to a ship in rear of the French admiral being
+out of station, tried to break through (b); but the captain of the
+"Destin," seventy-four, pressed up under more sail and threw himself
+across the path of the English ninety-gun ship.
+
+ "The action of the 'Destin' was justly praised," says
+ Lapeyrouse-Bonfils. "The fleet ran the danger of almost certain
+ defeat, but for the bravery of M. de Goimpy. Such, after the
+ affair, was the opinion of the whole French squadron. Yet,
+ admitting that our line was broken, what disasters then would
+ necessarily threaten the fleet? Would it not always have been
+ easy for our rear to remedy the accident by promptly standing on
+ to fill the place of the vessels cut off? That movement would
+ necessarily have brought about a _mêlée_, which would have
+ turned to the advantage of the fleet having the bravest and most
+ devoted captains. But then, as under the empire, it was an
+ acknowledged principle that ships cut off were ships taken, and
+ the belief wrought its own fulfilment."
+
+The effect of breaking an enemy's line, or order-of-battle, depends
+upon several conditions. The essential idea is to divide the opposing
+force by penetrating through an interval found, or made, in it, and
+then to concentrate upon that one of the fractions which can be least
+easily helped by the other. In a column of ships this will usually be
+the rear. The compactness of the order attacked, the number of the
+ships cut off, the length of time during which they can be isolated
+and outnumbered, will all affect the results. A very great factor in
+the issue will be the moral effect, the confusion introduced into a
+line thus broken. Ships coming up toward the break are stopped, the
+rear doubles up, while the ships ahead continue their course. Such a
+moment is critical, and calls for instant action; but the men are rare
+who in an unforeseen emergency can see, and at once take the right
+course, especially if, being subordinates, they incur responsibility.
+In such a scene of confusion the English, without presumption, hoped
+to profit by their better seamanship; for it is not only "courage and
+devotion," but skill, which then tells. All these effects of "breaking
+the line" received illustration in Rodney's great battle in 1782.
+
+De Guichen and Rodney met twice again in the following month, but on
+neither occasion did the French admiral take the favorite lee-gage of
+his nation. Meanwhile a Spanish fleet of twelve ships-of-the-line was
+on its way to join the French. Rodney cruised to windward of
+Martinique to intercept them; but the Spanish admiral kept a northerly
+course, sighted Guadeloupe, and thence sent a despatch to De Guichen,
+who joined his allies and escorted them into port. The great
+preponderance of the coalition, in numbers, raised the fears of the
+English islands; but lack of harmony led to delays and hesitations, a
+terrible epidemic raged in the Spanish squadron, and the intended
+operations came to nothing. In August De Guichen sailed for France
+with fifteen ships. Rodney, ignorant of his destination, and anxious
+about both North America and Jamaica, divided his fleet, leaving one
+half in the islands, and with the remainder sailing for New York,
+where he arrived on the 12th of September. The risk thus run was very
+great, and scarcely justifiable; but no ill effect followed the
+dispersal of forces.[144] Had De Guichen intended to turn upon
+Jamaica, or, as was expected by Washington, upon New York, neither
+part of Rodney's fleet could well have withstood him. Two chances of
+disaster, instead of one, were run, by being in small force on two
+fields instead of in full force on one.
+
+Rodney's anxiety about North America was well grounded. On the 12th of
+July of this year the long expected French succor arrived,--five
+thousand French troops under Rochambeau and seven ships-of-the-line
+under De Ternay. Hence the English, though still superior at sea, felt
+forced to concentrate at New York, and were unable to strengthen their
+operations in Carolina. The difficulty and distance of movements by
+land gave such an advantage to sea power that Lafayette urged the
+French government further to increase the fleet; but it was still
+naturally and properly attentive to its own immediate interests in the
+Antilles. It was not yet time to deliver America.
+
+Rodney, having escaped the great hurricane of October, 1780, by his
+absence, returned to the West Indies later in the year, and soon after
+heard of the war between England and Holland; which, proceeding from
+causes which will be mentioned later, was declared December 20, 1780.
+The admiral at once seized the Dutch islands of St. Eustatius and St.
+Martin, besides numerous merchant-ships, with property amounting in
+all to fifteen million dollars. These islands, while still neutral,
+had played a rôle similar to that of Nassau during the American Civil
+War, and had become a great depot of contraband goods, immense
+quantities of which now fell into the English hands.
+
+The year 1780 had been gloomy for the cause of the United States. The
+battle of Camden had seemed to settle the English yoke on South
+Carolina, and the enemy formed high hopes of controlling both North
+Carolina and Virginia. The treason of Arnold following had increased
+the depression, which was but partially relieved by the victory at
+King's Mountain. The substantial aid of French troops was the most
+cheerful spot in the situation. Yet even that had a checkered light,
+the second division of the intended help being blocked in Brest by the
+English fleet; while the final failure of De Guichen to appear, and
+Rodney coming in his stead, made the hopes of the campaign fruitless.
+
+A period of vehement and decisive action was, however, at hand. At the
+end of March, 1781, the Comte de Grasse sailed from Brest with
+twenty-six ships-of-the-line and a large convoy. When off the Azores,
+five ships parted company for the East Indies, under Suffren, of whom
+more will be heard later on. De Grasse came in sight of Martinique on
+the 28th of April. Admiral Hood (Rodney having remained behind at St.
+Eustatius) was blockading before Fort Royal, the French port and
+arsenal on the lee side of the island, in which were four
+ships-of-the-line, when his lookouts reported the enemy's fleet. Hood
+had two objects before him,--one to prevent the junction of the four
+blockaded ships with the approaching fleet, the other to keep the
+latter from getting between him and Gros Ilot Bay in Sta. Lucia.
+Instead of effecting this in the next twenty-four hours, by beating to
+windward of the Diamond Rock, his fleet got so far to leeward that De
+Grasse, passing through the channel on the 29th, headed up for Fort
+Royal, keeping his convoy between the fleet and the island. For this
+false position Hood was severely blamed by Rodney, but it may have
+been due to light winds and the lee current. However that be, the four
+ships in Fort Royal got under way and joined the main body. The
+English had now only eighteen ships to the French twenty-four, and the
+latter were to windward; but though thus in the proportion of four to
+three, and having the power to attack, De Grasse would not do it. The
+fear of exposing his convoy prevented him from running the chance of a
+serious engagement. Great must have been his distrust of his forces,
+one would say. When is a navy to fight, if this was not a time? He
+carried on a distant cannonade, with results so far against the
+English as to make his backwardness yet more extraordinary. Can a
+policy or a tradition which justifies such a line of conduct be good?
+
+The following day, April 30, De Grasse, having thrown away his chance,
+attempted to follow Hood; but the latter had no longer any reason for
+fighting, and his original inferiority was increased by the severe
+injuries of some ships on the 29th. De Grasse could not overtake him,
+owing to the inferior speed of his fleet, many of the ships not being
+coppered,--a fact worthy of note, as French vessels by model and size
+were generally faster than English; but this superiority was
+sacrificed through the delay of the government in adopting the new
+improvement.
+
+Hood rejoined Rodney at Antigua; and De Grasse, after remaining a
+short time at Fort Royal, made an attempt upon Gros Ilot Bay, the
+possession of which by the English kept all the movements of his fleet
+under surveillance. Foiled here, he moved against Tobago, which
+surrendered June 2, 1781. Sailing thence, after some minor operations,
+he anchored on the 26th of July at Cap Français (now Cape Haytien), in
+the island of Hayti. Here he found awaiting him a French frigate from
+the United States, bearing despatches from Washington and Rochambeau,
+upon which he was to take the most momentous action that fell to any
+French admiral during the war.
+
+The invasion of the Southern States by the English, beginning in
+Georgia and followed by the taking of Charleston and the military
+control of the two extreme States, had been pressed on to the
+northward by way of Camden into North Carolina. On the 16th of August,
+1780, General Gates was totally defeated at Camden; and during the
+following nine months the English under Cornwallis persisted in their
+attempts to overrun North Carolina. These operations, the narration of
+which is foreign to our immediate subject, had ended by forcing
+Cornwallis, despite many successes in actual encounter, to fall back
+exhausted toward the seaboard, and finally upon Wilmington, in which
+place depots for such a contingency had been established. His
+opponent, General Greene, then turned the American troops toward South
+Carolina. Cornwallis, too weak to dream of controlling, or even
+penetrating, into the interior of an unfriendly country, had now to
+choose between returning to Charleston, to assure there and in South
+Carolina the shaken British power, and moving northward again into
+Virginia, there to join hands with a small expeditionary force
+operating on the James River under Generals Phillips and Arnold. To
+fall back would be a confession that the weary marching and fighting
+of months past had been without results, and the general readily
+convinced himself that the Chesapeake was the proper seat of war, even
+if New York itself had to be abandoned. The commander-in-chief, Sir
+Henry Clinton, by no means shared this opinion, upon which was
+justified a step taken without asking him. "Operations in the
+Chesapeake," he wrote, "are attended with great risk unless we are
+sure of a permanent superiority at sea. I tremble for the fatal
+consequences that may ensue." For Cornwallis, taking the matter into
+his own hands, had marched from Wilmington on the 25th of April, 1781,
+joining the British already at Petersburg on the 20th of May. The
+forces thus united numbered seven thousand men. Driven back from the
+open country of South Carolina into Charleston, there now remained two
+centres of British power,--at New York and in the Chesapeake. With New
+Jersey and Pennsylvania in the hands of the Americans, communication
+between the two depended wholly upon the sea.
+
+Despite his unfavorable criticism of Cornwallis's action, Clinton had
+himself already risked a large detachment in the Chesapeake. A body of
+sixteen hundred men under Benedict Arnold had ravaged the country of
+the James and burned Richmond in January of this same year. In the
+hopes of capturing Arnold, Lafayette had been sent to Virginia with a
+nucleus of twelve hundred troops, and on the evening of the 8th of
+March the French squadron at Newport sailed, in concerted movement, to
+control the waters of the bay. Admiral Arbuthnot, commanding the
+English fleet lying in Gardiner's Bay,[145] learned the departure by
+his lookouts, and started in pursuit on the morning of the 10th,
+thirty-six hours later. Favored either by diligence or luck, he made
+such good time that when the two fleets came in sight of each other, a
+little outside of the capes of the Chesapeake, the English were
+leading[146] (Plate XII., A, A). They at once went about to meet their
+enemy, who, on his part, formed a line-of-battle. The wind at this
+time was west, so that neither could head directly into the bay.
+
+The two fleets were nearly equal in strength, there being eight ships
+on each side; but the English had one ninety-gun ship, while of the
+French one was only a heavy frigate, which was put into the line.
+Nevertheless, the case was eminently one for the general French policy
+to have determined the action of a vigorous chief, and the failure to
+see the matter through must fall upon the good-will of Commodore
+Destouches, or upon some other cause than that preference for the
+ulterior objects of the operations, of which the reader of French
+naval history hears so much. The weather was boisterous and
+threatening, and the wind, after hauling once or twice, settled down
+to northeast, with a big sea, but was then fair for entering the bay.
+The two fleets were by this time both on the port tack standing out to
+sea, the French leading, and about a point on the weather bow of the
+English (B, B). From this position they wore in succession (c) ahead
+of the latter, taking the lee-gage, and thus gaining the use of their
+lower batteries, which the heavy sea forbade to the weather-gage. The
+English stood on till abreast the enemy's line (a, b), when they wore
+together, and soon after attacked in the usual manner, and with the
+usual results (C). The three van ships were very badly injured aloft,
+but in their turn, throwing their force mainly on the two leaders of
+the enemy, crippled them seriously in hulls and rigging. The French
+van then kept away, and Arbuthnot, in perplexity, ordered his van to
+haul the wind again. M. Destouches now executed a very neat movement
+by defiling. Signalling his van to haul up on the other tack (e), he
+led the rest of his squadron by the disabled English ships, and after
+giving them the successive broadsides of his comparatively fresh
+ships, wore (d), and out to sea (D). This was the end of the battle,
+in which the English certainly got the worst; but with their usual
+tenacity of purpose, being unable to pursue their enemy afloat, they
+steered for the bay (D), made the junction with Arnold, and thus broke
+up the plans of the French and Americans, from which so much had been
+hoped by Washington. There can be no doubt, after careful reading of
+the accounts, that after the fighting the French were in better force
+than the English, and they in fact claimed the victory; yet the
+ulterior objects of the expedition did not tempt them again to try the
+issue with a fleet of about their own size.[147]
+
+ [Illustration: Pl. XII. ARBUTHNOT & DESTOUCHES. MARCH 16, 1781.]
+
+The way of the sea being thus open and held in force, two thousand
+more English troops sailing from New York reached Virginia on the 26th
+of March, and the subsequent arrival of Cornwallis in May raised the
+number to seven thousand. The operations of the contending forces
+during the spring and summer months, in which Lafayette commanded the
+Americans, do not concern our subject. Early in August, Cornwallis,
+acting under orders from Clinton, withdrew his troops into the
+peninsula between the York and James rivers, and occupied Yorktown.
+
+Washington and Rochambeau had met on the 21st of May, and decided that
+the situation demanded that the effort of the French West Indian
+fleet, when it came, should be directed against either New York or the
+Chesapeake. This was the tenor of the despatch found by De Grasse at
+Cap Français, and meantime the allied generals drew their troops
+toward New York, where they would be on hand for the furtherance of
+one object, and nearer the second if they had to make for it.
+
+In either case the result, in the opinion both of Washington and of
+the French government, depended upon superior sea power; but
+Rochambeau had privately notified the admiral that his own preference
+was for the Chesapeake as the scene of the intended operations, and
+moreover the French government had declined to furnish the means for a
+formal siege of New York.[148] The enterprise therefore assumed the
+form of an extensive military combination, dependent upon ease and
+rapidity of movement, and upon blinding the eyes of the enemy to the
+real objective,--purposes to which the peculiar qualities of a navy
+admirably lent themselves. The shorter distance to be traversed, the
+greater depth of water and easier pilotage of the Chesapeake, were
+further reasons which would commend the scheme to the judgment of a
+seaman; and De Grasse readily accepted it, without making difficulties
+or demanding modifications which would have involved discussion and
+delay.
+
+Having made his decision, the French admiral acted with great good
+judgment, promptitude, and vigor. The same frigate that brought
+despatches from Washington was sent back, so that by August 15th the
+allied generals knew of the intended coming of the fleet. Thirty-five
+hundred soldiers were spared by the governor of Cap Français, upon the
+condition of a Spanish squadron anchoring at the place, which De
+Grasse procured. He also raised from the governor of Havana the money
+urgently needed by the Americans; and finally, instead of weakening
+his force by sending convoys to France, as the court had wished, he
+took every available ship to the Chesapeake. To conceal his coming as
+long as possible, he passed through the Bahama Channel, as a less
+frequented route, and on the 30th of August anchored in Lynnhaven Bay,
+just within the capes of the Chesapeake, with twenty-eight
+ships-of-the-line. Three days before, August 27, the French squadron
+at Newport, eight ships-of-the-line with four frigates and eighteen
+transports under M. de Barras, sailed for the rendezvous; making,
+however, a wide circuit out to sea to avoid the English. This course
+was the more necessary as the French siege-artillery was with it. The
+troops under Washington and Rochambeau had crossed the Hudson on the
+24th of August, moving toward the head of Chesapeake Bay. Thus the
+different armed forces, both land and sea, were converging toward
+their objective, Cornwallis.
+
+The English were unfortunate in all directions. Rodney, learning of De
+Grasse's departure, sent fourteen ships-of-the-line under Admiral Hood
+to North America, and himself sailed for England in August, on account
+of ill health. Hood, going by the direct route, reached the Chesapeake
+three days before De Grasse, looked into the bay, and finding it empty
+went on to New York. There he met five ships-of-the-line under Admiral
+Graves, who, being senior officer, took command of the whole force and
+sailed on the 31st of August for the Chesapeake, hoping to intercept
+De Barras before he could join De Grasse. It was not till two days
+later that Sir Henry Clinton was persuaded that the allied armies had
+gone against Cornwallis, and had too far the start to be overtaken.
+
+Admiral Graves was painfully surprised, on making the Chesapeake, to
+find anchored there a fleet which from its numbers could only be an
+enemy's. Nevertheless, he stood in to meet it, and as De Grasse got
+under way, allowing his ships to be counted, the sense of numerical
+inferiority--nineteen to twenty-four--did not deter the English
+admiral from attacking. The clumsiness of his method, however,
+betrayed his gallantry; many of his ships were roughly handled,
+without any advantage being gained. De Grasse, expecting De Barras,
+remained outside five days, keeping the English fleet in play without
+coming to action; then returning to port he found De Barras safely at
+anchor. Graves went back to New York, and with him disappeared the
+last hope of succor that was to gladden Cornwallis's eyes. The siege
+was steadily endured, but the control of the sea made only one issue
+possible, and the English forces were surrendered October 19, 1781.
+With this disaster the hope of subduing the colonies died in England.
+The conflict flickered through a year longer, but no serious
+operations were undertaken.
+
+In the conduct of the English operations, which ended thus
+unfortunately, there was both bad management and ill fortune. Hood's
+detachment might have been strengthened by several ships from Jamaica,
+had Rodney's orders been carried out.[149] The despatch-ship, also,
+sent by him to Admiral Graves commanding in New York, found that
+officer absent on a cruise to the eastward, with a view to intercept
+certain very important supplies which had been forwarded by the
+American agent in France. The English Court had laid great stress upon
+cutting off this convoy; but, with the knowledge that he had of the
+force accompanying it, the admiral was probably ill-advised in leaving
+his headquarters himself, with all his fleet, at the time when the
+approach of the hurricane season in the West Indies directed the
+active operations of the navies toward the continent. In consequence
+of his absence, although Rodney's despatches were at once sent on by
+the senior officer in New York, the vessel carrying them being driven
+ashore by enemy's cruisers, Graves did not learn their contents until
+his return to port, August 16. The information sent by Hood of his
+coming was also intercepted. After Hood's arrival, it does not appear
+that there was avoidable delay in going to sea; but there does seem to
+have been misjudgment in the direction given to the fleet. It was
+known that De Barras had sailed from Newport with eight ships, bound
+probably for the Chesapeake, certainly to effect a junction with De
+Grasse; and it has been judiciously pointed out that if Graves had
+taken up his cruising-ground near the Capes, but out of sight of land,
+he could hardly have failed to fall in with him in overwhelming force.
+Knowing what is now known, this would undoubtedly have been the proper
+thing to do; but the English admiral had imperfect information. It
+was nowhere expected that the French would bring nearly the force they
+did; and Graves lost information, which he ought to have received, as
+to their numbers, by the carelessness of his cruisers stationed off
+the Chesapeake. These had been ordered to keep under way, but were
+both at anchor under Cape Henry when De Grasse's appearance cut off
+their escape. One was captured, the other driven up York River. No
+single circumstance contributed more to the general result than the
+neglect of these two subordinate officers, by which Graves lost that
+all-important information. It can readily be conceived how his
+movements might have been affected, had he known two days earlier that
+De Grasse had brought twenty-seven or twenty-eight sail of the line;
+how natural would have been the conclusion, first, to waylay De
+Barras, with whom his own nineteen could more than cope. "Had Admiral
+Graves succeeded in capturing that squadron, it would have greatly
+paralyzed the besieging army [it had the siege train on board], if it
+would not have prevented its operations altogether; it would have put
+the two fleets nearly on an equality in point of numbers, would have
+arrested the progress of the French arms for the ensuing year in the
+West Indies, and might possibly have created such a spirit of discord
+between the French and Americans[150] as would have sunk the latter
+into the lowest depths of despair, from which they were only
+extricated by the arrival of the forces under De Grasse."[151] These
+are true and sober comments upon the naval strategy.
+
+In regard to the admiral's tactics, it will be enough to say that the
+fleet was taken into battle nearly as Byng took his; that very similar
+mishaps resulted; and that, when attacking twenty-four ships with
+nineteen, seven, under that capable officer Hood, were not able to get
+into action, owing to the dispositions made.
+
+On the French side De Grasse must be credited with a degree of energy,
+foresight, and determination surprising in view of his failures at
+other times. The decision to take every ship with him, which made him
+independent of any failure on the part of De Barras; the passage
+through the Bahama Channel to conceal his movements; the address with
+which he obtained the money and troops required, from the Spanish and
+the French military authorities; the prevision which led him, as early
+as March 29, shortly after leaving Brest, to write to Rochambeau that
+American coast pilots should be sent to Cap Français; the coolness
+with which he kept Graves amused until De Barras's squadron had
+slipped in, are all points worthy of admiration. The French were also
+helped by the admiral's power to detain the two hundred
+merchant-ships, the "West India trade," awaiting convoy at Cap
+Français, where they remained from July till November, when the close
+of operations left him at liberty to convoy them with ships-of-war.
+The incident illustrates one weakness of a mercantile country with
+representative government, compared with a purely military nation. "If
+the British government," wrote an officer of that day, "had
+sanctioned, or a British admiral had adopted, such a measure, the one
+would have been turned out and the other hanged."[152] Rodney at the
+same time had felt it necessary to detach five ships-of-the-line with
+convoys, while half a dozen more went home with the trade from
+Jamaica.
+
+It is easier to criticise the division of the English fleet between
+the West Indies and North America in the successive years 1780 and
+1781, than to realize the embarrassment of the situation. This
+embarrassment was but the reflection of the military difficulty of
+England's position, all over the world, in this great and unequal war.
+England was everywhere outmatched and embarrassed, as she has always
+been as an empire, by the number of her exposed points. In Europe the
+Channel fleet was more than once driven into its ports by overwhelming
+forces. Gibraltar, closely blockaded by land and sea, was only kept
+alive in its desperate resistance by the skill of English seamen
+triumphing over the inaptness and discords of their combined enemies.
+In the East Indies, Sir Edward Hughes met in Suffren an opponent as
+superior to him in numbers as was De Grasse to Hood, and of far
+greater ability. Minorca, abandoned by the home government, fell
+before superior strength, as has been seen to fall, one by one, the
+less important of the English Antilles. The position of England from
+the time that France and Spain opened their maritime war was
+everywhere defensive, except in North America; and was therefore, from
+the military point of view, essentially false. She everywhere awaited
+attacks which the enemies, superior in every case, could make at their
+own choice and their own time. North America was really no exception
+to this rule, despite some offensive operations which in no way
+injured her real, that is her naval, foes.
+
+Thus situated, and putting aside questions of national pride or
+sensitiveness, what did military wisdom prescribe to England? The
+question would afford an admirable study to a military inquirer, and
+is not to be answered off-hand, but certain evident truths may be
+pointed out. In the first place, it should have been determined what
+part of the assailed empire was most necessary to be preserved. After
+the British islands themselves, the North American colonies were the
+most valuable possessions in the eyes of the England of that day. Next
+should have been decided what others by their natural importance were
+best worth preserving, and by their own inherent strength, or that of
+the empire, which was mainly naval strength, could most surely be
+held. In the Mediterranean, for instance, Gibraltar and Mahon were
+both very valuable positions. Could both be held? Which was more
+easily to be reached and supported by the fleet? If both could not
+probably be held, one should have been frankly abandoned, and the
+force and efforts necessary to its defence carried elsewhere. So in
+the West Indies the evident strategic advantages of Barbadoes and Sta.
+Lucia prescribed the abandonment of the other small islands by
+garrisons as soon as the fleet was fairly outnumbered, if not before.
+The case of so large an island as Jamaica must be studied separately,
+as well as with reference to the general question. Such an island may
+be so far self-supporting as to defy any attack but one in great force
+and numbers, and that would rightly draw to it the whole English force
+from the windward stations at Barbadoes and Sta. Lucia.
+
+With the defence thus concentrated, England's great weapon, the navy,
+should have been vigorously used on the offensive. Experience has
+taught that free nations, popular governments, will seldom dare wholly
+to remove the force that lies between an invader and its shores or
+capital. Whatever the military wisdom, therefore, of sending the
+Channel fleet to seek the enemy before it united, the step may not
+have been possible. But at points less vital the attack of the English
+should have anticipated that of the allies. This was most especially
+true of that theatre of the war which has so far been considered. If
+North America was the first object, Jamaica and the other islands
+should have been boldly risked. It is due to Rodney to say that he
+claims that his orders to the admirals at Jamaica and New York were
+disobeyed in 1781, and that to this was owing the inferiority in
+number of Graves's fleet.
+
+But why, in 1780, when the departure of De Guichen for Europe left
+Rodney markedly superior in numbers during his short visit to North
+America, from September 14 to November 14, should no attempt have been
+made to destroy the French detachment of seven ships-of-the-line in
+Newport? These ships had arrived there in July; but although they had
+at once strengthened their position by earthworks, great alarm was
+excited by the news of Rodney's appearance off the coast. A fortnight
+passed by Rodney in New York and by the French in busy work, placed
+the latter, in their own opinion, in a position to brave all the naval
+force of England. "We twice feared, and above all at the time of
+Rodney's arrival," wrote the chief of staff of the French squadron,
+"that the English might attack us in the road itself; and there was a
+space of time during which such an undertaking would not have been an
+act of rashness. Now [October 20], the anchorage is fortified so that
+we can there brave all the naval force of England."[153]
+
+The position thus taken by the French was undoubtedly very
+strong.[154] It formed a re-entrant angle of a little over ninety
+degrees, contained by lines drawn from Goat Island to what was then
+called Brenton's Point, the site of the present Fort Adams on the one
+side, and to Rose Island on the other. On the right flank of the
+position Rose Island received a battery of thirty-six 24-pounders;
+while twelve guns of the same size were placed on the left flank at
+Brenton's Point. Between Rose and Goat islands four ships, drawn up on
+a west-northwest line, bore upon the entrance and raked an approaching
+fleet; while three others, between Goat Island and Brenton's Point,
+crossed their fire at right angles with the former four.
+
+On the other hand, the summer winds blow directly up the entrance,
+often with great force. There could be no question even of a
+considerably crippled attacking ship reaching her destined position,
+and when once confused with the enemy's line, the shore batteries
+would be neutralized. The work on Rose Island certainly, that on
+Brenton's Point probably, had less height than the two upper batteries
+of a ship-of-the-line, and could be vastly outnumbered. They could not
+have been casemated, and might indisputably have been silenced by the
+grapeshot of the ships that could have been brought against them. Rose
+Island could be approached on the front and on the west flank within
+two hundred yards, and on the north within half a mile. There was
+nothing to prevent this right flank of the French, including the line
+of ships, being enfiladed and crushed by the English ships taking
+position west of Rose Island. The essential points of close range and
+superior height were thus possible to the English fleet, which
+numbered twenty to the enemy's seven. If successful in destroying the
+shipping and reducing Rose Island, it could find anchorage farther up
+the bay and await a favorable wind to retire. In the opinion of a
+distinguished English naval officer of the day,[155] closely familiar
+with the ground, there was no doubt of the success of an attack; and
+he urged it frequently upon Rodney, offering himself to pilot the
+leading ship. The security felt by the French in this position, and
+the acquiescence of the English in that security, mark clearly the
+difference in spirit between this war and the wars of Nelson and
+Napoleon.
+
+It is not, however, merely as an isolated operation, but in relation
+to the universal war, that such an attempt is here considered. England
+stood everywhere on the defensive, with inferior numbers. From such a
+position there is no salvation except by action vigorous almost to
+desperation. "It is impossible for us," wrote with great truth the
+First Lord of the Admiralty to Rodney, "to have a superior fleet in
+every part; and unless our commanders-in-chief will take the great
+line, as you do, and consider the king's whole dominions under their
+care, our enemies must find us unprepared somewhere, and carry their
+point against us."[156] Attacks which considered in themselves alone
+might be thought unjustifiable, were imposed upon English commanders.
+The allied navy was the key of the situation, and its large
+detachments, as at Newport, should have been crushed at any risk. The
+effect of such a line of action upon the policy of the French
+government is a matter of speculation, as to which the present writer
+has no doubts; but no English officer in chief command rose to the
+level of the situation, with the exception of Hood, and possibly of
+Howe. Rodney was now old, infirm, and though of great ability, a
+careful tactician rather than a great admiral.
+
+The defeat of Graves and subsequent surrender of Cornwallis did not
+end the naval operations in the western hemisphere. On the contrary,
+one of the most interesting tactical feats and the most brilliant
+victory of the whole war were yet to grace the English flag in the
+West Indies; but with the events at Yorktown the patriotic interest
+for Americans closes. Before quitting that struggle for independence,
+it must again be affirmed that its successful ending, at least at so
+early a date, was due to the control of the sea,--to sea power in the
+hands of the French, and its improper distribution by the English
+authorities. This assertion may be safely rested on the authority of
+the one man who, above all others, thoroughly knew the resources of
+the country, the temper of the people, the difficulties of the
+struggle, and whose name is still the highest warrant for sound,
+quiet, unfluttered good-sense and patriotism.
+
+The keynote to all Washington's utterances is set in the "Memorandum
+for concerting a plan of operations with the French army," dated July
+15, 1780, and sent by the hands of Lafayette:--
+
+ "The Marquis de Lafayette will be pleased to communicate the
+ following general ideas to Count de Rochambeau and the Chevalier
+ de Ternay, as the sentiments of the underwritten:
+
+ "I. _In any operation, and under all circumstances, a decisive
+ naval superiority is to be considered as a fundamental
+ principle, and the basis upon which every hope of success must
+ ultimately depend._"
+
+This, however, though the most formal and decisive expression of
+Washington's views, is but one among many others equally distinct.
+Thus, writing to Franklin, December 20, 1780, he says:--
+
+ "Disappointed of the second division of French troops [blockaded
+ in Brest], but more especially in the expected naval
+ superiority, which was the pivot upon which everything turned,
+ we have been compelled to spend an inactive campaign after a
+ flattering prospect at the opening of it.... Latterly we have
+ been obliged to become spectators of a succession of detachments
+ from the army at New York in aid of Lord Cornwallis; while our
+ naval weakness, and the political dissolution of a large part of
+ our army, put it out of our power to counteract them at the
+ southward, or to take advantage of them here."
+
+A month later, January 15, 1781, in a memorandum letter to Colonel
+Laurens, sent on a special mission to France, he says:--
+
+ "Next to a loan of money, a constant naval superiority upon
+ these coasts is the object most interesting. This would
+ instantly reduce the enemy to a difficult defensive.... Indeed,
+ it is not to be conceived how they could subsist a large force
+ in this country, if we had the command of the seas to interrupt
+ the regular transmission of supplies from Europe. This
+ superiority, with an aid in money, would enable us to convert
+ the war into a vigorous offensive. With respect to us it seems
+ to be one of two deciding points."
+
+In another letter to the same person, then in Paris, dated April 9, he
+writes:--
+
+ "If France delays a timely and powerful aid in the critical
+ posture of our affairs, it will avail us nothing, should she
+ attempt it hereafter.... Why need I run into detail, when it may
+ be declared in a word that we are at the end of our tether, and
+ that now or never our deliverance must come? How easy would it
+ be to retort the enemy's own game upon them, if it could be made
+ to comport with the general plan of the war to keep a superior
+ fleet always in these seas, and France would put us in condition
+ to be active by advancing us money."
+
+Ships and money are the burden of his cry. May 23, 1781, he writes to
+the Chevalier de la Luzerne: "I do not see how it is possible to give
+effectual support to the Southern States, and avert the evils which
+threaten, while we are inferior in naval force in these seas." As the
+season for active operations advances, his utterances are more
+frequent and urgent. To Major General Greene, struggling with his
+difficulties in South Carolina, he writes, June 1, 1781: "Our affairs
+have been attentively considered in every point of view, and it was
+finally determined to make an attempt upon New York, in preference to
+a Southern operation, as we had not decided command of the water." To
+Jefferson, June 8: "Should I be supported in the manner I expect, by
+the neighboring States, the enemy will, I hope, be reduced to the
+necessity of recalling part of their force from the southward to
+support New York, or they will run the most imminent risk of being
+expelled from that post, which is to them invaluable; and should we,
+by a lucky coincidence of circumstances, gain a naval superiority,
+their ruin would be inevitable.... While we remain inferior at sea ...
+policy dictates that relief should be attempted by diversion rather
+than by sending reinforcements immediately to the point in distress,"
+that is, to the South. To Rochambeau, June 13: "Your Excellency will
+recollect that New York was looked upon by us as the only practicable
+object under present circumstances; but should we be able to secure a
+naval superiority, we may perhaps find others more practicable and
+equally advisable." By the 15th of August the letters of De Grasse
+announcing his sailing for the Chesapeake were received, and the
+correspondence of Washington is thenceforth filled with busy
+preparations for the campaign in Virginia, based upon the long-delayed
+fleet. The discouragement of De Grasse, and his purpose to go to sea,
+upon learning that the English fleet in New York had been reinforced,
+drew forth an appealing letter dated September 25, which is too long
+for quotation; but the danger passed, Washington's confidence returns.
+The day after the capitulation he writes to De Grasse: "The surrender
+of York ... _the honor of which belongs to your Excellency_, has
+greatly anticipated [in time] our most sanguine anticipations." He
+then goes on to urge further operations in the South, seeing so much
+of the good season was still left: "The general naval superiority of
+the British, previous to your arrival, gave them decisive advantages
+in the South, in the rapid transport of their troops and supplies;
+while the immense land marches of our succors, too tardy and expensive
+in every point of view, subjected us to be beaten in detail. It will
+depend upon your Excellency, therefore, to terminate the war." De
+Grasse refusing this request, but intimating an intention to
+co-operate in the next year's campaign, Washington instantly accepts:
+"With your Excellency I need not insist upon the indispensable
+necessity of a maritime force capable of giving you an absolute
+ascendency in these seas.... You will have observed that, whatever
+efforts are made by the land armies, the navy must have the casting
+vote in the present contest." A fortnight later, November 15, he
+writes to Lafayette, who is on the point of sailing for France:--
+
+ "As you expressed a desire to know my sentiments respecting the
+ operations of the next campaign, I will, without a tedious
+ display of reasoning, declare in one word that it must depend
+ absolutely upon the naval force which is employed in these seas,
+ and the time of its appearance next year. No land force can act
+ decisively unless accompanied by a maritime superiority.... A
+ doubt did not exist, nor does it at this moment, in any man's
+ mind, of the total extirpation of the British force in the
+ Carolinas and Georgia, if Count de Grasse could have extended
+ his co-operation two months longer."
+
+Such, in the opinion of the revered commander-in-chief of the American
+armies, was the influence of sea power upon the contest which he
+directed with so much skill and such infinite patience, and which,
+amidst countless trials and discouragements, he brought to a glorious
+close.
+
+It will be observed that the American cause was reduced to these
+straits, notwithstanding the great and admitted losses of British
+commerce by the cruisers of the allies and by American privateers.
+This fact, and the small results from the general war, dominated as it
+was by the idea of commerce-destroying, show strongly the secondary
+and indecisive effect of such a policy upon the great issues of war.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[129] Martin: History of France.
+
+[130] This delay was due to calms. Howe's Despatch, Gentleman's
+Magazine, 1778.
+
+[131] Most accounts say between Goat Island and Canonicut; but the
+position given seems more probable. The names "Goat" and "Gould"
+(often written "Gold") are easily confused. Since writing the above,
+the author has been favored with the sight of a contemporary
+manuscript map obtained in Paris, which shows the anchorage as near
+Canonicut and abreast Coaster's Harbor Island; the latter being marked
+"L'Isle d'Or ou Golde Isle." The sketch, while accurate in its main
+details, seems the more authentic from its mistakes being such as a
+foreigner, during a hurried and exciting stay of twenty-four hours,
+might readily make.
+
+[132] "The arrival of the French fleet upon the coast of America is a
+great and striking event; but the operations of it have been injured by
+a number of unforeseen and unfavorable circumstances, which, though
+they ought not to detract from the merit and good intention of our
+great ally, have nevertheless lessened the importance of its services
+in a great degree. The length of the passage, in the first instance,
+was a capital misfortune; for had even one of common length taken
+place, Lord Howe, with the British ships-of-war and all the transports
+in the river Delaware, must inevitably have fallen; and Sir Henry
+Clinton must have had better luck than is commonly dispensed to men of
+his profession under such circumstances, if he and his troops had not
+shared at least the fate of Burgoyne. The long passage of Count
+d'Estaing was succeeded by an unfavorable discovery at the Hook, which
+hurt us in two respects,--first, in a defeat of the enterprise upon New
+York and the shipping and troops at that place, and next in the delay
+occasioned in ascertaining the depth of water over the bar which was
+essential to their entrance into the harbor of New York. And, moreover,
+after the enterprise upon Rhode Island had been planned and was in the
+moment of execution, that Lord Howe with the British ships should
+interpose merely to create a diversion and draw the French fleet from
+the island was again unlucky, as the Count had not returned on the 17th
+to the island, though drawn off from it on the 10th; by which means the
+land operations were retarded, and the whole subjected to a miscarriage
+in case of the arrival of Byron's squadron."--WASHINGTON'S Letter, Aug.
+20, 1778.
+
+[133] See page 426.
+
+[134] D'Estaing's position at anchor is marked by the anchor in Plate
+X.
+
+[135] Of one of these, the "Monmouth," sixty-four (a'), it is said
+that the officers of the French flag-ship drank to the health of the
+captain of the "little black ship." Ships' names, like those of
+families, often have a marked career. A former "Monmouth," twenty
+years before, had attacked and taken, practically single-handed, the
+"Foudroyant," eighty-four, one of the finest ships in the French navy.
+She was then commanded by a Captain Gardiner, who, having commanded
+Byng's ship in the battle which led to his execution, was moved by his
+mortification at the result of that affair to dare such desperate
+odds, and thereby lost his life. The same ship, here punished so
+severely off Grenada, will be found in like sturdy fight, under
+another captain, three years later in India.
+
+[136] The line BC shows the final direction of the French
+line-of-battle; the lee ship (o) having tacked and standing to o',
+while the other ships took position in her wake. Though not expressly
+stated, Byron doubtless formed in the same way on a parallel line.
+Into this new line the disabled ships (c'), which could scarcely have
+made good the course they were heading, would be easily received.
+
+[137] Chevalier: Hist. de la Marine Française.
+
+[138] Guérin: Hist. Maritime.
+
+[139] Drinkwater, in his history of the siege of Gibraltar, explains
+that the Spanish admiral believed that Rodney would not accompany the
+convoy to the Straits, but had separated from it. He did not detect
+his mistake until too late.
+
+[140] The place where the battle was fought is shown by the crossed
+flags.
+
+[141] The black ships, in position A, represent the English ships
+bearing down upon the French centre and rear. The line v r is the
+line-of-battle from van to rear before bearing down. The positions v',
+r', are those of the van and rear ships after hauling up on the port
+tack, when the French wore.
+
+[142] In a severe reprimand addressed to Captain Carkett, commanding
+the leading ship of the English line, by Rodney, he says: "Your leading
+in the manner you did, induced others to follow so bad an example; and
+thereby, forgetting that the signal for the line was at only two
+cables' length distance from each other, the van division was led by
+you to _more than two leagues distance_ from the centre division, which
+was thereby exposed to the greatest strength of the enemy and not
+properly supported" (Life, vol. i. p. 351). By all rules of tactical
+common-sense it would seem that the other ships should have taken their
+distance from their next astern, that is, should have closed toward the
+centre. In conversation with Sir Gilbert Blane, who was not in this
+action, Rodney stated that the French line extended four leagues in
+length, "as if De Guichen thought we meant to run away from him" (Naval
+Chronicle, vol. xxv. p. 402).
+
+[143] History of the American Revolution.
+
+[144] For Rodney's reasons, see his Life, vol. i. pp. 365-376.
+
+[145] At the eastern end of Long Island.
+
+[146] The French ascribe this disadvantage to the fact that some of
+their ships were not coppered.
+
+[147] That the French government was not satisfied with M.
+Destouches's action can be safely inferred from its delay to reward
+the officers of the squadron, which called forth much feeling and very
+lively remonstrances. The French asserted that Arbuthnot was hooted in
+the streets of New York and recalled by his government. The latter is
+a mistake, as he went home by his own request; but the former is
+likely enough. Both commanders reversed in this case the usual naval
+policy of their nations.
+
+[148] Bancroft: History of the United States.
+
+[149] Life of Rodney, vol. ii. p. 152; Clerk: Naval Tactics, p. 84.
+
+[150] De Barras had been unwilling to go to the Chesapeake, fearing to
+be intercepted by a superior force, and had only yielded to the
+solicitation of Washington and Rochambeau.
+
+[151] Naval Researches: Capt. Thomas White, R.N.
+
+[152] White: Naval Researches.
+
+[153] Bouclon: La Marine de Louis XVI., p. 281. Under a rather
+misleading title this work is really a lengthy biography of Liberge de
+Granchain, chief of staff to the French squadron under Ternay.
+
+[154] Diary of a French officer, 1781; Magazine of American History
+for March, 1880. The works at the time of Rodney's visit to New York
+were doubtless less complete than in 1781. This authority, a year
+later, gives the work on Rose Island twenty 36-pounders.
+
+[155] Sir Thomas Graves, afterward second in command to Nelson in the
+attack at Copenhagen in 1801,--an enterprise fully as desperate and
+encompassed with greater difficulties of pilotage than the one here
+advocated. See biographical memoir, Naval Chronicle, vol. viii.
+
+[156] Rodney's Life, vol. i. p. 402.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+ MARITIME WAR IN EUROPE, 1779-1782.
+
+
+The last chapter closed with the opinions of Washington, expressed in
+many ways and at many times, as to the effect of sea power upon the
+struggle for American independence. If space allowed, these opinions
+could be amply strengthened by similar statements of Sir Henry
+Clinton, the English commander-in-chief.[157] In Europe the results
+turned yet more entirely upon the same factor. There the allies had
+three several objectives, at each of which England stood strictly upon
+the defensive. The first of these was England herself, involving, as a
+preliminary to an invasion, the destruction of the Channel fleet,--a
+project which, if seriously entertained, can scarcely be said to have
+been seriously attempted; the second was the reduction of Gibraltar;
+the third, the capture of Minorca. The last alone met with success.
+Thrice was England threatened by a largely superior fleet, thrice the
+threat fell harmless. Thrice was Gibraltar reduced to straits; thrice
+was it relieved by the address and fortune of English seamen, despite
+overpowering odds.
+
+After Keppel's action off Ushant, no general encounter took place
+between fleets in European seas during the year 1778 and the first
+half of 1779. Meantime Spain was drawing toward a rupture with England
+and an active alliance with France. War was declared by her on the
+16th of June, 1779; but as early as April 12, a treaty between the two
+Bourbon kingdoms, involving active war upon England, had been signed.
+By its terms the invasion of Great Britain or Ireland was to be
+undertaken, every effort made to recover for Spain, Minorca,
+Pensacola, and Mobile, and the two courts bound themselves to grant
+neither peace, nor truce, nor suspension of hostilities, until
+Gibraltar should be restored.[158]
+
+The declaration of war was withheld until ready to strike; but the
+English government, doubtless, should have been upon its guard in the
+strained relations of the two countries, and prepared to prevent a
+junction of the two fleets. As it was, no efficient blockade of Brest
+was established, and twenty-eight French sail-of-the-line went out
+unopposed[159] June 3, 1779, under D'Orvilliers, Keppel's opponent of
+the year before. The fleet steered for the coasts of Spain, where it
+was to find the Spanish ships; but it was not till the 22d of July
+that the full contingent joined. Seven precious summer weeks thus
+slipped by unimproved, but that was not all the loss; the French had
+been provisioned for only thirteen weeks, and this truly great armada
+of sixty-six ships-of-the-line and fourteen frigates had not more than
+forty working-days before it. Sickness, moreover, ravaged the fleet;
+and although it was fortunate enough to enter the Channel while the
+English were at sea, the latter, numbering little more than half their
+enemies, succeeded in passing within them. The flabbiness of
+coalitions increased the weakness due to inefficient preparation; a
+great and not unnatural panic on the English Channel coast, and the
+capture of one ship-of-the-line, were the sole results of a cruise
+extending, for the French, over fifteen weeks.[160] The
+disappointment, due to bad preparation, mainly on the part of Spain,
+though the French ministry utterly failed to meet the pressing wants
+of its fleet, fell, of course, upon the innocent Admiral d'Orvilliers.
+That brave and accomplished but unfortunate officer, whose only son, a
+lieutenant, had died of the pestilence which scourged the allies,
+could not support the odium. Being of a deeply religious character,
+the refuge which Villeneuve after Trafalgar found in suicide was
+denied him; but he threw up his command and retired into a religious
+house.
+
+The scanty maritime interest of the year 1780, in Europe, centres
+round Cadiz and Gibraltar. This fortress was invested by Spain
+immediately upon the outbreak of war, and, while successfully
+resisting direct attack, the supply of provisions and ammunition was a
+matter of serious concern to England, and involved both difficulty and
+danger. For this purpose, Rodney sailed on the 29th of December, 1779,
+having under his command twenty ships-of-the-line with a large convoy
+and reinforcements for Gibraltar and Minorca, as well as the West
+India trade. The latter parted company on the 7th of January, under
+the care of four frigates, and the following morning the fleet fell in
+with and captured a Spanish squadron of seven ships-of-war and sixteen
+supply-ships. Twelve of the latter being laden with provisions were
+carried on to Gibraltar. A week later, at one P.M. of the 16th, a
+Spanish fleet of eleven sail-of-the-line was seen in the southeast.
+They held their ground, supposing the approaching vessels to be only
+supply-ships for Gibraltar, without a strong force of men-of-war,--an
+unfortunate error from which they did not awake until too late to
+escape, owing to the yet more unfortunate oversight of having no
+lookout frigates thrown out. When the Spanish admiral, Don Juan de
+Langara, recognized his mistake, he attempted to escape; but the
+English ships were copper-bottomed, and Rodney making the signal for a
+general chase overtook the enemy, cut in between him and his port,
+regardless of a blowy night, lee shore, and dangerous shoals, and
+succeeded in capturing the commander-in-chief with six ships-of-the-line.
+A seventh was blown up. The weather continuing very tempestuous, one of
+the prizes was wrecked, and one forced into Cadiz; several of the
+English ships were also in great danger, but happily escaped, and
+within a few days the entire force entered Gibraltar Bay. The convoy
+for Minorca was at once despatched, and immediately after the return of
+the ships-of-war guarding it, on the 13th of February, Rodney sailed
+for the West Indies with four ships-of-the-line, sending the rest of
+his force, with the prizes, to England under Admiral Digby.
+
+The state of politics and parties in England at this time was such
+that, combined with the unavoidable inferiority of the Channel fleet,
+it was difficult to find an admiral willing to accept the chief
+command. An admirable officer, Barrington, the captor of Sta. Lucia,
+refused the first place, though willing to serve as second, even to a
+junior.[161] The allied fleet, to the number of thirty-six
+sail-of-the-line, assembled at Cadiz. Their cruises, however, were
+confined to the Portuguese coast; and their only service, a most
+important one, was the capture of an entire convoy, largely laden with
+military stores, for the East and West Indies. The entrance of sixty
+English prizes, with nearly three thousand prisoners, into Cadiz, was
+a source of great rejoicing to Spain. On the 24th of October, De
+Guichen, returning from his contest with Rodney, came into the same
+port with his West Indian squadron, of nineteen ships-of-the-line; but
+the immense armament thus assembled did nothing. The French ships
+returned to Brest in January, 1781.
+
+While thus unproductive of military results in Europe, the war in 1780
+gave rise to an event which cannot wholly be passed over by any
+history of sea power. This was the Armed Neutrality, at the head of
+which stood Russia, joined by Sweden and Denmark. The claim of England
+to seize enemy's goods in neutral ships bore hard upon neutral powers,
+and especially upon those of the Baltic and upon Holland, into whose
+hands, and those of the Austrian Netherlands, the war had thrown much
+of the European carrying-trade; while the products of the Baltic,
+naval stores and grain, were those which England was particularly
+interested in forbidding to her enemies. The declarations finally put
+forth by Russia, and signed by Sweden and Denmark, were four in
+number:
+
+1. That neutral vessels had a right, not only to sail to unblockaded
+ports, but also from port to port of a belligerent nation; in other
+words, to maintain the coasting trade of a belligerent.
+
+2. That property belonging to the subjects of a power at war should be
+safe on board neutral vessels. This was the principle involved in the
+now familiar maxim, "Free ships make free goods."
+
+3. That no articles are contraband, except arms, equipments, and
+munitions of war. This ruled out naval stores and provisions unless
+belonging to the government of a belligerent.
+
+4. That blockades, to be binding, must have an adequate naval force
+stationed in close proximity to the blockaded port.
+
+The contracting parties being neutral in the present war, but binding
+themselves to support these principles by a combined armed fleet of a
+fixed minimum number, the agreement received the name of the Armed
+Neutrality. The discussion of the propriety of the various
+declarations belongs to International law; but it is evident that no
+great maritime State, situated as England then was, would submit to
+the first and third as a matter of right. Policy only could induce her
+to do so. Without meeting the declarations by a direct contradiction,
+the ministry and the king determined to disregard them,--a course
+which was sustained in principle even by prominent members of the
+bitter opposition of that day. The undecided attitude of the United
+Provinces, divided as in the days of Louis XIV. between the partisans
+of England and France, despite a century of alliance with the former,
+drew the especial attention of Great Britain. They had been asked to
+join the Armed Neutrality; they hesitated, but the majority of the
+provinces favored it. A British officer had already gone so far as to
+fire upon a Dutch man-of-war which had resisted the search of
+merchant-ships under its convoy; an act which, whether right or wrong,
+tended to incense the Dutch generally against England. It was
+determined by the latter that if the United Provinces acceded to the
+coalition of neutrals, war should be declared. On the 16th of
+December, 1780, the English ministry was informed that the
+States-General had resolved to sign the declarations of the Armed
+Neutrality without delay. Orders were at once sent out to Rodney to
+seize the Dutch West India and South American possessions; similar
+orders to the East Indies; and the ambassador at the Hague was
+recalled. England declared war four days later. The principal effect,
+therefore, of the Armed Neutrality upon the war was to add the
+colonies and commerce of Holland to the prey of English cruisers. The
+additional enemy was of small account to Great Britain, whose
+geographical position effectually blocked the junction of the Dutch
+fleet with those of her other enemies. The possessions of Holland fell
+everywhere, except when saved by the French; while a bloody but wholly
+uninstructive battle between English and Dutch squadrons in the North
+Sea, in August, 1781, was the only feat of arms illustrative of the
+old Dutch courage and obstinacy.
+
+The year 1781, decisive of the question of the independence of the
+United States, was marked in the European seas by imposing movements
+of great fleets followed by puny results. At the end of March De
+Grasse sailed from Brest with twenty-six ships-of-the-line. On the
+29th he detached five under Suffren to the East Indies, and himself
+continued on to meet success at Yorktown and disaster in the West
+Indies. On the 23d of June De Guichen sailed from Brest with eighteen
+ships-of-the-line for Cadiz, where he joined thirty Spanish ships.
+This immense armament sailed on the 22d of July for the Mediterranean,
+landed fourteen thousand troops at Minorca, and then moved upon the
+English Channel.
+
+The English had this year first to provide against the danger to
+Gibraltar. That beset fortress had had no supplies since Rodney's
+visit, in January of the year before, and was now in sore want, the
+provisions being scanty and bad, the biscuits weevilly, and the meat
+tainted. Amid the horrors and uproar of one of the longest and most
+exciting sieges of history, the sufferings of the combatants were
+intensified by the presence of many peaceful inhabitants, including
+the wives and families of soldiers as well as of officers. A great
+fleet of twenty-eight ships-of-the-line sailed from Portsmouth on the
+13th of March, convoying three hundred merchant-ships for the East and
+West Indies, besides ninety-seven transports and supply-ships for the
+Rock. A delay on the Irish coast prevented its falling in with De
+Grasse, who had sailed nine days after it. Arriving off Cape St.
+Vincent, it met no enemy, and looking into Cadiz saw the great Spanish
+fleet at anchor. The latter made no move, and the English admiral,
+Derby, threw his supplies into Gibraltar on the 12th of April,
+undisturbed. At the same time he, like De Grasse, detached to the East
+Indies a small squadron, which was destined before long to fall in
+with Suffren. The inaction of the Spanish fleet, considering the
+eagerness of its government about Gibraltar and its equal if not
+superior numbers, shows scanty reliance of the Spanish admiral upon
+himself or his command. Derby, having relieved Gibraltar and Minorca,
+returned to the Channel in May.
+
+Upon the approach of the combined fleet of nearly fifty sail in August
+following, Derby fell back upon Torbay and there anchored his fleet,
+numbering thirty ships. De Guichen, who held chief command, and whose
+caution when engaged with Rodney has been before remarked, was in
+favor of fighting; but the almost unanimous opposition of the
+Spaniards, backed by some of his own officers, overruled him in a
+council of war,[162] and again the great Bourbon coalition fell back,
+foiled by their own discord and the unity of their enemy. Gibraltar
+relieved, England untouched, were the results of these gigantic
+gatherings; they can scarcely be called efforts. A mortifying disaster
+closed the year for the allies. De Guichen sailed from Brest with
+seventeen sail, protecting a large convoy of merchantmen and ships
+with military supplies. The fleet was pursued by twelve English ships
+under Admiral Kempenfeldt, an officer whose high professional
+abilities have not earned the immortality with which poetry has graced
+his tragical death. Falling in with the French one hundred and fifty
+miles west of Ushant, he cut off a part of the convoy, despite his
+inferior numbers.[163] A few days later a tempest dispersed the
+French fleet. Only two ships-of-the-line and five merchantmen out of
+one hundred and fifty reached the West Indies.
+
+The year 1782 opened with the loss to the English of Port Mahon, which
+surrendered on the 5th of February, after a siege of six months.--a
+surrender induced by the ravages of scurvy, consequent upon the lack
+of vegetables, and confinement in the foul air of bombproofs and
+casemates, under the heavy fire of an enemy. On the last night of the
+defence the call for necessary guards was four hundred and fifteen,
+while only six hundred and sixty men were fit for duty, thus leaving
+no reliefs.
+
+The allied fleets assembled this year in Cadiz, to the number of forty
+ships-of-the-line. It was expected that this force would be increased
+by Dutch ships, but a squadron under Lord Howe drove the latter back
+to their ports. It does not certainly appear that any active
+enterprise was intended against the English coast; but the allies
+cruised off the mouth of the Channel and in the Bay of Biscay during
+the summer months. Their presence insured the safe arrival and
+departure of the homeward and outward bound merchantmen, and likewise
+threatened English commerce; notwithstanding which, Howe, with
+twenty-two ships, not only kept the sea and avoided an engagement, but
+also succeeded in bringing the Jamaica fleet safe into port. The
+injury to trade and to military transportation by sea may be said to
+have been about equal on either side; and the credit for successful
+use of sea power for these most important ends must therefore be given
+to the weaker party.
+
+Having carried out their orders for the summer cruise, the combined
+fleets returned to Cadiz. On the 10th of September they sailed thence
+for Algesiras, on the opposite side of the bay from Gibraltar, to
+support a grand combined attack by land and sea, which, it was hoped,
+would reduce to submission the key to the Mediterranean. With the
+ships already there, the total rose to nearly fifty ships-of-the-line.
+The details of the mighty onslaught scarcely belong to our subject,
+yet cannot be wholly passed by, without at least such mention as may
+recognize and draw attention to their interest.
+
+The three years' siege which was now drawing to its end had been
+productive of many brilliant feats of arms, as well as of less
+striking but more trying proofs of steadfast endurance, on the part of
+the garrison. How long the latter might have held out cannot be said,
+seeing the success with which the English sea power defied the efforts
+of the allies to cut off the communications of the fortress; but it
+was seemingly certain that the place must be subdued by main force or
+not at all, while the growing exhaustion of the belligerents foretold
+the near end of the war. Accordingly Spain multiplied her efforts of
+preparation and military ingenuity; while the report of them and of
+the approaching decisive contest drew to the scene volunteers and men
+of eminence from other countries of Europe. Two French Bourbon princes
+added, by their coming, to the theatrical interest with which the
+approaching drama was invested. The presence of royalty was needed
+adequately to grace the sublime catastrophe; for the sanguine
+confidence of the besiegers had determined a satisfactory _dénouement_
+with all the security of a playwright.
+
+Besides the works on the isthmus which joins the Rock to the mainland,
+where three hundred pieces of artillery were now mounted, the chief
+reliance of the assailants was upon ten floating batteries elaborately
+contrived to be shot and fire proof, and carrying one hundred and
+fifty-four heavy guns. These were to anchor in a close north-and-south
+line along the west face of the works, at about nine hundred yards
+distance. They were to be supported by forty gunboats and as many bomb
+vessels, besides the efforts of the ships-of-the-line to cover the
+attack and distract the garrison. Twelve thousand French troops were
+brought to reinforce the Spaniards in the grand assault, which was to
+be made when the bombardment had sufficiently injured and demoralized
+the defenders. At this time the latter numbered seven thousand, their
+land opponents thirty-three thousand men.
+
+The final act was opened by the English. At seven o'clock on the
+morning of September 8, 1782, the commanding general, Elliott, began a
+severe and most injurious fire upon the works on the isthmus. Having
+effected his purpose, he stopped; but the enemy took up the glove the
+next morning, and for four days successively poured in a fire from the
+isthmus alone of six thousand five hundred cannon-balls and one
+thousand one hundred bombs every twenty-four hours. So approached the
+great closing scene of September 13. At seven A.M. of that day the ten
+battering-ships unmoored from the head of the bay and stood down to
+their station. Between nine and ten they anchored, and the general
+fire at once began. The besieged replied with equal fury. The
+battering-ships seem in the main, and for some hours, to have
+justified the hopes formed of them; cold shot glanced or failed to get
+through their sides, while the self-acting apparatus for extinguishing
+fires balked the hot shot.
+
+About two o'clock, however, smoke was seen to issue from the ship of
+the commander-in-chief, and though controlled for some time, the fire
+continued to gain. The same misfortune befell others; by evening, the
+fire of the besieged gained a marked superiority, and by one o'clock
+in the morning the greater part of the battering-ships were in flames.
+Their distress was increased by the action of the naval officer
+commanding the English gunboats, who now took post upon the flank of
+the line and raked it effectually,--a service which the Spanish
+gunboats should have prevented. In the end, nine of the ten blew up at
+their anchors, with a loss estimated at fifteen hundred men, four
+hundred being saved from the midst of the fire by the English seamen.
+The tenth ship was boarded and burned by the English boats. The hopes
+of the assailants perished with the failure of the battering-ships.
+
+There remained only the hope of starving out the garrison. To this end
+the allied fleets now gave themselves. It was known that Lord Howe was
+on his way out with a great fleet, numbering thirty-four
+ships-of-the-line, besides supply vessels. On the 10th of October a
+violent westerly gale injured the combined ships, driving one ashore
+under the batteries of Gibraltar, where she was surrendered. The next
+day Howe's force came in sight, and the transports had a fine chance
+to make the anchorage, which, through carelessness, was missed by all
+but four. The rest, with the men-of-war, drove eastward into the
+Mediterranean. The allies followed on the 13th; but though thus placed
+between the port and the relieving force, and not encumbered, like the
+latter, with supply-ships, they yet contrived to let the transports,
+with scarcely an exception, slip in and anchor safely. Not only
+provisions and ammunition, but also bodies of troops carried by the
+ships-of-war, were landed without molestation. On the 19th the English
+fleet repassed the straits with an easterly wind, having within a
+week's time fulfilled its mission, and made Gibraltar safe for another
+year. The allied fleet followed, and on the 20th an action took place
+at long range, the allies to windward, but not pressing their attack
+close. The number of ships engaged in this magnificent spectacle, the
+closing scene of the great drama in Europe, the after-piece to the
+successful defence of Gibraltar, was eighty-three of the
+line,--forty-nine allies and thirty-four English. Of the former,
+thirty-three only got into action; but as the duller sailers would
+have come up to a general engagement, Lord Howe was probably right in
+declining, so far as in him lay, a trial which the allies did not too
+eagerly court.
+
+Such were the results of this great contest in the European seas,
+marked on the part of the allies by efforts gigantic in size, but
+loose-jointed and flabby in execution. By England, so heavily
+overmatched in mere numbers, were shown firmness of purpose, high
+courage, and seamanship; but it can scarcely be said that the military
+conceptions of her councils, or the cabinet management of her sea
+forces, were worthy of the skill and devotion of her seamen. The odds
+against her were not so great--not nearly so great--as the formidable
+lists of guns and ships seemed to show; and while allowance must
+justly be made for early hesitations, the passing years of indecision
+and inefficiency on the part of the allies should have betrayed to her
+their weakness. The reluctance of the French to risk their ships, so
+plainly shown by D'Estaing, De Grasse, and De Guichen, the
+sluggishness and inefficiency of the Spaniards, should have encouraged
+England to pursue her old policy, to strike at the organized forces of
+the enemy afloat. As a matter of fact, and probably from the
+necessities of the case, the opening of every campaign found the
+enemies separated,--the Spaniards in Cadiz, the French in Brest.[164]
+To blockade the latter in full force before they could get out,
+England should have strained every effort; thus she would have stopped
+at its head the main stream of the allied strength, and, by knowing
+exactly where this great body was, would have removed that uncertainty
+as to its action which fettered her own movements as soon as it had
+gained the freedom of the open sea. Before Brest she was interposed
+between the allies; by her lookouts she would have known the approach
+of the Spaniards long before the French could know it; she would have
+kept in her hands the power of bringing against each, singly, ships
+more numerous and individually more effective. A wind that was fair to
+bring on the Spaniards would have locked their allies in the port. The
+most glaring instances of failure on the part of England to do this
+were when De Grasse was permitted to get out unopposed in March, 1781;
+for an English fleet of superior force had sailed from Portsmouth nine
+days before him, but was delayed by the admiralty on the Irish
+coast;[165] and again at the end of that year, when Kempenfeldt was
+sent to intercept De Guichen with an inferior force, while ships
+enough to change the odds were kept at home. Several of the ships
+which were to accompany Rodney to the West Indies were ready when
+Kempenfeldt sailed, yet they were not associated with an enterprise so
+nearly affecting the objects of Rodney's campaign. The two forces
+united would have made an end of De Guichen's seventeen ships and his
+invaluable convoy.
+
+Gibraltar was indeed a heavy weight upon the English operations, but
+the national instinct which clung to it was correct. The fault of the
+English policy was in attempting to hold so many other points of land,
+while neglecting, by rapidity of concentration, to fall upon any of
+the detachments of the allied fleets. The key of the situation was
+upon the ocean; a great victory there would have solved all the other
+points in dispute. But it was not possible to win a great victory
+while trying to maintain a show of force everywhere.[166]
+
+North America was a yet heavier clog, and there undoubtedly the
+feeling of the nation was mistaken; pride, not wisdom, maintained that
+struggle. Whatever the sympathies of individuals and classes in the
+allied nations, by their governments American rebellion was valued
+only as a weakening of England's arm. The operations there depended,
+as has been shown, upon the control of the sea; and to maintain that,
+large detachments of English ships were absorbed from the contest with
+France and Spain. Could a successful war have made America again what
+it once was, a warmly attached dependency of Great Britain, a firm
+base for her sea power, it would have been worth much greater
+sacrifices; but that had become impossible. But although she had lost,
+by her own mistakes, the affection of the colonists, which would have
+supported and secured her hold upon their ports and sea-coast, there
+nevertheless remained to the mother-country, in Halifax, Bermuda, and
+the West Indies, enough strong military stations, inferior, as naval
+bases, only to those strong ports which are surrounded by a friendly
+country, great in its resources and population. The abandonment of the
+contest in North America would have strengthened England very much
+more than the allies. As it was, her large naval detachments there
+were always liable to be overpowered by a sudden move of the enemy
+from the sea, as happened in 1778 and 1781.
+
+To the abandonment of America as hopelessly lost, because no military
+subjection could have brought back the old loyalty, should have been
+added the giving up, for the time, all military occupancy which
+fettered concentration, while not adding to military strength. Most of
+the Antilles fell under this head, and the ultimate possession of them
+would depend upon the naval campaign. Garrisons could have been spared
+for Barbadoes and Sta. Lucia, for Gibraltar and perhaps for Mahon,
+that could have effectually maintained them until the empire of the
+seas was decided; and to them could have been added one or two vital
+positions in America, like New York and Charleston, to be held only
+till guarantees were given for such treatment of the loyalists among
+the inhabitants as good faith required England to exact.
+
+Having thus stripped herself of every weight, rapid concentration with
+offensive purpose should have followed. Sixty ships-of-the-line on the
+coast of Europe, half before Cadiz and half before Brest, with a
+reserve at home to replace injured ships, would not have exhausted by
+a great deal the roll of the English navy; and that such fleets would
+not have had to fight, may not only be said by us, who have the whole
+history before us, but might have been inferred by those who had
+watched the tactics of D'Estaing and De Guichen, and later on of De
+Grasse. Or, had even so much dispersal been thought unadvisable, forty
+ships before Brest would have left the sea open to the Spanish fleet
+to try conclusions with the rest of the English navy when the question
+of controlling Gibraltar and Mahon came up for decision. Knowing what
+we do of the efficiency of the two services, there can be little
+question of the result; and Gibraltar, instead of a weight, would, as
+often before and since those days, have been an element of strength to
+Great Britain.
+
+The conclusion continually recurs. Whatever may be the determining
+factors in strifes between neighboring continental States, when a
+question arises of control over distant regions, politically
+weak,--whether they be crumbling empires, anarchical republics,
+colonies, isolated military posts, or islands below a certain
+size,--it must ultimately be decided by naval power, by the organized
+military force afloat, which represents the communications that form
+so prominent a feature in all strategy. The magnificent defence of
+Gibraltar hinged upon this; upon this depended the military results of
+the war in America; upon this the final fate of the West India
+Islands; upon this certainly the possession of India. Upon this will
+depend the control of the Central American Isthmus, if that question
+take a military coloring; and though modified by the continental
+position and surroundings of Turkey, the same sea power must be a
+weighty factor in shaping the outcome of the Eastern Question in
+Europe.
+
+If this be true, military wisdom and economy, both of time and money,
+dictate bringing matters to an issue as soon as possible upon the
+broad sea, with the certainty that the power which achieves military
+preponderance there will win in the end. In the war of the American
+Revolution the numerical preponderance was very great against England;
+the actual odds were less, though still against her. Military
+considerations would have ordered the abandonment of the colonies; but
+if the national pride could not stoop to this, the right course was to
+blockade the hostile arsenals. If not strong enough to be in superior
+force before both, that of the more powerful nation should have been
+closed. Here was the first fault of the English admiralty; the
+statement of the First Lord as to the available force at the outbreak
+of the war was not borne out by facts. The first fleet, under Keppel,
+barely equalled the French; and at the same time Howe's force in
+America was inferior to the fleet under D'Estaing. In 1779 and 1781,
+on the contrary, the English fleet was superior to that of the French
+alone; yet the allies joined unopposed, while in the latter year De
+Grasse got away to the West Indies, and Suffren to the East. In
+Kempenfeldt's affair with De Guichen, the admiralty knew that the
+French convoy was of the utmost importance to the campaign in the West
+Indies, yet they sent out their admiral with only twelve ships; while
+at that time, besides the reinforcement destined for the West Indies,
+a number of others were stationed in the Downs, for what Fox justly
+called "the paltry purpose" of distressing the Dutch trade. The
+various charges made by Fox in the speech quoted from, and which, as
+regarded the Franco-Spanish War, were founded mainly on the expediency
+of attacking the allies before they got away into the ocean
+wilderness, were supported by the high professional opinion of Lord
+Howe, who of the Kempenfeldt affair said: "Not only the fate of the
+West India Islands, but perhaps the whole future fortune of the war,
+might have been decided, almost without a risk, in the Bay of
+Biscay."[167] Not without a risk, but with strong probabilities of
+success, the whole fortune of the war should at the first have been
+staked on a concentration of the English fleet between Brest and
+Cadiz. No relief for Gibraltar would have been more efficacious; no
+diversion surer for the West India Islands; and the Americans would
+have appealed in vain for the help, scantily given as it was, of the
+French fleet. For the great results that flowed from the coming of De
+Grasse must not obscure the fact that he came on the 31st of August,
+and announced from the beginning that he must be in the West Indies
+again by the middle of October. Only a providential combination of
+circumstances prevented a repetition to Washington, in 1781, of the
+painful disappointments by D'Estaing and De Guichen in 1778 and 1780.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[157] The curious reader can consult Clinton's letters and notes, in
+the "Clinton Cornwallis Controversy," by B.F. Stevens. London, 1888.
+
+[158] Bancroft: History of the United States, vol. x. p. 191.
+
+[159] Although the English thus culpably failed to use their
+superiority to the French alone, the Channel fleet numbering over
+forty of the line, the fear that it might prevent the junction caused
+the Brest fleet to sail in haste and undermanned,--a fact which had an
+important effect upon the issue of the cruise. (Chevalier, p. 159.)
+
+[160] The details of the mismanagement of this huge mob of ships are
+so numerous as to confuse a narrative, and are therefore thrown into a
+foot-note. The French fleet was hurried to sea four thousand men
+short. The Spaniards were seven weeks in joining. When they met, no
+common system of signals had been arranged; five fair summer days were
+spent in remedying this defect. Not till a week after the junction
+could the fleet sail for England. No steps were taken to supply the
+provisions consumed by the French during the seven weeks. The original
+orders to D'Orvilliers contemplated a landing at Portsmouth, or the
+seizure of the Isle of Wight, for which a large army was assembled on
+the coast of Normandy. Upon reaching the Channel, these orders were
+suddenly changed, and Falmouth indicated as the point of landing. By
+this time, August 16, summer was nearly over; and Falmouth, if taken,
+would offer no shelter to a great fleet. Then an easterly gale drove
+the fleet out of the Channel. By this time the sickness which raged
+had so reduced the crews that many ships could be neither handled nor
+fought. Ships companies of eight hundred or a thousand men could
+muster only from three to five hundred. Thus bad administration
+crippled the fighting powers of the fleet; while the unaccountable
+military blunder of changing the objective from a safe and accessible
+roadstead to a fourth-rate and exposed harbor completed the disaster
+by taking away the only hope of a secure base of operations during the
+fall and winter months. France then had no first-class port on the
+Channel; hence the violent westerly gales which prevail in the autumn
+and winter would have driven the allies into the North Sea.
+
+[161] Life of Admiral Keppel, vol. ii pp. 72, 346, 403. See also
+Barrow: Life of Lord Howe, pp. 123-126.
+
+[162] Beatson gives quite at length (vol. v. p. 395) the debate in the
+allied council of war. The customary hesitation of such councils, in
+face of the difficulties of the situation, was increased by an appeal
+to the delusion of commerce-destroying as a decisive mode of warfare.
+M. de Beausset urged that "the allied fleets should direct their whole
+attention to that great and attainable object, the intercepting of the
+British homeward-bound West India fleets. This was a measure which, as
+they were now masters of the sea, could scarcely fail of success; and
+it would prove a blow so fatal to that nation, that she could not
+recover it during the whole course of the war." The French account of
+Lapeyrouse-Bonfils is essentially the same. Chevalier, who is silent
+as to details, justly remarks: "The cruise just made by the allied
+fleet was such as to injure the reputation of France and Spain. These
+two powers had made a great display of force which had produced no
+result." The English trade also received little injury. Guichen wrote
+home: "I have returned from a cruise fatiguing but not glorious."
+
+[163] This mishap of the French was largely due to mismanagement by De
+Guichen, a skilful and usually a careful admiral. When Kempenfeldt
+fell in with him, all the French ships-of-war were to leeward of their
+convoy, while the English were to windward of it. The former,
+therefore, were unable to interpose in time; and the alternative
+remedy, of the convoy running down to leeward of their escort, could
+not be applied by all the merchant-ships in so large a body.
+
+[164] "In the spring of 1780 the British admiralty had assembled in
+the Channel ports forty-five ships-of-the-line. The squadron at Brest
+was reduced to twelve or fifteen.... To please Spain, twenty French
+ships-of-the-line had joined the flag of Admiral Cordova in Cadiz. In
+consequence of these dispositions, the English with their Channel
+fleet held in check the forces which we had in Brest and in Cadiz.
+Enemy's cruisers traversed freely the space between the Lizard and the
+Straits of Gibraltar." (Chevalier, p. 202.)
+
+In 1781 "the Cabinet of Versailles called the attention of Holland and
+Spain to the necessity of assembling at Brest a fleet strong enough to
+impose upon the ships which Great Britain kept in the Channel. The
+Dutch remained in the Texel, and the Spaniards did not leave Cadiz.
+From this state of things it resulted that the English, with forty
+ships-of-the-line, blocked seventy belonging to the allied powers."
+(p. 265.)
+
+[165] "A question was very much agitated both in and out of
+Parliament; namely, Whether the intercepting of the French fleet under
+the Count de Grasse should not have been the first object of the
+British fleet under Vice-Admiral Darby, instead of losing time in
+going to Ireland, by which that opportunity was missed. The defeat of
+the French fleet would certainly totally have disconcerted the great
+plans which the enemies had formed in the East and West Indies. It
+would have insured the safety of the British West India islands; the
+Cape of Good Hope must have fallen into the hands of Britain; and the
+campaign in North America might have had a very different
+termination." (Beatson's Memoirs, vol. v. p. 341, where the contrary
+arguments are also stated.)
+
+[166] This is one of the most common and flagrant violations of the
+principles of war,--stretching a thin line, everywhere inadequate,
+over an immense frontier. The clamors of trade and local interests
+make popular governments especially liable to it.
+
+[167] Annual Register, 1782.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+ EVENTS IN THE EAST INDIES, 1778-1781.--SUFFREN SAILS FROM BREST,
+ 1781.--HIS BRILLIANT NAVAL CAMPAIGN IN THE INDIAN SEAS, 1782,
+ 1783.
+
+
+The very interesting and instructive campaign of Suffren in the East
+Indies, although in itself by far the most noteworthy and meritorious
+naval performance of the war of 1778, failed, through no fault of his,
+to affect the general issue. It was not till 1781 that the French
+Court felt able to direct upon the East naval forces adequate to the
+importance of the issue. Yet the conditions of the peninsula at that
+time were such as to give an unusual opportunity for shaking the
+English power. Hyder Ali, the most skilful and daring of all the
+enemies against whom the English had yet fought in India, was then
+ruling over the kingdom of Mysore, which, from its position in the
+southern part of the peninsula, threatened both the Carnatic and the
+Malabar coast. Hyder, ten years before, had maintained alone a most
+successful war against the intruding foreigners, concluding with a
+peace upon the terms of a mutual restoration of conquests; and he was
+now angered by the capture of Mahé. On the other hand, a number of
+warlike tribes, known by the name of the Mahrattas, of the same race
+and loosely knit together in a kind of feudal system, had become
+involved in war with the English. The territory occupied by these
+tribes, whose chief capital was at Poonah, near Bombay, extended
+northward from Mysore to the Ganges. With boundaries thus
+conterminous, and placed centrally with reference to the three English
+presidencies of Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras, Hyder and the Mahrattas
+were in a position of advantage for mutual support and for offensive
+operations against the common enemy. At the beginning of the war
+between England and France, a French agent appeared at Poonah. It was
+reported to Warren Hastings, the Governor-General, that the tribes had
+agreed to terms and ceded to the French a seaport on the Malabar
+coast. With his usual promptness, Hastings at once determined on war,
+and sent a division of the Bengal army across the Jumna and into
+Berar. Another body of four thousand English troops also marched from
+Bombay; but being badly led, was surrounded and forced to surrender in
+January, 1779. This unusual reverse quickened the hopes and increased
+the strength of the enemies of the English; and although the material
+injury was soon remedied by substantial successes under able leaders,
+the loss of prestige remained. The anger of Hyder Ali, roused by the
+capture of Mahé, was increased by imprudent thwarting on the part of
+the governor of Madras. Seeing the English entangled with the
+Mahrattas, and hearing that a French armament was expected on the
+Coromandel coast, he quietly prepared for war. In the summer of 1780
+swarms of his horsemen descended without warning from the hills, and
+appeared near the gates of Madras. In September one body of English
+troops, three thousand strong, was cut to pieces, and another of five
+thousand was only saved by a rapid retreat upon Madras, losing its
+artillery and trains. Unable to attack Madras, Hyder turned upon the
+scattered posts separated from each other and the capital by the open
+country, which was now wholly in his control.
+
+Such was the state of affairs when, in January, 1781, a French
+squadron of six ships-of-the-line and three frigates appeared on the
+coast. The English fleet under Sir Edward Hughes had gone to Bombay.
+To the French commodore, Count d'Orves, Hyder appealed for aid in an
+attack upon Cuddalore. Deprived of support by sea, and surrounded by
+the myriads of natives, the place must have fallen. D'Orves, however,
+refused, and returned to the Isle of France. At the same time one of
+the most skilful of the English Indian soldiers, Sir Eyre Coote, took
+the field against Hyder. The latter at once raised the siege of the
+beleaguered posts, and after a series of operations extending through
+the spring months, was brought to battle on the 1st of July, 1781. His
+total defeat restored to the English the open country, saved the
+Carnatic, and put an end to the hopes of the partisans of the French
+in their late possession of Pondicherry. A great opportunity had been
+lost.
+
+Meanwhile a French officer of very different temper from his
+predecessors was on his way to the East Indies. It will be remembered
+that when De Grasse sailed from Brest, March 22, 1781, for the West
+Indies, there went with his fleet a division of five ships-of-the-line
+under Suffren. The latter separated from the main body on the 29th of
+the month, taking with him a few transports destined for the Cape of
+Good Hope, then a Dutch colony. The French government had learned that
+an expedition from England was destined to seize this important
+halting-place on the road to India, and Suffren's first mission was to
+secure it. In fact, the squadron under Commodore Johnstone[168] had
+got away first, and had anchored at Porto Praya, in the Cape Verde
+Islands, a Portuguese colony, on the 11th of April. It numbered two
+ships-of-the-line, and three of fifty guns, with frigates and smaller
+vessels, besides thirty-five transports, mostly armed. Without
+apprehension of attack, not because he trusted to the neutrality of
+the port but because he thought his destination secret, the English
+commodore had not anchored with a view to battle.
+
+It so happened that at the moment of sailing from Brest one of the
+ships intended for the West Indies was transferred to Suffren's
+squadron. She consequently had not water enough for the longer voyage,
+and this with other reasons determined Suffren also to anchor at
+Porto Praya. On the 16th of April, five days after Johnstone, he made
+the island early in the morning and stood for the anchorage, sending a
+coppered ship ahead to reconnoitre. Approaching from the eastward, the
+land for some time hid the English squadron; but at quarter before
+nine the advance ship, the "Artésien," signalled that enemy's ships
+were anchored in the bay. The latter is open to the southward, and
+extends from east to west about a mile and a half; the conditions are
+such that ships usually lie in the northeast part, near the shore
+(Plate XIII).[169] The English were there, stretching irregularly in a
+west-northwest line. Both Suffren and Johnstone were surprised, but
+the latter more so; and the initiative remained with the French
+officer. Few men were fitter, by natural temper and the teaching of
+experience, for the prompt decision required. Of ardent disposition
+and inborn military genius, Suffren had learned, in the conduct of
+Boscawen toward the squadron of De la Clue,[170] in which he had
+served, not to lay weight upon the power of Portugal to enforce
+respect for her neutrality. He knew that this must be the squadron
+meant for the Cape of Good Hope. The only question for him was whether
+to press on to the Cape with the chance of getting there first, or to
+attack the English at their anchors, in the hope of so crippling them
+as to prevent their further progress. He decided for the latter; and
+although the ships of his squadron, not sailing equally well, were
+scattered, he also determined to stand in at once, rather than lose
+the advantage of a surprise. Making signal to prepare for action at
+anchor, he took the lead in his flag-ship, the "Héros," of
+seventy-four guns, hauled close round the southeast point of the bay,
+and stood for the English flag-ship (f). He was closely followed by
+the "Hannibal," seventy-four (line a b); the advance ship "Artésien"
+(c), a sixty-four, also stood on with him; but the two rear ships were
+still far astern.
+
+ [Illustration: Pl. XIII. PORTO PRAYA. APRIL 16, 1781.]
+
+The English commodore got ready for battle as soon as he made out the
+enemy, but had no time to rectify his order. Suffren anchored five
+hundred feet from the flag-ship's starboard beam (by a singular
+coincidence the English flag-ship was also called "Hero"), thus having
+enemy's ships on both sides, and opened fire. The "Hannibal" anchored
+ahead of her commodore (b), and so close that the latter had to veer
+cable and drop astern (a); but her captain, ignorant of Suffren's
+intention to disregard the neutrality of the port, had not obeyed the
+order to clear for action, and was wholly unprepared,--his decks
+lumbered with water-casks which had been got up to expedite watering,
+and the guns not cast loose. He did not add to this fault by any
+hesitation, but followed the flag-ship boldly, receiving passively the
+fire, to which for a time he was unable to reply. Luffing to the wind,
+he passed to windward of his chief, chose his position with skill, and
+atoned by his death for his first fault. These two ships were so
+placed as to use both broadsides. The "Artésien," in the smoke,
+mistook an East India ship for a man-of-war. Running alongside (c'),
+her captain was struck dead at the moment he was about to anchor, and
+the critical moment being lost by the absence of a head, the ship
+drifted out of close action, carrying the East-Indiaman along with her
+(c''). The remaining two vessels, coming up late, failed to keep close
+enough to the wind, and they too were thrown out of action (d, e).
+Then Suffren, finding himself with only two ships to bear the brunt of
+the fight, cut his cable and made sail. The "Hannibal" followed his
+movement; but so much injured was she that her fore and main masts
+went over the side,--fortunately not till she was pointed out from the
+bay, which she left shorn to a hulk.
+
+Putting entirely aside questions of international law, the wisdom and
+conduct of Suffren's attack, from the military point of view, invite
+attention. To judge them properly, we must consider what was the
+object of the mission with which he was charged, and what were the
+chief factors in thwarting or forwarding it. His first object was to
+protect the Cape of Good Hope against an English expedition; the
+chief reliance for effecting his purpose was to get there first; the
+obstacle to his success was the English fleet. To anticipate the
+arrival of the latter, two courses were open to him,--to run for it in
+the hope of winning the race, or to beat the enemy and so put him out
+of the running altogether. So long as his whereabouts was unknown, a
+search, unless with very probable information, would be a waste of
+time; but when fortune had thrown his enemy across his path, the
+genius of Suffren at once jumped to the conclusion that the control of
+the sea in southern waters would determine the question, and should be
+settled at once. To use his own strong expression, "The destruction of
+the English squadron would _cut off the root_ of all the plans and
+projects of that expedition, gain us for a long time the superiority
+in India, a superiority whence might result a glorious peace, and
+hinder the English from reaching the Cape before me,--an object which
+has been fulfilled and was the principal aim of my mission." He was
+ill-informed as to the English force, believing it greater than it
+was; but he had it at disadvantage and surprised. The prompt decision
+to fight, therefore, was right, and it is the most pronounced merit of
+Suffren in this affair, that he postponed for the moment--dismissed,
+so to speak, from his mind--the ulterior projects of the cruise; but
+in so doing he departed from the traditions of the French navy and the
+usual policy of his government. It cannot be imputed to him as a fault
+that he did not receive from his captains the support he was fairly
+entitled to expect. The accidents and negligence which led to their
+failure have been mentioned; but having his three best ships in hand,
+there can be little doubt he was right in profiting by the surprise,
+and trusting that the two in reserve would come up in time.
+
+The position taken by his own ship and by the "Hannibal," enabling
+them to use both broadsides,--in other words, to develop their utmost
+force,--was excellently judged. He thus availed himself to the full of
+the advantage given by the surprise and by the lack of order in the
+enemy's squadron. This lack of order, according to English accounts,
+threw out of action two of their fifty-gun ships,--a circumstance
+which, while discreditable to Johnstone, confirmed Suffren's judgment
+in precipitating his attack. Had he received the aid upon which, after
+all deductions, he was justified in counting, he would have destroyed
+the English squadron; as it was, he saved the Cape Colony at Porto
+Praya. It is not surprising, therefore, that the French Court,
+notwithstanding its traditional sea policy and the diplomatic
+embarrassment caused by the violation of Portuguese neutrality, should
+have heartily and generously acknowledged a vigor of action to which
+it was unused in its admirals.
+
+It has been said that Suffren, who had watched the cautious movements
+of D'Estaing in America, and had served in the Seven Years' War,
+attributed in part the reverses suffered by the French at sea to the
+introduction of Tactics, which he stigmatized as the veil of timidity;
+but that the results of the fight at Porto Praya, necessarily engaged
+without previous arrangement, convinced him that system and method had
+their use.[171] Certainly his tactical combinations afterward were of
+a high order, especially in his earlier actions in the East (for he
+seems again to have abandoned them in the later fights under the
+disappointment caused by his captains' disaffection or blundering).
+But his great and transcendent merit lay in the clearness with which
+he recognized in the English fleets, the exponent of the British sea
+power, the proper enemy of the French fleet, to be attacked first and
+always when with any show of equality. Far from blind to the
+importance of those ulterior objects to which the action of the French
+navy was so constantly subordinated, he yet saw plainly that the way
+to assure those objects was not by economizing his own ships, but by
+destroying those of the enemy. Attack, not defence, was the road to
+sea power in his eyes; and sea power meant control of the issues upon
+the land, at least in regions distant from Europe. This view out of
+the English policy he had the courage to take, after forty years of
+service in a navy sacrificed to the opposite system; but he brought to
+its practical application a method not to be found in any English
+admiral of the day, except perhaps Rodney, and a fire superior to the
+latter. Yet the course thus followed was no mere inspiration of the
+moment; it was the result of clear views previously held and
+expressed. However informed by natural ardor, it had the tenacity of
+an intellectual conviction. Thus he wrote to D'Estaing, after the
+failure to destroy Barrington's squadron at Sta. Lucia, remonstrating
+upon the half-manned condition of his own and other ships, from which
+men had been landed to attack the English troops:--
+
+ "Notwithstanding the small results of the two cannonades of the
+ 15th of December [directed against Barrington's squadron], and
+ the unhappy check our land forces have undergone, we may yet
+ hope for success. But the only means to have it is to attack
+ vigorously the squadron, which, with our superiority, cannot
+ resist, notwithstanding its land batteries, whose effects will
+ be neutralized if we run them aboard, or anchor upon their
+ buoys. If we delay, they may escape.... Besides, our fleet being
+ unmanned, it is in condition neither to sail nor to fight. What
+ would happen if Admiral Byron's fleet should arrive? What would
+ become of ships having neither crews nor admiral? Their defeat
+ would cause the loss of the army and the colony. Let us destroy
+ that squadron; their army, lacking everything and in a bad
+ country, would soon be obliged to surrender. Then let Byron
+ come, we shall be pleased to see him. I think it is not
+ necessary to point out that for this attack we need men and
+ plans well concerted with those who are to execute them."
+
+Equally did he condemn the failure of D'Estaing to capture the four
+crippled ships of Byron's squadron, after the action off Grenada.
+
+Owing to a combination of misfortunes, the attack at Porto Praya had
+not the decisive result it deserved. Commodore Johnstone got under way
+and followed Suffren; but he thought his force was not adequate to
+attack in face of the resolute bearing of the French, and feared the
+loss of time consequent upon chasing to leeward of his port. He
+succeeded, however, in retaking the East India ship which the
+"Artésien" had carried out. Suffren continued his course and anchored
+at the Cape, in Simon's Bay, on the 21st of June. Johnstone followed
+him a fortnight later; but learning by an advance ship that the French
+troops had been landed, he gave up the enterprise against the colony,
+made a successful commerce-destroying attack upon five Dutch India
+ships in Saldanha Bay, which poorly repaid the failure of the military
+undertaking, and then went back himself to England, after sending the
+ships-of-the-line on to join Sir Edward Hughes in the East Indies.
+
+Having seen the Cape secured, Suffren sailed for the Isle of France,
+arriving there on the 25th of October, 1781. Count d'Orves, being
+senior, took command of the united squadron. The necessary repairs
+were made, and the fleet sailed for India, December 17. On the 22d of
+January, 1782, an English fifty-gun ship, the "Hannibal," was taken.
+On the 9th of February Count d'Orves died, and Suffren became
+commander-in-chief, with the rank of commodore. A few days later the
+land was seen to the northward of Madras; but owing to head-winds the
+city was not sighted until February 15. Nine large ships-of-war were
+found anchored in order under the guns of the forts. They were the
+fleet of Sir Edward Hughes, not in confusion like that of
+Johnstone.[172]
+
+Here, at the meeting point between these two redoubtable champions,
+each curiously representative of the characteristics of his own
+race,--the one of the stubborn tenacity and seamanship of the English,
+the other of the ardor and tactical science of the French, too long
+checked and betrayed by a false system,--is the place to give an
+accurate statement of the material forces. The French fleet had three
+seventy-fours, seven sixty-fours, and two fifty-gun ships, one of
+which was the lately captured English "Hannibal." To these Sir Edward
+Hughes opposed two seventy-fours, one seventy, one sixty-eight, four
+sixty-fours, and one fifty-gun ship. The odds, therefore, twelve to
+nine, were decidedly against the English; and it is likely that the
+advantage in single-ship power, class for class, was also against
+them.
+
+It must be recalled that at the time of his arrival Suffren found no
+friendly port or roadstead, no base of supplies or repair. The French
+posts had all fallen by 1779; and his rapid movement, which saved the
+Cape, did not bring him up in time to prevent the capture of the Dutch
+Indian possessions. The invaluable harbor of Trincomalee, in Ceylon,
+was taken just one month before Suffren saw the English fleet at
+Madras. But if he thus had everything to gain, Hughes had as much to
+lose. To Suffren, at the moment of first meeting, belonged superiority
+of numbers and the power of taking the offensive, with all its
+advantages in choice of initiative. Upon Hughes fell the anxiety of
+the defensive, with inferior numbers, many assailable points, and
+uncertainty as to the place where the blow would fall.
+
+It was still true, though not so absolutely as thirty years before,
+that control in India depended upon control of the sea. The passing
+years had greatly strengthened the grip of England, and
+proportionately loosened that of France. Relatively, therefore, the
+need of Suffren to destroy his enemy was greater than that of his
+predecessors, D'Aché and others; whereas Hughes could count upon a
+greater strength in the English possessions, and so bore a somewhat
+less responsibility than the admirals who went before him.
+
+Nevertheless, the sea was still by far the most important factor in
+the coming strife, and for its proper control it was necessary to
+disable more or less completely the enemy's fleet, and to have some
+reasonably secure base. For the latter purpose, Trincomalee, though
+unhealthy, was by far the best harbor on the east coast; but it had
+not been long enough in the hands of England to be well supplied.
+Hughes, therefore, inevitably fell back on Madras for repairs after an
+action, and was forced to leave Trincomalee to its own resources until
+ready to take the sea again. Suffren, on the other hand, found all
+ports alike destitute of naval supplies, while the natural advantages
+of Trincomalee made its possession an evident object of importance to
+him; and Hughes so understood it.
+
+Independently, therefore, of the tradition of the English navy
+impelling Hughes to attack, the influence of which appears plainly
+between the lines of his letters, Suffren had, in moving toward
+Trincomalee, a threat which was bound to draw his adversary out of his
+port. Nor did Trincomalee stand alone; the existing war between Hyder
+Ali and the English made it imperative for Suffren to seize a port
+upon the mainland, at which to land the three thousand troops carried
+by the squadron to co-operate on shore against the common enemy, and
+from which supplies, at least of food, might be had. Everything,
+therefore, concurred to draw Hughes out, and make him seek to cripple
+or hinder the French fleet.
+
+The method of his action would depend upon his own and his adversary's
+skill, and upon the uncertain element of the weather. It was plainly
+desirable for him not to be brought to battle except on his own terms;
+in other words, without some advantage of situation to make up for his
+weaker force. As a fleet upon the open sea cannot secure any
+advantages of ground, the position favoring the weaker was that to
+windward, giving choice of time and some choice as to method of
+attack, the offensive position used defensively, with the intention to
+make an offensive movement if circumstances warrant. The leeward
+position left the weaker no choice but to run, or to accept action on
+its adversary's terms.
+
+Whatever may be thought of Hughes's skill, it must be conceded that
+his task was difficult. Still, it can be clearly thought down to two
+requisites. The first was to get in a blow at the French fleet, so as
+to reduce the present inequality; the second, to keep Suffren from
+getting Trincomalee, which depended wholly on the fleet.[173]
+Suffren, on the other hand, if he could do Hughes, in an action, more
+injury than he himself received, would be free to turn in any
+direction he chose.
+
+Suffren having sighted Hughes's fleet at Madras, February 15, anchored
+his own four miles to the northward. Considering the enemy's line,
+supported by the batteries, to be too strong for attack, he again got
+under way at four P.M., and stood south. Hughes also weighed, standing
+to the southward all that night under easy sail, and at daylight found
+that the enemy's squadron had separated from the convoy, the ships of
+war being about twelve miles east, while the transports were nine
+miles southwest, from him (Plate XIV. A, A). This dispersal is said to
+have been due to the carelessness of the French frigates, which did
+not keep touch of the English. Hughes at once profited by it, chasing
+the convoy (c), knowing that the line-of-battle ships must follow. His
+copper-bottomed ships came up with and captured six of the enemy, five
+of which were English prizes. The sixth carried three hundred troops
+with military stores. Hughes had scored a point.
+
+Suffren of course followed in a general chase, and by three P.M. four
+of his best sailers were two or three miles from the sternmost English
+ships. Hughes's ships were now much scattered, but not injudiciously
+so, for they joined by signal at seven P.M. Both squadrons stood to
+the southeast during the night, under easy sail.
+
+At daylight of the 17th--the date of the first of four actions fought
+between these two chiefs within seven months--the fleets were six or
+eight miles apart, the French bearing north-northeast from the
+English (B, B). The latter formed line-ahead on the port tack (a),
+with difficulty, owing to the light winds and frequent calms. Admiral
+Hughes explains that he hoped to weather the enemy by this course so
+as to engage closely, counting probably on finding himself to windward
+when the sea-breeze made. The wind continuing light, but with frequent
+squalls, from north-northeast, the French, running before it, kept the
+puffs longer and neared the English rapidly, Suffren's intention to
+attack the rear being aided by Hughes's course. The latter finding his
+rear straggling, bore up to line abreast (b), retreating to gain time
+for the ships to close on the centre. These movements in line abreast
+continued till twenty minutes before four P.M., when, finding he could
+not escape attack on the enemy's terms, Hughes hauled his wind on the
+port tack and awaited it (C). Whether by his own fault or not, he was
+now in the worst possible position, waiting for an attack by a
+superior force at its pleasure. The rear ship of his line, the
+"Exeter," was not closed up; and there appears no reason why she
+should not have been made the van, by forming on the starboard tack,
+and thus bringing the other ships up to her.
+
+ [Illustration: Pl. XIV. SUFFREN & HUGHES. FEB. 17. 1782.]
+
+The method of Suffren's attack (C) is differently stated by him and by
+Hughes, but the difference is in detail only; the main facts are
+certain. Hughes says the enemy "steered down on the rear of our line
+in an irregular double line-abreast," in which formation they
+continued till the moment of collision, when "three of the enemy's
+ships in the first line bore right down upon the 'Exeter,' while four
+more of their second line, headed by the 'Héros,' in which M. de
+Suffren had his flag, hauled _along the outside of the first line_
+toward our centre. At five minutes past four the enemy's three ships
+began their fire upon the 'Exeter,' which was returned by her and her
+second ahead; the action became general from our rear to our centre,
+the commanding ship of the enemy, with three others of their second
+line, leading down on our centre, yet never advancing farther than
+opposite to the 'Superbe,' our centre ship, with little or no wind and
+some heavy rain during the engagement. Under these circumstances, the
+enemy brought eight of their best ships to the attack of five of ours,
+as the van of our line, consisting of the 'Monmouth,' 'Eagle,'
+'Burford,' and 'Worcester,' could not be brought into action without
+tacking on the enemy," for which there was not enough wind.
+
+Here we will leave them, and give Suffren's account of how he took up
+his position. In his report to the Minister of Marine he says:--
+
+ "I should have destroyed the English squadron, less by superior
+ numbers than by the advantageous disposition in which I attacked
+ it. I attacked the rear ship and stood along the English line as
+ far as the sixth. I thus made three of them useless, so that we
+ were twelve against six. I began the fight at half-past three in
+ the afternoon, taking the lead and making signal to form line as
+ best could be done; without that I would not have engaged. At
+ four I made signal to three ships to double on the enemy's rear,
+ and to the squadron to approach within pistol-shot. This signal,
+ though repeated, was not executed. I did not _myself_ give the
+ example, in order that I might hold in check the three van
+ ships, which by tacking would have doubled on me. However,
+ except the 'Brilliant,' which doubled on the rear, no ship was
+ as close as mine, nor received as many shots."
+
+The principal point of difference in the two accounts is, that Suffren
+asserts that his flag-ship passed along the whole English line, from
+the rear to the sixth ship; while Hughes says the French divided into
+two lines, which, upon coming near, steered, one on the rear, the
+other on the centre, of his squadron. The latter would be the better
+manoeuvre; for if the leading ship of the attack passed, as Suffren
+asserts, along the enemy's line from the rear to the sixth, she should
+receive in succession the first fire of six ships, which ought to
+cripple her and confuse her line. Suffren also notes the intention to
+double on the rear by placing three ships to leeward of it. Two of the
+French did take this position. Suffren further gives his reason for
+not closing with his own ship, which led; but as those which followed
+him went no nearer, Hughes's attention was not drawn to his action.
+
+The French commodore was seriously, and it would seem justly, angered
+by the inaction of several of his captains. Of the second in command
+he complained to the minister: "Being at the head, I could not well
+see what was going on in the rear. I had directed M. de Tromelin to
+make signals to ships which might be near him; he only repeated my own
+without having them carried out." This complaint was wholly justified.
+On the 6th of February, ten days before the fight, he had written to
+his second as follows:--
+
+ "If we are so fortunate as to be to windward, as the English are
+ not more than eight, or at most nine, my intention is to double
+ on their rear. Supposing your division to be in the rear, you
+ will see by your position what number of ships will overlap the
+ enemy's line, and you will make signal to them to double[174]
+ [that is, to engage on the lee side].... In any case, I beg you
+ to order to your division the manoeuvres which you shall think
+ best fitted to assure the success of the action. The capture of
+ Trincomalee and that of Negapatam, and perhaps of all Ceylon,
+ should make us wish for a general action."
+
+The last two sentences reveal Suffren's own appreciation of the
+military situation in the Indian seas, which demanded, first, the
+disabling of the hostile fleet, next, the capture of certain strategic
+ports. That this diagnosis was correct is as certain as that it
+reversed the common French maxims, which would have put the port first
+and the fleet second as objectives. A general action was the first
+desideratum of Suffren, and it is therefore safe to say that to avoid
+such action should have been the first object of Hughes. The attempt
+of the latter to gain the windward position was consequently correct;
+and as in the month of February the sea-breeze at Madras sets in from
+the eastward and southward about eleven A.M., he probably did well to
+steer in that general direction, though the result disappointed him.
+De Guichen in one of his engagements with Rodney shaped the course of
+his fleet with reference to being to windward when the afternoon
+breeze made, and was successful. What use Hughes would have made of
+the advantage of the wind can only be inferred from his own
+words,--that he sought it in order to engage more closely. There is
+not in this the certain promise of any skilful use of a tactical
+advantage.
+
+Suffren also illustrates, in his words to Tromelin, his conception of
+the duties of a second in command, which may fairly be paralleled with
+that of Nelson in his celebrated order before Trafalgar. In this first
+action he led the main attack himself, leaving the direction of what
+may be called the reserve--at any rate, of the second half of the
+assault--to his lieutenant, who, unluckily for him, was not a
+Collingwood, and utterly failed to support him. It is probable that
+Suffren's leading was due not to any particular theory, but to the
+fact that his ship was the best sailer in the fleet, and that the
+lateness of the hour and lightness of the wind made it necessary to
+bring the enemy to action speedily. But here appears a fault on the
+part of Suffren. Leading as he did involves, not necessarily but very
+naturally, the idea of example; and holding his own ship outside of
+close range, for excellent tactical reasons, led the captains in his
+wake naturally, almost excusably, to keep at the same distance,
+notwithstanding his signals. The conflict between orders and example,
+which cropped out so singularly at Vicksburg in our civil war, causing
+the misunderstanding and estrangement of two gallant officers, should
+not be permitted to occur. It is the business of a chief to provide
+against such misapprehensions by most careful previous explanation of
+both the letter and spirit of his plans. Especially is this so at sea,
+where smoke, slack wind, and intervening rigging make signals hard to
+read, though they are almost the only means of communication. This was
+Nelson's practice; nor was Suffren a stranger to the idea.
+"Dispositions well concerted with those who are to carry them out are
+needed," he wrote to D'Estaing, three years before. The excuse which
+may be pleaded for those who followed him, and engaged, cannot avail
+for the rear ships, and especially not for the second in command, who
+knew Suffren's plans. He should have compelled the rear ships to take
+position to leeward, leading himself, if necessary. There was wind
+enough; for two captains actually engaged to leeward, one of them
+without orders, acting, through the impulse of his own good will and
+courage, on Nelson's saying, "No captain can do very wrong who places
+his ship alongside that of an enemy." He received the special
+commendation of Suffren, in itself an honor and a reward. Whether the
+failure of so many of his fellows was due to inefficiency, or to a
+spirit of faction and disloyalty, is unimportant to the general
+military writer, however interesting to French officers jealous for
+the honor of their service. Suffren's complaints, after several
+disappointments, became vehement.
+
+ "My heart," wrote he, "is wrung by the most general defection. I
+ have just lost the opportunity of destroying the English
+ squadron.... All--yes, all--might have got near, since we were
+ to windward and ahead, and none did so. Several among them had
+ behaved bravely in other combats. I can only attribute this
+ horror to the wish to bring the cruise to an end, to ill-will,
+ and to ignorance; for I dare not suspect anything worse. The
+ result has been terrible. I must tell you, Monseigneur, that
+ officers who have been long at the Isle of France are neither
+ seamen nor military men. Not seamen, for they have not been at
+ sea; and the trading temper, independent and insubordinate, is
+ absolutely opposed to the military spirit."
+
+This letter, written after his fourth battle with Hughes, must be
+taken with allowance. Not only does it appear that Suffren himself,
+hurried away on this last occasion by his eagerness, was partly
+responsible for the disorder of his fleet, but there were other
+circumstances, and above all the character of some of the officers
+blamed, which made the charge of a general disaffection excessive. On
+the other hand, it remains true that after four general actions, with
+superior numbers on the part of the French, under a chief of the skill
+and ardor of Suffren, the English squadron, to use his own plaintive
+expression, "still existed;" not only so, but had not lost a single
+ship. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that of a French naval
+writer: "Quantity disappeared before quality."[175] It is immaterial
+whether the defect was due to inefficiency or disaffection.
+
+The inefficiency which showed itself on the field of battle
+disappeared in the general conduct of the campaign where the qualities
+of the chief alone told. The battle of February 17th ended with a
+shift of wind to the southeast at six P.M., after two hours action.
+The English were thus brought to windward, and their van ships enabled
+to share in the fight. Night falling, Suffren, at half-past six,
+hauled his squadron by the wind on the starboard tack, heading
+northeast, while Hughes steered south under easy sail. It is said by
+Captain Chevalier, of the French navy, that Suffren intended to renew
+the fight next day. In that case he should have taken measures to keep
+within reach. It was too plainly Hughes's policy not to fight without
+some advantage,--to allow the supposition that with one ship, the
+"Exeter," lost to him through the concentration of so many enemies
+upon her, he would quietly await an attack. This is so plain as to
+make it probable that Suffren saw sufficient reason, in the results to
+his fleet and the misconduct of his officers, not to wish to renew
+action at once. The next morning the two fleets were out of sight of
+each other. The continuance of the north wind, and the crippled state
+of two of his ships, forced Hughes to go to Trincomalee, where the
+sheltered harbor allowed them to repair. Suffren, anxious about his
+transports, went to Pondicherry, where he anchored in their company.
+It was his wish then to proceed against Negapatam; but the commander
+of the troops chose to act against Cuddalore. After negotiations and
+arrangements with Hyder Ali the army landed south of Porto Novo, and
+marched against Cuddalore, which surrendered on the 4th of April.
+
+Meanwhile Suffren, anxious to act against his principal objective, had
+sailed again on the 23d of March. It was his hope to cut off two
+ships-of-the-line which were expected from England. For this he was
+too late; the two seventy-fours joined the main body at Madras, March
+30th. Hughes had refitted at Trincomalee in a fortnight, and reached
+Madras again on the 12th of March. Soon after the reinforcement had
+joined him, he sailed again for Trincomalee with troops and military
+stores for the garrison. On the 8th of April Suffren's squadron was
+seen to the northeast, also standing to the southward. Hughes kept on,
+through that and the two following days, with light northerly winds.
+On the 11th he made the coast of Ceylon, fifty miles north of
+Trincomalee, and bore away for the port. On the morning of the 12th
+the French squadron in the northeast was seen crowding sail in
+pursuit. It was the day on which Rodney and De Grasse met in the West
+Indies, but the parts were reversed; here the French, not the English,
+sought action.
+
+The speed of the ships in both squadrons was very unequal; each had
+some coppered ships and some not coppered. Hughes found that his slow
+sailers could not escape the fastest of his enemy,--a condition which
+will always compel a retreating force to hazard an action, unless it
+can resolve to give up the rear ships, and which makes it imperative
+for the safety, as well as the efficiency, of a squadron that vessels
+of the same class should all have a certain minimum speed. The same
+cause--the danger of a separated ship--led the unwilling De Grasse,
+the same day, in another scene, to a risky manoeuvre and a great
+mishap. Hughes, with better reason, resolved to fight; and at nine
+A.M. formed his line on the starboard tack, standing in-shore (Plate
+XV., A), the squadron in good order, with intervals of two cables
+between the ships.[176] His account, which again varies from that of
+Suffren, giving a radically different idea of the tactics used by the
+French commodore, and more to the credit of the latter's skill, will
+first be followed. He says:--
+
+ "The enemy, bearing north by east, distant six miles, with wind
+ at north by east, continued manoeuvring their ships and
+ changing their positions in line, till fifteen minutes past
+ noon, when they bore away (a) to engage us, five sail of their
+ van stretching along (b) to engage the ships of our van, and the
+ other seven sail (b') steering directly on our three centre
+ ships, the 'Superbe,' the 'Monmouth,' her second ahead, and the
+ 'Monarca,' her second astern. At half-past one the engagement
+ began in the van of both squadrons; three minutes after, I made
+ the signal for battle. The French admiral in the 'Héros' and his
+ second astern in 'L'Orient' (both seventy-fours) bore down on
+ the 'Superbe'[177] within pistol-shot. The 'Héros' continued in
+ her position, giving and receiving a severe fire for nine
+ minutes, and then stood on, greatly damaged, to attack the
+ 'Monmouth,' at that time engaged with another of the enemy's
+ ships, making room for the ships in his rear to come up to the
+ attack of our centre, where the engagement was hottest. At three
+ the 'Monmouth' had her mizzen-mast shot away, and in a few
+ minutes her mainmast, and bore out of the line to leeward (C,
+ c); and at forty minutes past three the wind unexpectedly
+ continuing far northerly without any sea-breeze, and being
+ careful not to entangle our ships with the land, I made signal
+ to wear and haul by the wind in a line-of-battle on the larboard
+ tack, still engaging the enemy."
+
+Now here, practically, was concentration with a vengeance. In this,
+the hardest fight between these two hard fighters, the English loss
+was 137 killed and 430 wounded in eleven ships. Of this total, the two
+centre ships, the flag-ship and her next ahead, lost 104 killed and
+198 wounded,--fifty-three per cent of the entire loss of the squadron,
+of which they formed eighteen per cent. The casualties were very much
+heavier, in proportion to the size of the ships, than those of the
+leaders of the two columns at Trafalgar.[178] The material injury to
+hulls, spars, etc., was yet more serious. The English squadron, by
+this concentration of the enemy upon a small fraction of it, was
+entirely crippled. Inferior when the action began, its inferiority
+was yet more decisive by the subtraction of two ships, and Suffren's
+freedom to move was increased.
+
+ [Illustration: Pl. XV. SUFFREN & HUGHES. APRIL 12, 1782.]
+
+But how far was this concentration intended by Suffren? For this we
+must go to the pages of two French writers,[179] who base their
+narratives upon his own despatches on record in the French Marine
+Office. The practical advantage gained by the French must also be
+tested by comparing the lists of casualties, and the injuries received
+by their individual ships; for it is evident that if both the
+squadrons received the same total amount of injury, but that with the
+English it fell on two ships, so that they could not be ready for
+action for a month or more, while with the French the damage was
+divided among the twelve, allowing them to be ready again in a few
+days, the victory tactically and strategically would rest with the
+latter.[180]
+
+As regards Suffren's purpose, there is nothing to indicate that he
+meant to make such an attack as Hughes describes. Having twelve ships
+to the English eleven, his intention seems to have been to pursue the
+usual English practice,--form line parallel to the enemy, bear down
+together, and engage ship to ship. To this he added one simple
+combination; the twelfth French ship, being unprovided with an
+opponent, was to engage the rear English ship on her lee side, placing
+her thus between two fires. In truth, a concentration upon the van and
+centre, such as Hughes describes, is tactically inferior to a like
+effort upon the centre and rear of a column. This is true of steamers
+even, which, though less liable to loss of motive power, must still
+turn round to get from van to rear, losing many valuable seconds; but
+it is specially true of sailing vessels, and above all in the light,
+baffling airs which are apt to mark the change of monsoon at the
+season when this fight was fought. Nelson emphasized his contempt of
+the Russians of his day by saying he would not hesitate to attack
+their van, counting upon throwing the whole line in confusion from
+their want of seamanship; but though entertaining a not much better
+opinion of the Spaniards, he threw the weight of attack on the rear of
+the allied fleets at Trafalgar. In dealing with such seamen as the
+captains of Hughes's fleet, it would have been an error to assail the
+van instead of the rear. Only a dead calm could have kept the latter
+out of action.
+
+Suffren's attack is thus described by Captain Chevalier. After
+mentioning Hughes's forming line on the starboard tack, he says:--
+
+ "This manoeuvre was imitated by the French, and the two
+ squadrons ran on parallel lines, heading about west-northwest
+ (A, A). At eleven, our line being well formed, Suffren made
+ signal to keep away to west-southwest, by a movement all
+ together. Our ships did not keep their bearing upon the
+ prescribed line, and the van, composed of the best sailers, came
+ first within range of the enemy.[181] At one, the leading ships
+ of the English fleet opened fire upon the 'Vengeur' and
+ 'Artésien' [French van]. These two ships, having luffed[182] to
+ return the fire, were at once ordered to keep away again.
+ Suffren, who wished for a decisive action, kept his course,
+ receiving without reply the shots directed upon his ship by the
+ enemy. When at pistol-range of the 'Superbe,' he hauled to the
+ wind (B), and the signal to open fire appeared at his mainmast
+ head. Admiral Hughes having only eleven ships, the 'Bizarre,'
+ according to the dispositions taken by the commander-in-chief,
+ was to attack on the quarter the rear ship of the English fleet
+ and double on it to leeward. At the moment when the first
+ cannon-shots were heard, our worst sailers were not up with
+ their stations. Breathing the letter, and not the spirit, of the
+ commodore's orders, the captains of these ships luffed at the
+ same time as those which preceded them. Hence it resulted that
+ the French line formed a curve (B), whose extremities were
+ represented in the van by the 'Artésien' and 'Vengeur,' and in
+ the rear by the 'Bizarre,' 'Ajax,' and 'Sévère.' In consequence,
+ these ships were very far from those which corresponded to them
+ in the enemy's line."
+
+It is evident from all this, written by a warm admirer of Suffren, who
+has had full access to the official papers, that the French chief
+intended an attack elementary in conception and difficult of
+execution. To keep a fleet on a line of bearing, sailing free,
+requires much drill, especially when the ships have different rates of
+speed, as had Suffren's. The extreme injury suffered by the "Superbe"
+and "Monmouth," undeniably due to a concentration, cannot be
+attributed to Suffren's dispositions. "The injuries which the 'Héros'
+received at the beginning of the action did not allow her to remain by
+the 'Superbe.' Not being able to back her topsails in time, the braces
+having been cut, she passed ahead, and was only stopped on the beam of
+the 'Monmouth.'"[183] This accounts for the suffering of the latter
+ship, already injured, and now contending with a much larger opponent.
+The "Superbe" was freed from Suffren only to be engaged by the next
+Frenchman, an equally heavy ship; and when the "Monmouth" drifted or
+bore up, to leeward, the French flag-ship also drifted so that for a
+few moments she fired her stern guns into the "Superbe's" bow (C, d).
+The latter at the same time was engaged on the beam and quarter by two
+French ships, who, either with or without signal, came up to shield
+their commodore.
+
+An examination of the list of casualties shows that the loss of the
+French was much more distributed among their ships than was the case
+with the English. No less than three of the latter escaped without a
+man killed, while of the French only one. The kernel of the action
+seems to have been in the somewhat fortuitous concentration of two
+French seventy-fours and one sixty-four on an English seventy-four and
+sixty-four. Assuming the ships to have been actually of the same force
+as their rates, the French brought, counting broadside only, one
+hundred and six guns against sixty-nine.
+
+Some unfavorable criticism was excited by the management of Admiral
+Hughes during the three days preceding the fight, because he refrained
+from attacking the French, although they were for much of the time to
+leeward with only one ship more than the English, and much separated
+at that. It was thought that he had the opportunity of beating them in
+detail.[184] The accounts accessible are too meagre to permit an
+accurate judgment upon this opinion, which probably reflected the
+mess-table and quarter-deck talk of the subordinate officers of the
+fleet. Hughes's own report of the position of the two fleets is vague,
+and in one important particular directly contradictory to the French.
+If the alleged opportunity offered, the English admiral in declining
+to use it adhered to the resolve, with which he sailed, neither to
+seek nor shun the enemy, but to go directly to Trincomalee and land
+the troops and supplies he had on board. In other words, he was
+governed in his action by the French rather than the English naval
+policy, of subordinating the attack of the enemy's fleet to the
+particular mission in hand. If for this reason he did allow a
+favorable chance of fighting to slip, he certainly had reason bitterly
+to regret his neglect, in the results of the battle which followed;
+but in the lack of precise information the most interesting point to
+be noted is the impression made upon public and professional opinion,
+indicating how strongly the English held that the attack of the
+enemy's fleet was the first duty of an English admiral. It may also be
+said that he could hardly have fared worse by attacking than he did by
+allowing the enemy to become the assailant; and certainly not worse
+than he would have fared had Suffren's captains been as good as his
+own.
+
+After the action, towards sunset, both squadrons anchored in fifteen
+fathoms of water, irregular soundings, three of the French ships
+taking the bottom on coral patches. Here they lay for a week two miles
+apart, refitting. Hughes, from the ruined condition of the "Monmouth,"
+expected an attack; but when Suffren had finished his repairs on the
+19th, he got under way and remained outside for twenty-four hours,
+inviting a battle which he would not begin. He realized the condition
+of the enemy so keenly as to feel the necessity of justifying his
+action to the Minister of Marine, which he did for eight reasons
+unnecessary to particularize here. The last was the lack of efficiency
+and hearty support on the part of his captains.
+
+It is not likely that Suffren erred on the side of excessive caution.
+On the contrary, his most marked defect as a commander-in-chief was an
+ardor which, when in sight of the enemy, became impatience, and
+carried him at times into action hastily and in disorder. But if, in
+the details and execution of his battles, in his tactical
+combinations, Suffren was at times foiled by his own impetuosity and
+the short-comings of most of his captains, in the general conduct of
+the campaign, in strategy, where the personal qualities of the
+commander-in-chief mainly told, his superiority was manifest, and
+achieved brilliant success. Then ardor showed itself in energy,
+untiring and infectious. The eagerness of his hot Provençal blood
+overrode difficulty, created resources out of destitution, and made
+itself felt through every vessel under his orders. No military lesson
+is more instructive nor of more enduring value than the rapidity and
+ingenuity with which he, without a port or supplies, continually
+refitted his fleet and took the field, while his slower enemy was
+dawdling over his repairs.
+
+The battle forced the English to remain inactive for six weeks, till
+the "Monmouth" was repaired. Unfortunately, Suffren's situation did
+not allow him to assume the offensive at once. He was short of men,
+provisions, and especially of spare spars and rigging. In an official
+letter after the action he wrote: "I have no spare stores to repair
+rigging; the squadron lacks at least twelve spare topmasts." A convoy
+of supply-ships was expected at Point de Galles, which, with the rest
+of Ceylon, except Trincomalee, was still Dutch. He therefore anchored
+at Batacalo, south of Trincomalee, a position in which he was between
+Hughes and outward-bound English ships, and was favorably placed to
+protect his own convoys, which joined him there. On the 3d of June he
+sailed for Tranquebar, a Danish possession, where he remained two or
+three weeks, harassing the English communications between Madras and
+the fleet at Trincomalee. Leaving there, he sailed for Cuddalore, to
+communicate with the commander of the land forces and Hyder Ali. The
+latter was found to be much discontented with the scanty co-operation
+of the French general. Suffren, however, had won his favor, and he
+expressed a wish to see him on his return from the expedition then in
+contemplation; for, true to his accurate instinct, the commodore was
+bent upon again seeking out the English fleet, _after_ beating which
+he intended to attack Negapatam. There was not in him any narrowness
+of professional prejudice; he kept always in view the necessity, both
+political and strategic, of nursing the alliance with the Sultan and
+establishing control upon the seaboard and in the interior; but he
+clearly recognized that the first step thereto was the control of the
+sea, by disabling the English fleet. The tenacity and vigor with which
+he followed this aim, amid great obstacles, joined to the
+clear-sightedness with which he saw it, are the distinguishing merits
+of Suffren amid the crowd of French fleet-commanders,--his equals in
+courage, but trammelled by the bonds of a false tradition and the
+perception of a false objective.
+
+Hughes meantime, having rigged jury-masts to the "Monmouth," had gone
+to Trincomalee, where his squadron refitted and the sick were landed
+for treatment; but it is evident, as has before been mentioned, that
+the English had not held the port long enough to make an arsenal or
+supply port, for he says, "I will be able to remast the 'Monmouth'
+from the spare stores on board the several ships." His resources were
+nevertheless superior to those of his adversary. During the time that
+Suffren was at Tranquebar, worrying the English communications between
+Madras and Trincomalee, Hughes still stayed quietly in the latter
+port, sailing for Negapatam on the 23d of June, the day after Suffren
+reached Cuddalore. The two squadrons had thus again approached each
+other, and Suffren hastened his preparations for attack as soon as he
+heard that his enemy was where he could get at him. Hughes awaited his
+movement.
+
+Before sailing, however, Suffren took occasion to say in writing home:
+"Since my arrival in Ceylon, partly by the help of the Dutch, partly
+through the prizes we have taken, the squadron has been equipped for
+six months' service, and I have rations of wheat and rice assured for
+more than a year." This achievement was indeed a just source of pride
+and self-congratulation. Without a port, and destitute of resources,
+the French commodore had lived off the enemy; the store ships and
+commerce of the latter had supplied his wants. To his fertility of
+resource and the activity of his cruisers, inspired by himself, this
+result was due. Yet he had but two frigates, the class of vessel upon
+which an admiral must mainly depend for this predatory warfare. On the
+23d of March, both provisions and stores had been nearly exhausted.
+Six thousand dollars in money, and the provisions in the convoy, were
+then his sole resources. Since then he had fought a severe action,
+most expensive in rigging and men, as well as in ammunition. After
+that fight of April 12 he had left only powder and shot enough for one
+other battle of equal severity. Three months later he was able to
+report as above, that he could keep the sea on his station for six
+months without further supplies. This result was due wholly to
+himself,--to his self-reliance, and what may without exaggeration be
+called his greatness of soul. It was not expected at Paris; on the
+contrary, it was expected there that the squadron would return to the
+Isle of France to refit. It was not thought possible that it could
+remain on a hostile coast, so far from its nearest base, and be kept
+in efficient condition. Suffren thought otherwise; he considered, with
+true military insight and a proper sense of the value of his own
+profession, that the success of the operations in India depended upon
+the control of the sea, and therefore upon the uninterrupted presence
+of his squadron. He did not shrink from attempting that which had
+always been thought impossible. This firmness of spirit, bearing the
+stamp of genius, must, to be justly appreciated, be considered with
+reference to the circumstances of his own time, and of the preceding
+generations in which he grew up.
+
+Suffren was born July 17, 1729, and served during the wars of 1739 and
+1756. He was first under fire at Matthews's action off Toulon,
+February 22, 1744. He was the contemporary of D'Estaing, De Guichen,
+and De Grasse, before the days of the French Revolution, when the
+uprising of a people had taught men how often impossibilities are not
+impossible; before Napoleon and Nelson had made a mock of the word.
+His attitude and action had therefore at the time the additional merit
+of originality, but his lofty temper was capable of yet higher proof.
+Convinced of the necessity of keeping the squadron on its station, he
+ventured to disregard not only the murmurs of his officers but the
+express orders of the Court. When he reached Batacalo, he found
+despatches directing him to return to the Isle of France. Instead of
+taking them as a release from the great burden of responsibility, he
+disobeyed, giving his reasons, and asserting that he on the spot could
+judge better than a minister in Europe what the circumstances
+demanded. Such a leader deserved better subordinates, and a better
+colleague than he had in the commander of the forces on shore. Whether
+or no the conditions of the general maritime struggle would have
+permitted the overthrow of the English East Indian power may be
+doubtful; but it is certain that among all the admirals of the three
+nations there was none so fitted to accomplish that result as Suffren.
+We shall find him enduring severer tests, and always equal to them.
+
+In the afternoon of the 5th of July Suffren's squadron came in sight
+of the English, anchored off Cuddalore. An hour later, a sudden squall
+carried away the main and mizzen topmasts of one of the French ships.
+Admiral Hughes got under way, and the two fleets manoeuvred during the
+night. The following day the wind favored the English, and the
+opponents found themselves in line of battle on the starboard tack,
+heading south-southeast, with the wind at southwest. The disabled
+French ship having by unpardonable inactivity failed to repair her
+injuries, the numbers about to engage were equal,--eleven on each
+side. At eleven A.M. the English bore down together and engaged ship
+against ship; but as was usual under those conditions, the rear ships
+did not come to as close action as those ahead of them (Plate XVI.,
+Position I.). Captain Chevalier carefully points out that their
+failure was a fair offset to the failure of the French rear on the
+12th of April,[185] but fails to note in this connection that the
+French van, both on that occasion and again on the 3d of September,
+bungled as well as the rear. There can remain little doubt, in the
+mind of the careful reader, that most of the French captains were
+inferior, as seamen, to their opponents. During this part of the
+engagement the fourth ship in the French order, the "Brilliant" (a),
+lost her mainmast, bore up out of the line (a'), and dropped gradually
+astern and to leeward (a'')
+
+ [Illustration: Pl. XVI. SUFFREN & HUGHES. JULY 6, 1782.]
+
+At one P.M., when the action was hottest, the wind suddenly shifted to
+south-southeast, taking the ships on the port bow (Position II.). Four
+English ships, the "Burford," "Sultan" (s), "Worcester," and "Eagle,"
+seeing the breeze coming, kept off to port, toward the French line;
+the others were taken aback and paid off to starboard. The French
+ships, on the other hand, with two exceptions, the "Brilliant" (a) and
+"Sévère" (b), paid off from the English. The effect of the change of
+wind was therefore to separate the main parts of the two squadrons,
+but to bring together between the lines four English and two French
+ships. Technical order was destroyed. The "Brilliant," having dropped
+far astern of her position, came under the fire of two of the English
+rear, the "Worcester" and the "Eagle," who had kept off in time and so
+neared the French. Suffren in person came to her assistance (Position
+III., a) and drove off the English, who were also threatened by the
+approach of two other French ships that had worn to the westward in
+obedience to signal. While this partial action was taking place, the
+other endangered French ship, the "Sévère" (b), was engaged by the
+English "Sultan" (s), and, if the French captain M. de Cillart can be
+believed, by two other English ships. It is probable, from her place
+in the line, that the "Burford" also assailed her. However this may
+be, the "Sévère" hauled down her flag; but while the "Sultan" was
+wearing away from her, she resumed her fire, raking the English ship.
+The order to surrender, given by the French captain and carried into
+execution by the formal well-established token of submission, was
+disregarded by his subordinates, who fired upon their enemy while the
+flag was down. In effect, the action of the French ship amounted to
+using an infamous _ruse de guerre_; but it would be unjust to say that
+this was intended. The positions of the different vessels were such
+that the "Sultan" could not have secured her prize; other French ships
+were approaching and must have retaken it. The indignation of the
+French juniors at the weakness of their captain was therefore
+justified; their refusal to be bound by it may be excused to men face
+to face with an unexpected question of propriety, in the heat of
+battle and under the sting of shame. Nevertheless, scrupulous good
+faith would seem to demand that their deliverance should be awaited
+from other hands, not bound by the action of their commander; or at
+least that the forbearing assailant should not have suffered from
+them. The captain, suspended and sent home by Suffren, and cashiered
+by the king, utterly condemned himself by his attempted defence: "When
+Captain de Cillart saw the French squadron drawing off,--for all the
+ships except the 'Brilliant' had fallen off on the other tack,--he
+thought it useless to prolong his defence, and had the flag hauled
+down. _The ships engaged with him immediately ceased their fire_, and
+the one on the starboard side moved away. At this moment the 'Sévère'
+fell off to starboard and her sails filled; Captain de Cillart then
+ordered the fire to be resumed by his lower-deck guns, the only ones
+still manned, and he rejoined his squadron."[186]
+
+This action was the only one of the five fought by Suffren on the
+coast of India, in which the English admiral was the assailant. There
+can be found in it no indication of military conceptions, of tactical
+combinations; but on the other hand Hughes is continually showing the
+aptitudes, habits of thought, and foresight of the skilful seaman, as
+well as a courage beyond all proof. He was in truth an admirable
+representative of the average English naval officer of the middle of
+the eighteenth century; and while it is impossible not to condemn the
+general ignorance of the most important part of the profession, it is
+yet useful to remark how far thorough mastery of its other details,
+and dogged determination not to yield, made up for so signal a defect.
+As the Roman legions often redeemed the blunders of their generals, so
+did English captains and seamen often save that which had been lost by
+the errors of their admirals,--errors which neither captain nor seamen
+recognized, nor would probably have admitted. Nowhere were these solid
+qualities so clearly shown as in Suffren's battles, because nowhere
+else were such demands made upon them. No more magnificent instances
+of desperate yet useful resistance to overwhelming odds are to be
+found in naval annals, than that of the "Monmouth" on April 12, and of
+the "Exeter" on February 17. An incident told of the latter ship is
+worth quoting. "At the heel of the action, when the 'Exeter' was
+already in the state of a wreck, the master came to Commodore King to
+ask him what he should do with the ship, as two of the enemy were
+again bearing down upon her. He laconically answered, 'there is
+nothing to be done but to fight her till she sinks.'"[187] She was
+saved.
+
+Suffren, on the contrary, was by this time incensed beyond endurance
+by the misbehavior of his captains. Cillart was sent home; but besides
+him two others, both of them men of influential connections, and one a
+relative of Suffren himself, were dispossessed of their commands.
+However necessary and proper this step, few but Suffren would have had
+the resolution to take it; for, so far as he then knew, he was only a
+captain in rank, and it was not permitted even to admirals to deal
+thus with their juniors. "You may perhaps be angry, Monseigneur," he
+wrote, "that I have not used rigor sooner; but I beg you to remember
+that the regulations do not give this power even to a general officer,
+which I am not."
+
+It is immediately after the action of the 6th of July that Suffren's
+superior energy and military capacity begin markedly to influence the
+issue between himself and Hughes. The tussle had been severe; but
+military qualities began to tell, as they surely must. The losses of
+the two squadrons in men, in the last action, had been as one to three
+in favor of the English; on the other hand, the latter had apparently
+suffered more in sails and spars,--in motive power. Both fleets
+anchored in the evening, the English off Negapatam, the French to
+leeward, off Cuddalore. On the 18th of July Suffren was again ready for
+sea; whereas on the same day Hughes had but just decided to go to
+Madras to finish his repairs. Suffren was further delayed by the
+political necessity of an official visit to Hyder Ali, after which he
+sailed to Batacalo, arriving there on the 9th of August, to await
+reinforcements and supplies from France. On the 21st, these joined him;
+and two days later he sailed, now with fourteen ships-of-the-line, for
+Trincomalee, anchoring off the town on the 25th. The following night
+the troops were landed, batteries thrown up, and the attack pressed
+with vigor. On the 30th and 31st the two forts which made the defensive
+strength of the place surrendered, and this all-important port passed
+into the hands of the French. Convinced that Hughes would soon appear,
+Suffren granted readily all the honors of war demanded by the governor
+of the place, contenting himself with the substantial gain. Two days
+later, on the evening of September 2d, the English fleet was sighted by
+the French lookout frigates.
+
+During the six weeks in which Suffren had been so actively and
+profitably employed, the English admiral had remained quietly at
+anchor, repairing and refitting. No precise information is available
+for deciding how far this delay was unavoidable; but having in view
+the well-known aptitude of English seamen of that age, it can scarcely
+be doubted that, had Hughes possessed the untiring energy of his great
+rival, he could have gained the few days which decided the fate of
+Trincomalee, and fought a battle to save the place. In fact, this
+conclusion is supported by his own reports, which state that on the
+12th of August the ships were nearly fitted; and yet, though
+apprehending an attack on Trincomalee, he did not sail until the 20th.
+The loss of this harbor forced him to abandon the east coast, which
+was made unsafe by the approach of the northeast monsoon, and
+conferred an important strategic advantage upon Suffren, not to speak
+of the political effect upon the native rulers in India.
+
+To appreciate thoroughly this contrast between the two admirals, it is
+necessary also to note how differently they were situated with regard
+to material for repairs. After the action of the 6th, Hughes found at
+Madras spars, cordage, stores, provisions, and material. Suffren at
+Cuddalore found nothing. To put his squadron in good fighting
+condition, nineteen new topmasts were needed, besides lower masts,
+yards, rigging, sails, and so on. To take the sea at all, the masts
+were removed from the frigates and smaller vessels, and given to the
+ships-of-the-line while English prizes were stripped to equip the
+frigates. Ships were sent off to the Straits of Malacca to procure
+other spars and timber. Houses were torn down on shore to find lumber
+for repairing the hulls. The difficulties were increased by the
+character of the anchorage, an open roadstead with frequent heavy sea,
+and by the near presence of the English fleet; but the work was driven
+on under the eyes of the commander-in-chief, who, like Lord Howe at New
+York, inspired the working parties by his constant appearance among
+them. "Notwithstanding his prodigious obesity, Suffren displayed the
+fiery ardor of youth; he was everywhere where work was going on. Under
+his powerful impulse, the most difficult tasks were done with
+incredible rapidity. Nevertheless, his officers represented to
+him the bad state of the fleet, and the need of a port for the
+ships-of-the-line. 'Until we have taken Trincomalee,' he replied, 'the
+open roadsteads of the Coromandel coast will answer.'"[188] It was
+indeed to this activity on the Coromandel coast that the success at
+Trincomalee was due. The weapons with which Suffren fought are
+obsolete; but the results wrought by his tenacity and fertility in
+resources are among the undying lessons of history.
+
+While the characters of the two chiefs were thus telling upon the
+strife in India, other no less lasting lessons were being afforded by
+the respective governments at home, who did much to restore the
+balance between them. While the English ministry, after the news of
+the battle of Porto Praya, fitted out in November, 1781, a large and
+compact expedition, convoyed by a powerful squadron of six
+ships-of-the-line, under the command of an active officer, to
+reinforce Hughes, the French despatched comparatively scanty succors
+in small detached bodies, relying apparently upon secrecy rather than
+upon force to assure their safety. Thus Suffren, while struggling with
+his innumerable embarrassments, had the mortification of learning that
+now one and now another of the small detachments sent to his relief
+were captured, or driven back to France, before they were clear of
+European waters. There was in truth little safety for small divisions
+north of the Straits of Gibraltar. Thus the advantages gained by his
+activity were in the end sacrificed. Up to the fall of Trincomalee the
+French were superior at sea; but in the six months which followed, the
+balance turned the other way, by the arrival of the English
+reinforcements under Sir Richard Bickerton.
+
+With his usual promptness the French commodore had prepared for
+further immediate action as soon as Trincomalee surrendered. The
+cannon and men landed from the ships were at once re-embarked, and the
+port secured by a garrison strong enough to relieve him of any
+anxiety about holding it. This great seaman, who had done as much in
+proportion to the means intrusted to him as any known to history, and
+had so signally illustrated the sphere and influence of naval power,
+had no intention of fettering the movements of his fleet, or risking
+his important conquest, by needlessly taking upon the shoulders of the
+ships the burden of defending a seaport. When Hughes appeared, it was
+past the power of the English fleet by a single battle to reduce the
+now properly garrisoned post. Doubtless a successful campaign, by
+destroying or driving away the French sea power, would achieve this
+result; but Suffren might well believe that, whatever mishaps might
+arise on a single day, he could in the long run more than hold his own
+with his opponent.
+
+Seaports should defend themselves; the sphere of the fleet is on the
+open sea, its object offence rather than defence, its objective the
+enemy's shipping wherever it can be found. Suffren now saw again
+before him the squadron on which depended the English control of the
+sea; he knew that powerful reinforcements to it must arrive before the
+next season, and he hastened to attack. Hughes, mortified by his
+failure to arrive in time,--for a drawn battle beforehand would have
+saved what a successful battle afterward could not regain,--was in no
+humor to balk him. Still, with sound judgment, he retreated to the
+southeast, flying in good order, to use Suffren's expression;
+regulating speed by the slowest ships, and steering many different
+courses, so that the chase which began at daybreak overtook the enemy
+only at two in the afternoon. The object of the English was to draw
+Suffren so far to leeward of the port that, if his ships were
+disabled, he could not easily regain it.
+
+The French numbered fourteen ships-of-the-line to twelve English. This
+superiority, together with his sound appreciation of the military
+situation in India, increased Suffren's natural eagerness for action;
+but his ships sailed badly, and were poorly handled by indifferent and
+dissatisfied men. These circumstances, during the long and vexatious
+pursuit, chafed and fretted the hot temper of the commodore, which
+still felt the spur of urgency that for two months had quickened the
+operations of the squadron. Signal followed signal, manoeuvre
+succeeded manoeuvre, to bring his disordered vessels into position.
+"Sometimes they edged down, sometimes they brought to," says the
+English admiral, who was carefully watching their approach, "in no
+regular order, as if undetermined what to do." Still, Suffren
+continued on, and at two P.M., having been carried twenty-five miles
+away from his port, his line being then partly formed and within
+striking distance of the enemy, the signal was made to come to the
+wind to correct the order before finally bearing down. A number of
+blunders in executing this made matters worse rather than better; and
+the commodore, at last losing patience, made signal thirty minutes
+later to attack (Plate XVII., A), following it with another for close
+action at pistol range. This being slowly and clumsily obeyed, he
+ordered a gun fired, as is customary at sea to emphasize a signal;
+unluckily this was understood by his own crew to be the opening of the
+action, and the flag-ship discharged all her battery. This example was
+followed by the other ships, though yet at the distance of half
+cannon-shot, which, under the gunnery conditions of that day, meant
+indecisive action. Thus at the end and as the result of a mortifying
+series of blunders and bad seamanship, the battle began greatly to the
+disadvantage of the French, despite their superior numbers. The
+English, who had been retreating under short and handy sail, were in
+good order and quietly ready; whereas their enemies were in no order
+(B). Seven ships had forereached in rounding to,[189] and now formed
+an irregular group ahead of the English van, as well as far from it,
+where they were of little service; while in the centre a second
+confused group was formed, the ships overlapping and masking each
+other's fire. Under the circumstances the entire brunt of the action
+fell upon Suffren's flag-ship (a) and two others which supported him;
+while at the extreme rear a small ship-of-the-line, backed by a large
+frigate, alone engaged the English rear; but these, being wholly
+overmatched, were soon forced to retire.
+
+ [Illustration: Pl. XVII. SUFFREN AND HUGHES SEPT. 3, 1782.]
+
+A military operation could scarcely be worse carried out. The French
+ships in the battle did not support each other; they were so grouped
+as to hamper their own fire and needlessly increase the target offered
+to the enemy; so far from concentrating their own effort, three ships
+were left, almost unsupported, to a concentrated fire from the English
+line.[190] "Time passed on, and our three ships [B, a], engaged on the
+beam by the centre of the English fleet and raked [enfiladed] by van
+and rear, suffered greatly. After two hours the 'Héros'' sails were in
+rags, all her running rigging cut, and she could no longer steer. The
+'Illustre' had lost her mizzen-mast and maintopmast." In this disorder
+such gaps existed as to offer a great opportunity to a more active
+opponent. "Had the enemy tacked now," wrote the chief-of-staff in his
+journal, "we would have been cut off and probably destroyed." The
+faults of an action in which every proper distribution was wanting are
+summed up in the results. The French had fourteen ships engaged. They
+lost eighty-two killed and two hundred and fifty-five wounded. Of this
+total, sixty-four killed and one hundred and seventy-eight wounded, or
+three fourths, fell to three ships. Two of these three lost their main
+and mizzen masts and foretopmast; in other words, were helpless.
+
+This was a repetition on a larger scale of the disaster to two of
+Hughes's ships on the 12th of April; but on that day the English
+admiral, being to leeward and in smaller force had to accept action on
+the adversary's terms, while here the loss fell on the assailant, who,
+to the advantage of the wind and choice of his mode of attack, added
+superiority in numbers. Full credit must in this action be allowed to
+Hughes, who, though lacking in enterprise and giving no token of
+tactical skill or _coup d'oeil_, showed both judgment and good
+management in the direction of his retreat and in keeping his ships so
+well in hand. It is not easy to apportion the blame which rests upon
+his enemies. Suffren laid it freely upon his captains.[191] It has
+been rightly pointed out, however, that many of the officers thus
+condemned in mass had conducted themselves well before, both under
+Suffren and other admirals; that the order of pursuit was irregular,
+and Suffren's signals followed each other with confusing rapidity; and
+finally that chance, for which something must always be allowed, was
+against the French, as was also the inexperience of several captains.
+It is pretty certain that some of the mishap must be laid to the fiery
+and inconsiderate haste of Suffren, who had the defects of his great
+qualities, upon which his coy and wary antagonist unwittingly played.
+
+It is noteworthy that no complaints of his captains are to be found in
+Hughes's reports. Six fell in action, and of each he speaks in terms
+of simple but evidently sincere appreciation, while on the survivors
+he often bestows particular as well as general commendation. The
+marked contrast between the two leaders, and between the individual
+ship-commanders, on either side, makes this singularly instructive
+among naval campaigns; and the ultimate lesson taught is in entire
+accordance with the experience of all military history from the
+beginning. Suffren had genius, energy, great tenacity, sound military
+ideas, and was also an accomplished seaman. Hughes had apparently all
+the technical acquirements of the latter profession, would probably
+have commanded a ship equally well with any of his captains, but shows
+no trace of the qualities needed by a general officer. On the other
+hand, without insisting again upon the skill and fidelity of the
+English subordinates, it is evident that, to whatever it be
+attributed, the French single ships were as a rule incomparably
+worse-handled than those of their opponents. Four times, Suffren
+claims, certainly thrice, the English squadron was saved from
+overwhelming disaster by the difference in quality of the under
+officers. Good troops have often made amends for bad generalship; but
+in the end the better leader will prevail. This was conspicuously the
+case in the Indian seas in 1782 and 1783. War cut short the strife,
+but not before the issue was clearly indicated.
+
+The action of September 3, like that of July 6, was brought to a close
+by a shift of wind to the southeast. When it came, the English line
+wore, and formed again on the other tack. The French also wore; and
+their van ships, being now to windward, stood down between their
+crippled ships and the enemy's line (C). Toward sundown Hughes hauled
+off to the northward, abandoning the hope of regaining Trincomalee,
+but with the satisfaction of having inflicted this severe retaliation
+upon his successful opponent.
+
+That firmness of mind which was not the least of Suffren's qualities
+was severely tried soon after the action off Trincomalee. In returning
+to port, a seventy-four, the "Orient," was run ashore and lost by
+mismanagement, the only consolation being that her spars were saved
+for the two dismasted ships. Other crippled masts were replaced as
+before by robbing the frigates, whose crews also were needed to
+replace the losses in battle. Repairs were pushed on with the usual
+energy, the defence of the port was fully provided for, and on the
+30th of September the squadron sailed for the Coromandel coast, where
+the state of French interests urgently called for it. Cuddalore was
+reached in four days; and here another incapable officer wrecked the
+"Bizarre," of sixty-four guns, in picking up his anchorage. In
+consequence of the loss of these two ships, Suffren, when he next met
+the enemy, could oppose only fifteen to eighteen ships-of-the-line; so
+much do general results depend upon individual ability and care.
+Hughes was at Madras, ninety miles north, whither he had gone at once
+after the late action. He reports his ships badly damaged; but the
+loss was so evenly distributed among them that it is difficult to
+justify his failure to follow up the injuries done to the French.
+
+At this season the monsoon wind, which has come for four or five
+months from southwest, changes to northeast, blowing upon the east
+coast of the peninsula, where are no good harbors. The consequent
+swell made the shore often unapproachable, and so forbade support from
+fleet to army. The change of the monsoon is also frequently marked by
+violent hurricanes. The two commanders, therefore, had to quit a
+region where their stay might be dangerous as well as useless. Had
+Trincomalee not been lost, Hughes, in the condition of his squadron,
+might have awaited there the reinforcements and supplies expected soon
+from England; for although the port is not healthy, it is secure and
+well situated. Bickerton had already reached Bombay, and was on his
+way now to Madras with five ships-of-the-line. As things were, Hughes
+thought necessary to go to Bombay for the season, sailing or rather
+being driven to sea by a hurricane, on the 17th of October. Four days
+later Bickerton reached Madras, not having fallen in with the admiral.
+With an activity which characterized him he sailed at once, and was
+again in Bombay on the 28th of November. Hughes's ships, scattered and
+crippled by tempest, dropped in one by one, a few days later.
+
+Suffren held Trincomalee, yet his decision was not easy. The port was
+safe, he had not to fear an attack by the English fleet; and on the
+other hand, besides being sickly during the approaching monsoon, it
+was doubtful whether the provisions needed for the health of the crews
+could be had there. In short, though of strategic value from its
+strength and position, the port was deficient in resources. Opposed to
+Trincomalee there was an alternative in Achem, a harbor on the other
+side of the Bay of Bengal, at the west end of the island of Sumatra.
+This was healthy, could supply provisions, and, from its position with
+reference to the northeast monsoon, would permit ships to regain the
+Coromandel coast sooner than those in Bombay, when the milder ending
+of the season made landing more practicable.
+
+These simple considerations were not, however, the only elements in
+the really difficult problem before Suffren. The small results that
+followed this campaign must not hide the fact that great issues were
+possible, and that much might depend upon his decision. Owing to the
+French policy of sending out reinforcements in several small bodies,
+not only was there much loss, but great uncertainty prevailed among
+the scattered commands as to conditions elsewhere. This uncertainty,
+loss, and delay profoundly affected the political situation in India.
+When Suffren first reached the coast, the English had on their hands
+not only Hyder Ali, but the Mahrattas as well. Peace with the latter
+was signed on the 17th of May, 1782; but, owing probably to an
+opposition party among them, the ratifications were not exchanged
+until December. Both there and in the court of Hyder Ali there was
+division of interest; and representations were made from both to the
+French, who, though suspicious, could obtain no certain information of
+the treaty, that everything depended upon the relative military
+strength of themselves and the English. The presence and the actions
+of Suffren were all that France had to show,--the prestige of his
+genius, the capture of Trincomalee, his success in battle. The French
+army, cooped up in Cuddalore, was dependent upon the sultan for money,
+for food, and for reinforcements; even the fleet called on him for
+money, for masts, for ammunition, for grain. The English, on the other
+hand, maintained their ground; though on the whole worsted, they lost
+no ships; and Bickerton's powerful squadron was known to have reached
+Bombay. Above all, while the French asked for money, the English
+lavished it.
+
+It was impossible for the French to make head against their enemy
+without native allies; it was essential to keep Hyder from also making
+peace. Here the inadequate support and faulty dispositions of the home
+government made themselves felt. The command in India, both by land
+and sea, was intrusted to General de Bussy, once the brilliant
+fellow-worker with Dupleix, now a gouty invalid of sixty-four. With a
+view to secrecy, Bussy sailed from Cadiz in November, 1781, with two
+ships-of-the-line, for Teneriffe, where he was to be joined by a
+convoy leaving Brest in December. This convoy was captured by the
+English, only two of the vessels escaping to Bussy. The latter pursued
+his journey, and learning at the Cape of Good Hope that Bickerton's
+strong force was on the way, felt compelled to land there a great part
+of his troops. He reached the Isle of France on the 31st of May. The
+next convoy of eighteen transports, sailing in April for India, was
+also intercepted. Two of the four ships-of-war were taken, as also ten
+of the transports; the remainder returned to Brest. A third detachment
+was more fortunate, reaching the Cape in May; but it was delayed there
+two months by the wretched condition of the ships and crews. These
+disappointments decided Bussy to remain at the Island until joined by
+the expected ships from the Cape, and Suffren at this critical moment
+did not know what the state of things there was. The general had only
+written him that, as he could not reach the coast before the bad
+season, he should rendezvous at Achem. These uncertainties made a
+painful impression upon Hyder Ali, who had been led to expect Bussy in
+September, and had instead received news of Bickerton's arrival and
+the defection of his old allies, the Mahrattas. Suffren was forced to
+pretend a confidence which he did not feel, but which, with the
+influence of his own character and achievements, determined the sultan
+to continue the war. This settled, the squadron sailed for Achem on
+the 15th of October, anchoring there the 2d of November.
+
+Three weeks afterward a vessel arrived from Bussy, with word that his
+departure was indefinitely delayed by an epidemic raging among the
+troops. Suffren therefore determined to hasten his own return to the
+coast, and sailed on the 20th of December. January 8, 1783, he
+anchored off Ganjam, five hundred miles northeast of Cuddalore, whence
+he would have a fair wind to proceed when he wished. It was his
+purpose to attack not only the coasting vessels but the English
+factories on shore as well, the surf being now often moderate; but
+learning on the 12th, from an English prize, the important and
+discouraging news of Hyder Ali's death, he gave up all minor
+operations, and sailed at once for Cuddalore, hoping to secure by his
+presence the continuance of the alliance as well as the safety of the
+garrison. He reached the place on the 6th of February.
+
+During his four months absence the failure of Bussy to appear with his
+troops, and the arrival of Bickerton, who had shown himself on both
+coasts, had seriously injured the French cause. The treaty of peace
+between the English and the Mahrattas had been ratified; and the
+former, released from this war and reinforced, had attacked the sultan
+on the west, or Malabar, coast. The effect of this diversion was of
+course felt on the east coast, despite the efforts of the French to
+keep the new sultan there. The sickness among the troops at the Isle
+of France had, however, ceased early in November; and had Bussy then
+started without delay, he and Suffren would now have met in the
+Carnatic, with full command of the sea and large odds in their favor
+ashore. Hughes did not arrive till two months later.
+
+Being thus alone, Suffren, after communicating with Tippoo-Saib, the
+new sultan of Mysore, went to Trincomalee; and there he was at last
+joined, on the 10th of March, by Bussy, accompanied by three
+ships-of-the-line and numerous transports. Eager to bring the troops
+into the field, Suffren sailed on the 15th with his fastest ships, and
+landed them the next day at Porto Novo. He returned to Trincomalee on
+the 11th of April, and fell in with Hughes's fleet of seventeen
+ships-of-the-line off the harbor's mouth. Having only part of his
+force with him, no fight ensued, and the English went on to Madras.
+The southwest monsoon was now blowing.
+
+It is not necessary to follow the trivial operations of the next two
+months. Tippoo being engaged on the other side of the peninsula and
+Bussy displaying little vigor, while Hughes was in superior force off
+the coast, the affairs of the French on shore went from bad to worse.
+Suffren, having but fifteen ships to eighteen English, was unwilling
+to go to leeward of Trincomalee, lest it should fall before he could
+return to it. Under these conditions the English troops advanced from
+Madras, passing near but around Cuddalore, and encamped to the
+southward of it, by the sea. The supply-ships and light cruisers were
+stationed off the shore near the army; while Admiral Hughes, with the
+heavy ships, anchored some twenty miles south, where, being to
+windward, he covered the others.
+
+In order to assure to Suffren the full credit of his subsequent
+course, it is necessary to emphasize the fact that Bussy, though
+commander-in-chief both by land and sea, did not venture to order him
+to leave Trincomalee and come to his support. Allowing him to feel the
+extremity of the danger, he told him not to leave port unless he heard
+that the army was shut up in Cuddalore, and blockaded by the English
+squadron. This letter was received on the 10th of June. Suffren waited
+for no more. The next day he sailed, and forty-eight hours later his
+frigates saw the English fleet. The same day, the 13th, after a sharp
+action, the French army was shut up in the town, behind very weak
+walls. Everything now depended on the action of the fleets.
+
+Upon Suffren's appearance, Hughes moved away and anchored four or five
+miles from the town. Baffling winds prevailed for three days; but the
+monsoon resuming on the 16th, Suffren approached. The English admiral
+not liking to accept action at anchor, and to leeward, in which he was
+right, got under way; but attaching more importance to the
+weather-gage than to preventing a junction between the enemy's land
+and sea forces, he stood out into the offing with a southerly, or
+south-southeast wind, notwithstanding his superior numbers. Suffren
+formed on the same tack, and some manoeuvring ensued during that
+night and the next day. At eight P.M. of the 17th the French squadron,
+which had refused to be drawn to sea, anchored off Cuddalore and
+communicated with the commander-in-chief. Twelve hundred of the
+garrison were hastily embarked to fill the numerous vacancies at the
+guns of the fleet.
+
+Until the 20th the wind, holding unexpectedly at west, denied Hughes
+the advantage which he sought; and finally on that day he decided to
+accept action and await the attack. It was made by Suffren with
+fifteen ships to eighteen, the fire opening at quarter-past four P.M.
+and lasting until half-past six. The loss on both sides was nearly
+equal; but the English ships, abandoning both the field of battle and
+their army, returned to Madras. Suffren anchored before Cuddalore.
+
+The embarrassment of the British army was now very great. The
+supply-ships on which it had depended fled before the action of the
+20th, and the result of course made it impossible for them to return.
+The sultan's light cavalry harassed their communications by land. On
+the 25th, the general commanding wrote that his "mind was on the rack
+without a moment's rest since the departure of the fleet, considering
+the character of M. de Suffren, and the infinite superiority on the
+part of the French now that we are left to ourselves." From this
+anxiety he was relieved by the news of the conclusion of peace, which
+reached Cuddalore on the 29th by flag-of-truce from Madras.
+
+If any doubt had remained as to the relative merits of the two
+sea-commanders, the last few days of their campaign would have removed
+them. Hughes alleges the number of his sick and shortness of water as
+his reasons for abandoning the contest. Suffren's difficulties,
+however, were as great as his own;[192] and if he had an advantage at
+Trincomalee, that only shifts the dispute a step back, for he owed its
+possession to superior generalship and activity. The simple facts that
+with fifteen ships he forced eighteen to abandon a blockade, relieved
+the invested army, strengthened his own crews, and fought a decisive
+action, make an impression which does not need to be diminished in
+the interests of truth.[193] It is probable that Hughes's
+self-reliance had been badly shaken by his various meetings with
+Suffren.
+
+Although the tidings of peace sent by Hughes to Bussy rested only upon
+unofficial letters, they were too positive to justify a continuance of
+bloodshed. An arrangement was entered into by the authorities of the
+two nations in India, and hostilities ceased on the 8th of July. Two
+months later, at Pondicherry, the official despatches reached Suffren.
+His own words upon them are worth quoting, for they show the
+depressing convictions under which he had acted so noble a part: "God
+be praised for the peace! for it was clear that in India, though we
+had the means to impose the law, all would have been lost. I await
+your orders with impatience, and heartily pray they may permit me to
+leave. War alone can make bearable the weariness of certain things."
+
+On the 6th of October, 1783, Suffren finally sailed from Trincomalee
+for France, stopping at the Isle of France and the Cape of Good Hope.
+The homeward voyage was a continued and spontaneous ovation. In each
+port visited the most flattering attentions were paid by men of every
+degree and of every nation. What especially gratified him was the
+homage of the English captains. It might well be so; none had so
+clearly established a right to his esteem as a warrior. On no occasion
+when Hughes and Suffren met, save the last, did the English number
+over twelve ships; but six English captains had laid down their lives,
+obstinately opposing his efforts. While he was at the Cape, a division
+of nine of Hughes's ships, returning from the war, anchored in the
+harbor. Their captains called eagerly upon the admiral, the stout
+Commodore King of the "Exeter" at their head. "The good Dutchmen have
+received me as their savior," wrote Suffren; "but among the tributes
+which have most flattered me, none has given me more pleasure than the
+esteem and consideration testified by the English who are here." On
+reaching home, rewards were heaped upon him. Having left France as a
+captain, he came back a rear-admiral; and immediately after his return
+the king created a fourth vice-admiralship, a special post to be
+filled by Suffren, and to lapse at his death. These honors were won by
+himself alone; they were the tribute paid to his unyielding energy and
+genius, shown not only in actual fight but in the steadfastness which
+held to his station through every discouragement, and rose equal to
+every demand made by recurring want and misfortune.
+
+Alike in the general conduct of his operations and on the battlefield
+under the fire of the enemy, this lofty resolve was the distinguishing
+merit of Suffren; and when there is coupled with it the clear and
+absolute conviction which he held of the necessity to seek and crush
+the enemy's fleet, we have probably the leading traits of his military
+character. The latter was the light that led him, the former the
+spirit that sustained him. As a tactician, in the sense of a driller
+of ships, imparting to them uniformity of action and manoeuvring, he
+seems to have been deficient, and would probably himself have
+admitted, with some contempt, the justice of the criticism made upon
+him in these respects. Whether or no he ever actually characterized
+tactics--meaning thereby elementary or evolutionary tactics--as the
+veil of timidity, there was that in his actions which makes the _mot_
+probable. Such a contempt, however, is unsafe even in the case of
+genius. The faculty of moving together with uniformity and precision
+is too necessary to the development of the full power of a body of
+ships to be lightly esteemed; it is essential to that concentration of
+effort at which Suffren rightly aimed, but which he was not always
+careful to secure by previous dispositions. Paradoxical though it
+sounds, it is true that only fleets which are able to perform regular
+movements can afford at times to cast them aside; only captains whom
+the habit of the drill-ground has familiarized with the shifting
+phases it presents, can be expected to seize readily the opportunities
+for independent action presented by the field of battle. Howe and
+Jervis must make ready the way for the successes of Nelson. Suffren
+expected too much of his captains. He had the right to expect more
+than he got, but not that ready perception of the situation and that
+firmness of nerve which, except to a few favorites of Nature, are the
+result only of practice and experience.
+
+Still, he was a very great man. When every deduction has been made,
+there must still remain his heroic constancy, his fearlessness of
+responsibility as of danger, the rapidity of his action, and the
+genius whose unerring intuition led him to break through the
+traditions of his service and assert for the navy that principal part
+which befits it, that offensive action which secures the control of
+the sea by the destruction of the enemy's fleet. Had he met in his
+lieutenants such ready instruments as Nelson found prepared for him,
+there can be little doubt that Hughes's squadron would have been
+destroyed while inferior to Suffren's, before reinforcements could
+have arrived; and with the English fleet it could scarcely have failed
+that the Coromandel coast also would have fallen. What effect this
+would have had upon the fate of the peninsula, or upon the terms of
+the peace, can only be surmised. His own hope was that, by acquiring
+the superiority in India, a glorious peace might result.
+
+No further opportunities of distinction in war were given to Suffren.
+The remaining years of his life were spent in honored positions
+ashore. In 1788, upon an appearance of trouble with England, he was
+appointed to the command of a great fleet arming at Brest; but before
+he could leave Paris he died suddenly on the 8th of December, in the
+sixtieth year of his age. There seems to have been no suspicion at
+the time of other than natural causes of death, he being exceedingly
+stout and of apoplectic temperament; but many years after a story,
+apparently well-founded, became current that he was killed in a duel
+arising out of his official action in India. His old antagonist on the
+battlefield, Sir Edward Hughes, died at a great age in 1794.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[168] This Commodore Johnstone, more commonly known as Governor
+Johnstone, was one of the three commissioners sent by Lord North in
+1778 to promote a reconciliation with America. Owing to certain
+suspicious proceedings on his part, Congress declared it was
+incompatible with their honor to hold any manner of correspondence or
+intercourse with him. His title of Governor arose from his being at
+one time governor of Pensacola. He had a most unenviable reputation in
+the English navy. (See Charnock's Biog. Navalis.)
+
+[169] This plate is taken almost wholly from Cunat's "Vie de Suffren."
+
+[170] Page 299.
+
+[171] La Serre: Essais Hist. et Critiques sur la Marine Française.
+
+[172] The question of attacking the English squadron at its anchors
+was debated in a council of war. Its opinion confirmed Suffren's
+decision not to do so. In contrasting this with the failure of the
+English to attack the French detachment in Newport (p. 394), it must
+be borne in mind that in the latter case there was no means of forcing
+the ships to leave their strong position; whereas by threatening
+Trincomalee, or other less important points, Suffren could rely upon
+drawing Hughes out. He was therefore right in not attacking, while the
+English before Newport were probably wrong.
+
+[173] The dependence of Trincomalee upon the English fleet in this
+campaign affords an excellent illustration of the embarrassment and
+false position in which a navy finds itself when the defence of its
+seaports rests upon it. This bears upon a much debated point of the
+present day, and is worthy the study of those who maintain, too
+unqualifiedly, that the best coast defence is a navy. In one sense
+this is doubtless true,--to attack the enemy abroad is the best of
+defences; but in the narrow sense of the word "defence" it is not
+true. Trincomalee unfortified was simply a centre round which Hughes
+had to revolve like a tethered animal; and the same will always happen
+under like conditions.
+
+[174] Plate XIV., Fig. D, shows the order of battle Suffren intended
+in this action. The five rear ships of the enemy would each have two
+opponents close aboard. The leading French ship on the weather side
+was to be kept farther off, so that while attacking the sixth
+Englishman she could "contain" the van ships if they attempted to
+reinforce the rear by tacking.
+
+[175] Troude: Batailles Navales.
+
+[176] Between four and five hundred yards.
+
+[177] The English and French flag-ships are denoted in the plan by
+their exceptional size.
+
+[178] The "Victory," Nelson's ship at Trafalgar, a 100-gun ship, lost
+57 killed and 102 wounded; Hughes's ship, a 74, lost 59 killed and 96
+wounded. Collingwood's ship, the "Royal Sovereign," also of 100 guns,
+lost 47 killed and 94 wounded; the "Monmouth," a 64, in Hughes's
+action lost 45 killed and 102 wounded.
+
+[179] Troude: Batailles Navales; Chevalier: Hist. de la Marine
+Française.
+
+[180] This remark seems too self-evident to need emphasis; yet it may
+be questioned whether naval men generally carry it in their stock of
+axioms.
+
+[181] As always.
+
+[182] That is turned their side to the enemy instead of approaching
+him.
+
+[183] Chevalier.
+
+[184] Annual Register, 1782.
+
+[185] The British account differs materially as to the cause of the
+distance separating the two rears. "In this action it did not fall to
+the 'Monmouth's' lot to sustain a very considerable share, the enemy's
+rear being so far to leeward that the ships of the British rear could
+not, even whilst the wind was favorable, close with them without
+considerably breaking the order of their own line" (Memoir of Captain
+Alms, Naval Chronicle, vol. ii). Such contradictions are common, and,
+except for a particular purpose, need not to be reconciled. Alms seems
+to have been not only a first-rate seaman, but an officer capable of
+resolute and independent action; his account is probably correct.
+
+[186] Troude: Batailles Navales. It was seen from Suffren's ship that
+the "Sévère's" flag was down; but it was supposed that the ensign
+halliards had been shot away. The next day Hughes sent the captain of
+the "Sultan" to demand the delivery to him of the ship which had
+struck. The demand, of course, could not be complied with. "The
+'Sultan,'" Troude says, "which had hove-to to take possession of the
+'Sévère,' was the victim of this action; she received during some
+time, without replying, the whole fire of the French ship."
+
+[187] Annual Register, 1782.
+
+[188] Cunat: Vie de Suffren.
+
+[189] The curves in (B) represent the movements of the ships _after_
+the shift of wind, which practically ended the battle. The ships
+themselves show the order in fighting.
+
+[190] The enemy formed a semicircle around us and raked us ahead and
+astern, as the ship came up and fell off, with the helm to
+leeward.--_Journal de Bord du Bailli de Suffren._
+
+[191] See page 435. He added: "It is frightful to have had four times
+in our power to destroy the English squadron, and that it still
+exists."
+
+[192] There was not a single ship of Suffren's which had more than
+three-fourths of her regular complement of men. It must be added that
+soldiers and sepoys made up half of these reduced crews.--_Chevalier_,
+p. 463.
+
+[193] You will have learned my promotion to commodore and
+rear-admiral. Now, I tell you in the sincerity of my heart and for
+your own ear alone, that what I have done since then is worth
+infinitely more than what I had done before. You know the capture and
+battle of Trincomalee; but the end of the campaign, and that which
+took place between the month of March and the end of June, is far
+above anything that has been done in the navy since I entered it. The
+result has been very advantageous to the State, for the squadron was
+endangered and the army lost.--_Private Letter of Suffren, Sept. 13,
+1783; quoted in the "Journal de Bord du Bailli de Suffren."_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+ EVENTS IN THE WEST INDIES AFTER THE SURRENDER OF
+ YORKTOWN--ENCOUNTERS OF DE GRASSE WITH HOOD.--THE SEA BATTLE OF
+ THE SAINTS.--1781, 1782.
+
+
+The surrender of Cornwallis marked the end of the active war upon the
+American continent. The issue of the struggle was indeed assured upon
+the day when France devoted her sea power to the support of the
+colonists; but, as not uncommonly happens, the determining
+characteristics of a period were summed up in one striking event. From
+the beginning, the military question, owing to the physical
+characteristics of the country, a long seaboard with estuaries
+penetrating deep into the interior, and the consequent greater ease of
+movement by water than by land, had hinged upon the control of the sea
+and the use made of that control. Its misdirection by Sir William Howe
+in 1777, when he moved his army to the Chesapeake instead of
+supporting Burgoyne's advance, opened the way to the startling success
+at Saratoga, when amazed Europe saw six thousand regular troops
+surrendering to a body of provincials. During the four years that
+followed, until the surrender of Yorktown, the scales rose and fell
+according as the one navy or the other appeared on the scene, or as
+English commanders kept touch with the sea or pushed their operations
+far from its support. Finally, at the great crisis, all is found
+depending upon the question whether the French or the English fleet
+should first appear, and upon their relative force.
+
+The maritime struggle was at once transferred to the West Indies. The
+events which followed there were antecedent in time both to Suffren's
+battles and to the final relief of Gibraltar; but they stand so much
+by themselves as to call for separate treatment, and have such close
+relation to the conclusion of the war and the conditions of peace, as
+to form the dramatic finale of the one and the stepping-stone of
+transition to the other. It is fitting indeed that a brilliant though
+indecisive naval victory should close the story of an essentially
+naval war.
+
+The capitulation of Yorktown was completed on the 19th of October,
+1781, and on the 5th of November, De Grasse, resisting the suggestions
+of Lafayette and Washington that the fleet should aid in carrying the
+war farther south, sailed from the Chesapeake. He reached Martinique
+on the 26th, the day after the Marquis de Bouillé, commanding the
+French troops in the West Indies, had regained by a bold surprise the
+Dutch island of St. Eustatius. The two commanders now concerted a
+joint expedition against Barbadoes, which was frustrated by the
+violence of the trade winds.
+
+Foiled here, the French proceeded against the island of St.
+Christopher, or St. Kitt's (Plate XVIII.). On the 11th of January,
+1782, the fleet, carrying six thousand troops, anchored on the west
+coast off Basse Terre, the chief town. No opposition was met, the
+small garrison of six hundred men retiring to a fortified post ten
+miles to the northwest, on Brimstone Hill, a solitary precipitous
+height overlooking the lee shore of the island. The French troops
+landed and pursued, but the position being found too strong for
+assault, siege operations were begun.
+
+The French fleet remained at anchor in Basse Terre road. Meanwhile,
+news of the attack was carried to Sir Samuel Hood, who had followed De
+Grasse from the continent, and, in the continued absence of Rodney,
+was naval commander-in-chief on the station. He sailed from Barbadoes
+on the 14th, anchored at Antigua on the 21st, and there embarked all
+the troops that could be spared,--about seven hundred men. On the
+afternoon of the 23d the fleet started for St. Kitt's, carrying such
+sail as would bring it within striking distance of the enemy at
+daylight next morning.
+
+The English having but twenty-two ships to the French twenty-nine,
+and the latter being generally superior in force, class for class, it
+is necessary to mark closely the lay of the land in order to
+understand Hood's original plans and their subsequent modifications;
+for, resultless as his attempt proved, his conduct during the next
+three weeks forms the most brilliant military effort of the whole
+war. The islands of St. Kitt's and Nevis (Plates XVIII. and XIX.)
+being separated only by a narrow channel, impracticable for
+ships-of-the-line, are in effect one, and their common axis lying
+northwest and southeast, it is necessary for sailing-ships, with the
+trade wind, to round the southern extremity of Nevis, from which
+position the wind is fair to reach all anchorages on the lee side of
+the islands. Basse Terre is about twelve miles distant from the
+western point of Nevis (Fort Charles), and its roadstead lies east
+and west. The French fleet were anchored there in disorder (Plate
+XVIII., A), three or four deep, not expecting attack, and the ships
+at the west end of the road could not reach those at the east without
+beating to windward,--a tedious, and under fire a perilous process. A
+further most important point to note is that all the eastern ships
+were so placed that vessels approaching from the southward could
+reach them with the usual wind.
+
+Hood, therefore, we are told, intended to appear at early daylight, in
+order of and ready for battle, and fall upon the eastern ships, filing
+by them with his whole fleet (a, a'), thus concentrating the fire of
+all upon a few of the enemy; then turning away, so as to escape the
+guns of the others, he proposed, first wearing and then tacking, to
+keep his fleet circling in long procession (a', a'') past that part of
+the enemy's ships chosen for attack. The plan was audacious, but
+undeniably sound in principle; some good could hardly fail to follow,
+and unless De Grasse showed more readiness than he had hitherto done,
+even decisive results might be hoped for.[194]
+
+ [Illustration: Pl. XVIII. HOOD & DE GRASSE. JAN. 25 & 26, 1782.]
+
+The best-laid plans, however, may fail, and Hood's was balked by the
+awkwardness of a lieutenant of the watch, who hove-to (stopped) a
+frigate at night ahead of the fleet, and was consequently run down by
+a ship-of-the-line. The latter also received such injury as delayed
+the movement, several hours being lost in repairing damages. The
+French were thus warned of the enemy's approach, and although not
+suspecting his intention to attack, De Grasse feared that Hood would
+pass down to leeward of him and disturb the siege of Brimstone
+Hill,--an undertaking so rash for an inferior force that it is as
+difficult to conceive how he could have supposed it, as to account for
+his overlooking the weakness of his own position at anchor.
+
+At one P.M. of the 24th the English fleet was seen rounding the south
+end of Nevis; at three De Grasse got under way and stood to the
+southward. Toward sundown Hood also went about and stood south, as
+though retreating; but he was well to windward of his opponent, and
+maintained this advantage through the night. At daybreak both fleets
+were to leeward of Nevis,--the English near the island, the French
+about nine miles distant (Plate XIX.). Some time was spent in
+manoeuvring, with the object on Hood's part of getting the French
+admiral yet more to leeward; for, having failed in his first attempt,
+he had formed the yet bolder intention of seizing the anchorage his
+unskilful opponent had left, and establishing himself there in an
+impregnable manner. In this he succeeded, as will be shown; but to
+understand the justification for a movement confessedly hazardous, it
+must be pointed out that he thus would place himself between the
+besiegers of Brimstone Hill and their fleet; or if the latter anchored
+near the hill, the English fleet would be between it and its base in
+Martinique, ready to intercept supplies or detachments approaching
+from the southward. In short, the position in which Hood hoped to
+establish himself was on the flank of the enemy's communications, a
+position the more advantageous because the island alone could not long
+support the large body of troops so suddenly thrown upon it.
+Moreover, both fleets were expecting reinforcements; Rodney was on his
+way and might arrive first, which he did, and in time to save St.
+Kitt's, which he did not. It was also but four months since Yorktown;
+the affairs of England were going badly; something must be done,
+something left to chance, and Hood knew himself and his officers. It
+may be added that he knew his opponent.
+
+At noon, when the hillsides of Nevis were covered with expectant and
+interested sightseers, the English fleet rapidly formed its line on
+the starboard tack and headed north for Basse Terre (Plate XIX., A,
+A'). The French, at the moment, were in column steering south, but
+went about at once and stood for the enemy in a bow-and-quarter
+line[195] (A, A). At two the British had got far enough for Hood to
+make signal to anchor. At twenty minutes past two the van of the
+French came within gunshot of the English centre (B, B, B), and
+shortly afterward the firing began, the assailants very properly
+directing their main effort upon the English rear ships, which, as
+happens with most long columns, had opened out, a tendency increased
+in this case by the slowness of the fourth ship from the rear, the
+"Prudent." The French flag-ship, "Ville de Paris," of one hundred and
+twenty guns, bearing De Grasse's flag, pushed for the gap thus made,
+but was foiled by the "Canada," seventy-four, whose captain,
+Cornwallis, the brother of Lord Cornwallis, threw all his sails aback,
+and dropped down in front of the huge enemy to the support of the
+rear,--an example nobly followed by the "Resolution" and the "Bedford"
+immediately ahead of him (a). The scene was now varied and animated in
+the extreme. The English van, which had escaped attack, was rapidly
+anchoring (b) in its appointed position. The commander-in-chief in the
+centre, proudly reliant upon the skill and conduct of his captains,
+made signal for the ships ahead to carry a press of sail, and gain
+their positions regardless of the danger to the threatened rear. The
+latter, closely pressed and outnumbered, stood on unswervingly,
+shortened sail, and came to anchor, one by one, in a line ahead (B,
+B'), under the roar of the guns of their baffled enemies. The latter
+filed by, delivered their fire, and bore off again to the southward,
+leaving their former berths to their weaker but clever antagonists.
+
+ [Illustration: Pl. XIX. HOOD & DE GRASSE. JAN. 25, 1782.]
+
+The anchorage thus brilliantly taken by Hood was not exactly the same
+as that held by De Grasse the day before; but as it covered and
+controlled it, his claim that he took up the place the other had left
+is substantially correct. The following night and morning were spent
+in changing and strengthening the order, which was finally established
+as follows (Plate XVIII., B, B'). The van ship was anchored about four
+miles southeast from Basse Terre, so close to the shore that a ship
+could not pass inside her, nor, with the prevailing wind, even reach
+her, because of a point and shoal just outside, covering her position.
+From this point the line extended in a west-northwest direction to the
+twelfth or thirteenth ship (from a mile and a quarter to a mile and a
+half), where it turned gradually but rapidly to north, the last six
+ships being on a north and south line. Hood's flag-ship, the
+"Barfleur," of ninety guns, was at the apex of the salient angle thus
+formed.
+
+It would not have been impossible for the French fleet to take the
+anchorage they formerly held; but it and all others to leeward were
+forbidden by the considerations already stated, so long as Hood
+remained where he was. It became necessary therefore to dislodge him,
+but this was rendered exceedingly difficult by the careful tactical
+dispositions that have been described. His left flank was covered by
+the shore. Any attempt to enfilade his front by passing along the
+other flank was met by the broadsides of the six or eight ships drawn
+up _en potence_ to the rear. The front commanded the approaches to
+Basse Terre. To attack him in the rear, from the northwest, was
+forbidden by the trade-wind. To these difficulties was to be added
+that the attack must be made under sail against ships at anchor, to
+whom loss of spars would be of no immediate concern; and which, having
+springs[196] out, could train their broadsides over a large area with
+great ease.
+
+Nevertheless, both sound policy and mortification impelled De Grasse
+to fight, which he did the next day, January 26. The method of attack,
+in single column of twenty-nine ships against a line so carefully
+arranged, was faulty in the extreme; but it may be doubted whether any
+commander of that day would have broken through the traditional
+fighting order.[197] Hood had intended the same, but he hoped a
+surprise on an ill-ordered enemy, and at the original French anchorage
+it was possible to reach their eastern ships, with but slight exposure
+to concentrated fire. Not so now. The French formed to the southward
+and steered for the eastern flank of Hood's line. As their van ship
+drew up with the point already mentioned, the wind headed her, so that
+she could only reach the third in the English order, the first four
+ships of which, using their springs, concentrated their guns upon her.
+This vessel was supposed by the English to be the "Pluton," and if so,
+her captain was D'Albert de Rions, in Suffren's opinion the foremost
+officer of the French navy. "The crash occasioned by their destructive
+broadsides," wrote an English officer who was present, "was so
+tremendous that whole pieces of plank were seen flying from her off
+side ere she could escape the cool, concentrated fire of her
+determined adversaries. As she proceeded along the British line, she
+received the first fire of every ship in passing. She was indeed in
+so shattered a state as to be compelled to bear away for St.
+Eustatius." And so ship after ship passed by, running the length of
+the line (Plate XVIII., B, B), distributing their successive fires in
+gallant but dreary, ineffectual monotony over the whole extent. A
+second time that day De Grasse attacked in the same order, but
+neglecting the English van, directed his effort upon the rear and
+centre. This was equally fruitless, and seems to have been done with
+little spirit.
+
+From that time until the 14th of February, Hood maintained his
+position in sight of the French fleet, which remained cruising in the
+offing and to the southward. On the 1st a despatch vessel arrived from
+Kempenfeldt, informing him of the dispersal of the French
+reinforcements for the West Indies, which must have renewed his hopes
+that his bold attempt would be successful through Rodney's arrival. It
+was not, however, to be so. Brimstone Hill surrendered on the 12th,
+after a creditable defence. On the 13th De Grasse took his fleet, now
+amounting to thirty-three ships-of-the-line, to Nevis, and anchored
+there. On the night of the 14th Hood summoned all his captains on
+board, had them set their watches by his, and at eleven P.M., one
+after another, without noise or signal, cut their cables and made sail
+to the northward, passing round that end of the island unnoticed, or
+at least unmolested, by the French.
+
+Both strategically and tactically Hood's conceptions and dispositions
+were excellent, and their execution was most honorable to the skill
+and steadiness of himself and his captains. Regarded as a single
+military operation, this was brilliant throughout; but when considered
+with reference to the general situation of England at the time, a much
+higher estimate must be formed of the admiral's qualities.[198] St.
+Kitt's in itself might not be worth a great risk; but it was of the
+first importance that energy and audacity should be carried into the
+conduct of England's naval war, that some great success should light
+upon her flag. Material success was not obtained. The chances, though
+fair enough, turned against Hood; but every man in that fleet must
+have felt the glow of daring achievement, the assured confidence which
+follows a great deed nobly done. Had this man been in chief command
+when greater issues were at stake, had he been first instead of second
+at the Chesapeake, Cornwallis might have been saved. The
+operation--seizing an anchorage left by the enemy--would have been
+nearly the same; and both situations may be instructively compared
+with Suffren's relief of Cuddalore.
+
+The action of De Grasse, also, should be considered not only with
+reference to the particular occasion, but to the general condition of
+the war as well, and when thus weighed, and further compared with
+other very similar opportunities neglected by this general officer, a
+fair estimate of his military capacity can be reached. This
+comparison, however, is better deferred to the now not very distant
+close of the campaign. The most useful comment to be made here is,
+that his action in failing to crush Hood at his anchors, with a force
+at least fifty per cent greater, was in strict accordance with the
+general French principle of subordinating the action of the fleet to
+so-called particular operations; for nothing is more instructive than
+to note how an unsound principle results in disastrous action. Hood's
+inferiority was such as to weaken, for offensive purposes, his
+commanding position. So long as De Grasse kept to windward, he
+maintained his communications with Martinique, and he was strong
+enough, too, to force communication when necessary with the troops
+before Brimstone Hill. It was probable, as the event showed, that the
+particular operation, the reduction of St. Kitt's, would succeed
+despite the presence of the English fleet; and "the French navy has
+always preferred the glory of assuring a conquest to that, more
+brilliant perhaps but less real, of taking a few ships."
+
+So far De Grasse may be acquitted of any error beyond that of not
+rising above the traditions of his service. Some days, however, before
+the surrender of the island and the departure of the English fleet, he
+was joined by two ships-of-the-line which brought him word of the
+dispersal of the expected convoy and reinforcements from Europe.[199]
+He then knew that he himself could not be strengthened before Rodney's
+arrival, and that by that event the English would be superior to him.
+He had actually thirty-three ships-of-the-line in hand, and a few
+miles off lay twenty-two English in a position where he knew they
+would await his attack; yet he let them escape. His own explanation
+implies clearly that he had no intention of attacking them at
+anchor:--
+
+ "The day after the capitulation of Brimstone Hill was the moment
+ to watch Hood closely, and to fight him _as soon as he got under
+ way_ from the conquered island. But our provisions were
+ exhausted; We had only enough for thirty-six hours. Some
+ supply-ships had arrived at Nevis, and you will admit one must
+ live before fighting. I went to Nevis, always to windward and in
+ sight of the enemy, a league and a half from him, in order to
+ take on board the necessary supplies as rapidly as possible.
+ Hood decamped at night without signals, and the next morning I
+ found only the sick whom he left behind."[200]
+
+In other words, Hood having held his ground with consummate audacity
+and skill, when he had some chance of successful resistance, declined
+to await his adversary's attack under conditions overwhelmingly
+unfavorable. What shall be said of this talk about provisions? Did not
+the Comte de Grasse know a month before how long, to a day, the
+supplies on board would last? Did he not know, four days before Hood
+sailed, that he had with him every ship he could probably count on for
+the approaching campaign, while the English would surely be
+reinforced? And if the English position was as strong as good
+judgment, professional skill, and bold hearts could make it, had it
+not weak points? Were not the lee ships to leeward? If they did
+attempt to beat to windward, had he not ships to "contain" them? If
+the van ship could not be reached, had he not force enough to double
+and treble on the third and following ships, as far down the line as
+he chose? A letter of Suffren's, referring to a similar condition of
+things at Santa Lucia,[201] but written three years before these
+events, seems almost a prophetic description of them:--
+
+ "Notwithstanding the slight results of the two cannonades of
+ December 15 [1778], we can yet expect success; but the only way
+ to attain it is to attack vigorously the squadron, which in
+ consequence of our superiority cannot hold out, despite their
+ land works, which will become of no effect _if we lay them on
+ board, or anchor upon their buoys_. If we delay, a thousand
+ circumstances may save them. _They may profit by the night to
+ depart._"
+
+There can be no doubt that the English would have sold their defeat
+dearly; but results in war must be paid for, and the best are in the
+long run the cheapest. A tight grip of a few simple principles--that
+the enemy's fleet was the controlling factor in the coming campaign,
+that it was therefore his true objective, that one fraction of it must
+be crushed without delay when caught thus separated--would have saved
+De Grasse a great blunder; but it is only fair to note that it would
+have made him an exception to the practice of the French navy.
+
+The hour was now close at hand when the French admiral should feel,
+even if he did not admit, the consequences of this mistake, by which he
+had won a paltry island and lost an English fleet. Rodney had sailed
+from Europe on the 15th of January, with twelve ships-of-the-line. On
+the 19th of February he anchored at Barbadoes, and the same day Hood
+reached Antigua from St. Kitt's. On the 25th the squadrons of Rodney
+and Hood met to windward of Antigua, forming a united fleet of
+thirty-four ships-of-the-line. The next day De Grasse anchored in Fort
+Royal, thus escaping the pursuit which Rodney at once began. The
+English admiral then returned to Sta. Lucia, where he was joined by
+three more ships-of-the-line from England, raising his force to
+thirty-seven. Knowing that a large convoy was expected from France,
+before the arrival of which nothing could be attempted, Rodney sent a
+part of his fleet to cruise to windward and as far north as Guadeloupe;
+but the officer in charge of the French convoy, suspecting this action,
+kept well north of that island, and reached Fort Royal, Martinique, on
+the 20th of March. The ships-of-war with him raised De Grasse's fleet
+to thirty-three effective sail-of-the-line and two fifty-gun ships.
+
+The object of the united efforts of France and Spain this year was the
+conquest of Jamaica. It was expected to unite at Cap Français (now Cap
+Haïtien), in Hayti, fifty ships-of-the-line and twenty thousand
+troops. Part of the latter were already at the rendezvous; and De
+Grasse, appointed to command the combined fleets, was to collect in
+Martinique all the available troops and supplies in the French
+islands, and convoy them to the rendezvous. It was this junction that
+Rodney was charged to prevent.
+
+The region within which occurred the important operations of the next
+few days covers a distance of one hundred and fifty miles, from south
+to north, including the islands of Sta. Lucia, Martinique, Dominica,
+and Guadeloupe, in the order named. (See Plate XI. p. 378.) At this
+time the first was in English, the others in French, hands. The final,
+and for the moment decisive, encounter took place between, and a
+little to westward of, Dominica and Guadeloupe. These are
+twenty-three miles apart; but the channel is narrowed to thirteen by
+three islets called the Saints, lying ten miles south of Guadeloupe.
+It is said to have been De Grasse's intention, instead of sailing
+direct for Cap Français,[202] to take a circuitous course near the
+islands, which, being friendly or neutral, would give refuge to the
+convoy if pressed. The close pursuit of the English, who came up with
+him off Dominica, led him to forsake this plan, sending the convoy
+into Basse Terre at the south end of Guadeloupe, while with the fleet
+he tried to beat through the channel and pass east of the island, thus
+drawing the English away from the transports and ridding himself of
+the tactical embarrassment due to the latter's presence. Accidents to
+various ships thwarted this attempt, and brought about a battle
+disastrous to him and fatal to the joint enterprise.
+
+The anchorages of the two fleets, in Martinique and Sta. Lucia, were
+thirty miles apart. The prevailing east wind is generally fair to pass
+from one to the other; but a strong westerly current, and the
+frequency of calms and light airs, tend to throw to leeward
+sailing-ships leaving Sta. Lucia for the northern island. A chain of
+frigates connected the English lookout ships off Martinique, by
+signal, with Rodney's flag-ship in Gros Ilot Bay. Everything was astir
+at the two stations, the French busy with the multitudinous
+arrangements necessitated by a great military undertaking, the English
+with less to do, yet maintaining themselves in a state of expectancy
+and preparation for instant action, that entails constant alertness
+and mental activity.
+
+On the 5th of April Rodney was informed that the soldiers were being
+embarked, and on the 8th, soon after daylight, the lookout frigates
+were seen making signal that the enemy was leaving port. The English
+fleet at once began to get under way, and by noon was clear of the
+harbor to the number of thirty-six of the line. At half-past two P.M.
+the advanced frigates were in sight of the French fleet, which was
+seen from the mastheads of the main body just before sundown. The
+English stood to the northward all night, and at daybreak of the 9th
+were abreast Dominica, but for the most part becalmed. In-shore of
+them, to the northward and eastward, were seen the French fleet and
+convoy: the men-of-war numbering thirty-three of the line, besides
+smaller vessels; the convoy a hundred and fifty sail, under special
+charge of the two fifty-gun ships. The irregular and uncertain winds,
+common to the night and early hours of the day near the land, had
+scattered these unwieldy numbers. Fifteen sail-of-the-line were in the
+channel between Dominica and the Saints, with a fresh trade-wind,
+apparently beating to windward; the remainder of the ships-of-war and
+most of the convoy were still becalmed close under Dominica (Plate
+XX., Position I, b). Gradually, however, one by one, the French ships
+were catching light airs off the land; and by favor of these, which
+did not reach so far as the English in the offing, drew out from the
+island and entered the more steady breeze of the channel, reinforcing
+the group which was thus possessed of that prime element of naval
+power, mobility. At the same time light airs from the southeast crept
+out to the English van under Hood, fanning it gently north from the
+main body of the fleet toward two isolated French ships (i), which,
+having fallen to leeward during the night, had shared the calms that
+left the English motionless, with their heads all round the compass.
+They had come nearly within gunshot, when a light puff from the
+northwest enabled the Frenchmen to draw away and approach their own
+ships in the channel.
+
+The farther the English van advanced, the fresher grew their wind,
+until they fairly opened the channel of the Saints and felt the
+trade-wind. De Grasse signalled to the convoy to put into Guadeloupe,
+which order was so well carried out that they were all out of sight to
+the northward by two in the afternoon, and will appear no more in the
+sequel. The two French ships, already spoken of as fallen to leeward,
+not being yet out of danger from the English van, which had now a
+commanding breeze, and the latter being much separated from their rear
+and centre, De Grasse ordered his van to bear down and engage. This
+was obeyed by the ships signalled and by three others, in all by
+fourteen or fifteen, the action beginning at half-past nine A.M., and
+lasting with intermissions until quarter-past one P.M. Hood was soon
+forced to heave-to, in order not to increase too much his separation
+from the main fleet; the French kept under way, approaching from the
+rear and passing in succession at half cannon-shot to windward (Plate
+XX., Position I.). As each ship drew ahead of the English division,
+she tacked, standing back to the southward until in position to resume
+her place in the order of attack, thus describing a continuous
+irregular curve of elliptical form, to windward of their opponents.
+The brunt of the attack fell upon eight or nine of the English, this
+number being successively increased as one ship after another, as the
+baffling airs served, drew out from the calm space under Dominica; but
+the French received similar accessions. While this engagement was
+going on, part of the English centre, eight ships with Rodney's flag
+among them (Position I., a), by carefully watching the puffs and
+cat's-paws, had worked in with the land and caught the sea breeze,
+which was felt there sooner than in the offing. As soon as they had
+it, about eleven A.M., they stood to the north, being now on the
+weather quarter[203] both of the English van and its assailants
+(Position II., a). The latter, seeing this, tacked, and abandoning the
+contest for the moment, steered south to join their centre, lest
+Rodney's eight ships should get between them. At half-past eleven the
+French again formed line on the starboard tack, most of their ships
+being now clear of the land, while the English rear was still
+becalmed. The greater numbers of the French enabled them to extend
+from north to south along the length of the English line, whereas the
+latter was still broken by a great gap between the van and centre
+(Position II.). The attack upon Hood was therefore hotly renewed;
+but the French centre and rear (b), having the wind, kept their
+distance, and held Rodney's division at long range. At quarter-past
+one the French, finding that the whole British line was coming up with
+the wind, ceased firing, and at two Rodney hauled down the signal for
+battle, the enemy having withdrawn.
+
+ [Illustration: Pl. XX. RODNEY & DE GRASSE. APRIL 9, 1782.]
+
+This action of the 9th of April amounted actually to no more than an
+artillery duel. One French ship, the "Caton," a sixty-four (d),
+received injuries which sent her into Guadeloupe; two English were
+disabled, but repaired their injuries without leaving the fleet. The
+material advantage, therefore, lay with the latter. Opinions differ as
+to the generalship of the Comte de Grasse on this day, but they divide
+on the same basis of principle as to whether ulterior operations, or
+the chances of beating the enemy's fleet, are to determine an
+admiral's action. The facts of the case are these: Sixteen of the
+English fleet, all the rear and four of the centre (Position II., c),
+were not able at any time to fire a shot. Apparently every French
+ship, first and last, might have been brought into action. At the
+beginning, eight or nine English were opposed to fifteen French. At
+the end there were twenty English to thirty-three French, and these
+general proportions doubtless obtained throughout the four hours. De
+Grasse therefore found himself in the presence of a fleet superior to
+his own, in numbers at least, and by the favor of Providence that
+fleet so divided that nearly half of it was powerless to act. He had
+the wind, he had a fine body of captains; what was to prevent him from
+attacking Hood's nine ships with fifteen, putting one on each side of
+the six in the rear. Had those nine been thoroughly beaten, Rodney's
+further movements must have been hopelessly crippled. The French lost
+only five in their defeat three days later. The subsequent
+court-martial, however, laid down the French doctrine thus: "The
+decision to persist in engaging with only a part of our fleet may be
+considered as an act of prudence on the part of the admiral, which
+might be dictated by the ulterior projects of the campaign." On this a
+French professional writer naturally remarks, that if an attack were
+made at all, it would be more prudent to make it in force; less injury
+would fall on individual ships, while in the end the whole fleet would
+inevitably be drawn in to support any which, by losing spars, could
+not return to windward.
+
+Three times in one year had Fortune thrown before De Grasse the
+opportunity of attacking English fleets with decisive odds on his
+side.[204] Her favors were now exhausted. Three days more were to show
+how decidedly the ulterior projects of a campaign may be affected by a
+battle and the loss of a few ships. From the 9th to the morning of the
+12th the French fleet continued beating to windward between Dominica
+and the Saints, in no regular order. On the night of the 9th the
+English hove-to to repair damages. The next day the chase to windward
+was resumed, but the French gained very decidedly upon their pursuers.
+On the night of the 10th two ships, the "Jason" and "Zélé," collided.
+The "Zélé" was the bane of the French fleet during these days. She was
+one of those that were nearly caught by the enemy on the 9th, and was
+also the cause of the final disaster. The injuries to the "Jason"
+forced her to put into Guadeloupe. On the 11th the main body was to
+windward of the Saints, but the "Zélé" and another had fallen so far
+to leeward that De Grasse bore down to cover them, thus losing much of
+the ground gained. On the night following, the "Zélé" was again in
+collision, this time with De Grasse's flag-ship; the latter lost some
+sails, but the other, which had not the right of way and was wholly at
+fault, carried away both foremast and bowsprit. The admiral sent word
+to the frigate "Astrée" to take the "Zélé" in tow; and here flits
+across the page of our story a celebrated and tragical figure, for the
+captain of the "Astrée" was the ill-fated explorer Lapeyrouse, the
+mystery of whose disappearance with two ships and their entire crews
+remained so long unsolved. Two hours were consumed in getting the ship
+under way in tow of the frigate,--not very smart work under the
+conditions of weather and urgency; but by five A.M. the two were
+standing away for Basse Terre, where the "Caton" and "Jason," as well
+as the convoy, had already arrived. The French fleet had thus lost
+three from its line-of-battle since leaving Martinique.
+
+The disabled ship had not long been headed for Basse Terre, when the
+faint streaks of dawn announced the approach of the 12th of April, a
+day doubly celebrated in naval annals. The sun had not quite set upon
+the exhausted squadrons of Suffren and Hughes, anchoring after their
+fiercest battle off Ceylon, when his early rays shone upon the opening
+strife between Rodney and De Grasse.[205] The latter was at the time
+the greatest naval battle in its results that had been fought in a
+century; its influence on the course of events was very great, though
+far from as decisive as it might have been; it was attended with
+circumstances of unusual though somewhat factitious brilliancy, and
+particularly was marked by a manoeuvre that was then looked upon as
+exceptionally daring and decisive,--"breaking the line." It must be
+added that it has given rise to a storm of controversy; and the mass
+of details, as given by witnesses who should be reliable, are so
+confused and contradictory, owing mainly to the uncertainties of the
+wind, that it is impossible now to do more than attempt to reconcile
+them in a full account. Nevertheless, the leading features can be
+presented with sufficient accuracy, and this will first be done
+briefly and barely; the outline thus presented can afterward be
+clothed with the details which give color, life, and interest to the
+great scene.
+
+At daylight[206] (about half-past five) the English fleet, which had
+gone about at two A.M., was standing on the starboard tack, with the
+wind at southeast,[207] an unusual amount of southing for that hour
+(Plate XXI., A). It was then about fifteen miles from the Saints,
+which bore north-northeast, and ten from the French fleet, which bore
+northeast. The latter, owing to the events of the night, was greatly
+scattered, as much as eight or ten miles separating the weather, or
+easternmost, ships from the lee,[208] the flag-ship "Ville de Paris"
+being among the latter. Anxiety for the "Zélé" kept the French
+admiral, with the ships in his company, under short canvas, standing
+to the southward on the port tack (A). The English on the starboard
+tack, with the wind as they had it,[3] headed east-northeast, and
+thus, as soon as there was light to see, found the French "broad on
+the lee bow, and one of M. de Grasse's ships (the "Zélé") towed by a
+frigate, square under our lee (a), with his bowsprit and foremast
+prostrate across his forecastle."[209] To draw the French farther to
+leeward, Rodney detached four ships (b) to chase the "Zélé." As soon
+as De Grasse saw this he signalled his fleet to keep away (c), as
+Rodney wished, and at the same time to form the line-of-battle, thus
+calling down to him the ships to windward. The English line was also
+formed rapidly, and the chasing ships recalled at seven A.M. De
+Grasse, seeing that if he stood on he would lose the weather-gage
+altogether, hauled up again on the port tack (c'); and the breeze
+changing to east-southeast and east in his favor and knocking the
+English off, the race of the two fleets on opposite tacks, for the
+advantage of the wind, became nearly equal. The French, however, won,
+thanks to a superiority in sailing which had enabled them to draw so
+far to windward of the English on the previous days, and, but for the
+awkwardness of the "Zélé," might have cleared them altogether (Plate
+XXI., B). Their leading ships first reached and passed the point where
+the rapidly converging tracks intersected, while the English leader,
+the "Marlborough," struck the French line between the sixth and
+tenth ships (variously stated). The battle, of course, had by this
+time begun, the ninth ship in the French line, the "Brave," opening
+fire at twenty minutes before eight A.M. upon the "Marlborough." As
+there was no previous intention of breaking the line, the English
+leader kept away, in obedience to a signal from Rodney, and ran close
+along under the enemy's lee, followed in succession by all the ships
+as they reached her wake. The battle thus assumed the common and
+indecisive phase of two fleets passing on opposite tacks, the wind
+very light, however, and so allowing a more heavy engagement than
+common under these circumstances, the ships "sliding by" at the rate
+of three to four knots. Since the hostile lines diverged again south
+of their point of meeting, De Grasse made signal to keep away four
+points to south-southwest, thus bringing his van (B, a) to action with
+the English rear, and not permitting the latter to reach his rear
+unscathed. There were, however, two dangers threatening the French if
+they continued their course. Its direction, south or south-southwest,
+carried them into the calms that hung round the north end of Dominica;
+and the uncertainty of the wind made it possible that by its hauling
+to the southward the enemy could pass through their line and gain the
+wind, and with it the possibility of forcing the decisive battle which
+the French policy had shunned; and this was in fact what happened. De
+Grasse therefore made signal at half-past eight to wear _together_ and
+take the same tack as the English. This, however, was impossible; the
+two fleets were too close together to admit the evolution. He then
+signalled to haul close to the wind and wear _in succession_, which
+also failed to be done, and at five minutes past nine the dreaded
+contingency arose; the wind hauled to the southward, knocking off all
+the French ships that had not yet kept away; that is, all who had
+English ships close under their lee (Plate XXI. C). Rodney, in the
+"Formidable," was at this time just drawing up with the fourth ship
+astern of De Grasse's flag. Luffing to the new wind, he passed through
+the French line, followed by the five ships next astern of him (C,
+a), while nearly at the same moment, and from the same causes, his
+sixth astern (C, b) led through the interval abreast him, followed by
+the whole English rear. The French line-of-battle was thus broken in
+two places by columns of enemies' ships in such close order as to
+force its vessels aside, even if the wind had not conspired to
+embarrass their action. Every principle upon which a line-of-battle
+was constituted, for mutual support and for the clear field of fire of
+each ship, was thus overthrown for the French, and preserved for the
+English divisions which filed through; and the French were forced off
+to leeward by the interposition of the enemy's columns, besides being
+broken up. Compelled thus to forsake the line upon which they had been
+ranged, it was necessary to re-form upon another, and unite the three
+groups into which they were divided,--a difficult piece of tactics
+under any circumstances, but doubly so under the moral impression of
+disaster, and in presence of a superior enemy, who, though himself
+disordered, was in better shape, and already felt the glow of victory.
+
+ [Illustration: Pl. XXI. RODNEY & DE GRASSE. APRIL 12, 1782.]
+
+It does not appear that any substantial attempt to re-form was made by
+the French. To reunite, yes; but only as a flying, disordered mass.
+The various shifts of wind and movements of the divisions left their
+fleet, at midday (Plate XXI. D), with the centre (c) two miles
+northwest of and to leeward of the van (v), the rear (r) yet farther
+from the centre and to leeward of it. Calms and short puffs of wind
+prevailed now through both fleets. At half-past one P.M. a light
+breeze from the east sprang up, and De Grasse made signal to form the
+line again on the port tack; between three and four, not having
+succeeded in this, he made signal to form on the starboard tack. The
+two signals and the general tenor of the accounts show that at no time
+were the French re-formed after their line was broken; and all the
+manoeuvres tended toward, even if they did not necessitate, taking the
+whole fleet as far down as the most leewardly of its parts (D). In
+such a movement, it followed of course that the most crippled ships
+were left behind, and these were picked up, one by one, by the
+English, who pursued without any regular order, for which there was
+no need, as mutual support was assured without it. Shortly after six
+P.M. De Grasse's flag-ship, the "Ville de Paris," struck her colors to
+the "Barfleur," carrying the flag of Sir Samuel Hood. The French
+accounts state that nine of the enemy's ships then surrounded her, and
+there is no doubt that she had been fought to the bitter end. Her
+name, commemorating the great city whose gift she had been to the
+king, her unusual size, and the fact that no French naval
+commander-in-chief had before been taken prisoner in battle, conspired
+to bestow a peculiar brilliancy upon Rodney's victory. Four other
+ships-of-the-line were taken,[210] and, singularly enough, upon these
+particular ships was found the whole train of artillery intended for
+the reduction of Jamaica.
+
+Such were the leading features of the Battle of the Saints, or, as it
+is sometimes styled, of the 12th of April, known to the French as the
+Battle of Dominica. Certain points which have so far been omitted for
+the sake of clearness, but which affect the issue, must now be given.
+When the day opened, the French fleet was greatly scattered and
+without order.[211] De Grasse, under the influence of his fears for
+the "Zélé," so precipitated his movements that his line was not
+properly formed at the moment of engaging. The van ships had not yet
+come into position (B, a), and the remainder were so far from having
+reached their places that De Vaudreuil, commanding the rear division
+and last engaged, states that the line was formed under the fire of
+musketry. The English, on the contrary, were in good order, the only
+change made being to shorten the interval between ships from two to
+one cable's length (seven hundred feet). The celebrated stroke of
+breaking through the French line was due, not to previous intention,
+but to a shift of wind throwing their ships out of order and so
+increasing the spaces between them; while the gap through which
+Rodney's group penetrated was widened by the "Diadème" on its north
+side being taken aback and paying round on the other tack (C, c.) Sir
+Charles Douglas says the immediate effect, where the flag-ship broke
+through, was "the bringing together, almost if not quite in contact
+with each other, the four ships of the enemy which were nearest," on
+the north, "to the point alluded to (c), and coming up in succession.
+This unfortunate group, composing now only one large single object at
+which to fire, was attacked by the "Duke," "Namur," and "Formidable"
+(ninety-gun ships) all at once, receiving several broadsides from
+each, not a single shot missing; and great must have been the
+slaughter." The "Duke" (C, d), being next ahead of the flag-ship, had
+followed her leader under the French lee; but as soon as her captain
+saw that the "Formidable" had traversed the enemy's order, he did the
+same, passing north of this confused group and so bringing it under a
+fire from both sides. The log of the "Magnanime," one of the group,
+mentions passing under the fire of two three-deckers, one on either
+side.
+
+As soon as the order was thus broken, Rodney hauled down the signal
+for the line, keeping flying that for close action, and at the same
+time ordered his van, which had now passed beyond and north of the
+enemy's rear, to go about and rejoin the English centre. This was
+greatly delayed through the injuries to spars and sails received in
+passing under the enemy's fire. His own flag-ship and the ships with
+her went about. The rear, under Hood, instead of keeping north again
+to join the centre, stood to windward for a time, and were then
+becalmed at a considerable distance from the rest of the fleet.
+
+Much discussion took place at a later day as to the wisdom of Rodney's
+action in breaking through his enemy's order, and to whom the credit,
+if any, should be ascribed. The latter point is of little concern; but
+it may be said that the son of Sir Charles Douglas, Rodney's
+chief-of-staff, brought forward an amount of positive evidence, the
+only kind that could be accepted to diminish the credit of the person
+wholly responsible for the results, which proves that the suggestion
+came from Douglas, and Rodney's consent was with difficulty obtained.
+The value of the manoeuvre itself is of more consequence than any
+question of personal reputation. It has been argued by some that, so
+far from being a meritorious act, it was unfortunate, and for Rodney's
+credit should rather be attributed to the force of circumstances than
+to choice. It had been better, these say, to have continued along
+under the lee of the French rear, thus inflicting upon it the fire of
+the whole English line, and that the latter should have tacked and
+doubled on the French rear. This argument conveniently forgets that
+tacking, or turning round in any way, after a brush of this kind, was
+possible to only a part of the ships engaged; and that these would
+have much difficulty in overtaking the enemies who had passed on,
+unless the latter were very seriously crippled. Therefore this
+suggested attack, the precise reproduction of the battle of Ushant,
+really reduces itself to the fleets passing on opposite tacks, each
+distributing its fire over the whole of the enemy's line without
+attempting any concentration on a part of it. It may, and must, be
+conceded at once, that Rodney's change of course permitted the eleven
+rear ships of the French (D, r) to run off to leeward, having received
+the fire of only part of their enemy, while the English van had
+undergone that of nearly the whole French fleet. These ships, however,
+were thus thrown entirely out of action for a measurable and important
+time by being driven to leeward, and would have been still more out of
+position to help any of their fleet, had not De Grasse himself been
+sent to leeward by Hood's division cutting the line three ships ahead
+of him. The thirteen leading French ships, obeying the last signal
+they had seen, were hugging the wind; the group of six with De Grasse
+(C, e) would have done the same had they not been headed off by Hood's
+division. The result of Rodney's own action alone, therefore, would
+have been to divide the French fleet into two parts, separated by a
+space of six miles, and one of them hopelessly to leeward. The
+English, having gained the wind, would have been in position easily to
+"contain" the eleven lee ships, and to surround the nineteen weather
+ones in overwhelming force. The actual condition, owing to the _two_
+breaches in the line, was slightly different; the group of six with De
+Grasse being placed between his weather and lee divisions, two miles
+from the former, four from the latter (D). It seems scarcely necessary
+to insist upon the tactical advantages of such a situation for the
+English, even disregarding the moral effect of the confusion through
+which the French had passed. In addition to this, a very striking
+lesson is deducible from the immediate effects of the English guns in
+passing through. Of the five ships taken, three were those under whose
+sterns the English divisions pierced.[212] Instead of giving and
+taking, as the parallel lines ran by, on equal terms, each ship having
+the support of those ahead and astern, the French ships near which the
+penetrating columns passed received each the successive fire of all
+the enemy's division. Thus Hood's thirteen ships filed by the two rear
+ones of the French van, the "César" and "Hector," fairly crushing them
+under this concentration of fire; while in like manner, and with like
+results, Rodney's six passed by the "Glorieux." This "concentration by
+defiling" past the extremity of a column corresponds quite accurately
+to the concentration upon the flank of a line, and has a special
+interest, because if successfully carried out it would be as powerful
+an attack now as it ever has been. If quick to seize their advantage,
+the English might have fired upon the ships on both sides of the gaps
+through which they passed, as the "Formidable" actually did; but they
+were using the starboard broadsides, and many doubtless did not
+realize their opportunity until too late. The natural results of
+Rodney's act, therefore, were: (1) The gain of the wind, with the
+power of offensive action; (2) Concentration of fire upon a part of
+the enemy's order; and (3) The introduction into the latter of
+confusion and division, which might, and did, become very great,
+offering the opportunity of further tactical advantage. It is not a
+valid reply to say that, had the French been more apt, they could have
+united sooner. A manoeuvre that presents a good chance of advantage
+does not lose its merit because it can be met by a prompt movement of
+the enemy, any more than a particular lunge of the sword becomes
+worthless because it has its appropriate parry. The chances were that
+by heading off the rear ships, while the van stood on, the French
+fleet would be badly divided; and the move was none the less sagacious
+because the two fragments could have united sooner than they did, had
+they been well handled. With the alternative action suggested, of
+tacking after passing the enemy's rear, the pursuit became a stern
+chase, in which both parties having been equally engaged would
+presumably be equally crippled. Signals of disability, in fact, were
+numerous in both fleets.
+
+Independently of the tactical handling of the two fleets, there were
+certain differences of equipment which conferred tactical advantage,
+and are therefore worth noting. The French appear to have had finer
+ships, and, class for class, heavier armaments. Sir Charles Douglas,
+an eminent officer of active and ingenious turn of mind, who paid
+particular attention to gunnery details, estimated that in weight of
+battery the thirty-three French were superior to the thirty-six
+English by the force of four 84-gun ships; and that after the loss of
+the "Zélé," "Jason," and "Caton" there still remained an advantage
+equal to two seventy-fours. The French admiral La Gravière admits the
+generally heavier calibre of French cannon at this era. The better
+construction of the French ships and their greater draught caused them
+to sail and beat better, and accounts in part for the success of De
+Grasse in gaining to windward; for in the afternoon of the 11th only
+three or four of the body of his fleet were visible _from the
+mast-head_ of the English flag-ship, which had been within gunshot of
+them on the 9th. It was the awkwardness of the unlucky "Zélé" and of
+the "Magnanime," which drew down De Grasse from his position of
+vantage, and justified Rodney's perseverance in relying upon the
+chapter of accidents to effect his purpose. The greater speed of the
+French as a body is somewhat hard to account for, because, though
+undoubtedly with far better lines, the practice of coppering the
+bottom had not become so general in France as in England, and among
+the French there were several uncoppered and worm-eaten ships.[213]
+The better sailing of the French was, however, remarked by the English
+officers, though the great gain mentioned must have been in part owing
+to Rodney's lying-by, after the action of the 9th, to refit, due
+probably to the greater injury received by the small body of his
+vessels, which had been warmly engaged, with greatly superior numbers.
+It was stated, in narrating that action, that the French kept at half
+cannon-range; this was to neutralize a tactical advantage the English
+had in the large number of carronades and other guns of light weight
+but large calibre, which in close action told heavily, but were
+useless at greater distances. The second in command, De Vaudreuil, to
+whom was intrusted the conduct of that attack, expressly states that
+if he had come within reach of the carronades his ships would have
+been quickly unrigged. Whatever judgment is passed upon the military
+policy of refusing to crush an enemy situated as the English division
+was, there can be no question that, if the object was to prevent
+pursuit, the tactics of De Vaudreuil on the 9th was in all respects
+excellent. He inflicted the utmost injury with the least exposure of
+his own force. On the 12th, De Grasse, by allowing himself to be lured
+within reach of carronades, yielded this advantage, besides
+sacrificing to an impulse his whole previous strategic policy. Rapidly
+handled from their lightness, firing grape and shot of large
+diameter, these guns were peculiarly harmful in close action and
+useless at long range. In a later despatch De Vaudreuil says: "The
+effect of these new arms is most deadly within musket range; it is
+they which so badly crippled us on the 12th of April." There were
+other gunnery innovations, in some at least of the English ships,
+which by increasing the accuracy, the rapidity, and the field of fire,
+greatly augmented the power of their batteries. These were the
+introduction of locks, by which the man who aimed also fired; and the
+fitting to the gun-carriages of breast-pieces and sweeps, so that the
+guns could be pointed farther ahead or astern,--that is, over a larger
+field than had been usual. In fights between single ships, not
+controlled in their movements by their relations to a fleet, this
+improvement would at times allow the possessor to take a position
+whence he could train upon his enemy without the latter being able to
+reply, and some striking instances of such tactical advantage are
+given. In a fleet fight, such as is now being considered, the gain was
+that the guns could be brought to bear farther forward, and could
+follow the opponent longer as he passed astern, thus doubling, or
+more, the number of shots he might receive, and lessening for him the
+interval of immunity enjoyed between two successive antagonists.[214]
+These matters of antiquated and now obsolete detail carry with them
+lessons that are never obsolete; they differ in no respect from the
+more modern experiences with the needle-gun and the torpedo.
+
+And indeed this whole action of April 12, 1782, is fraught with sound
+military teaching. Perseverance in pursuit, gaining advantage of
+position, concentration of one's own effort, dispersal of the enemy's
+force, the efficient tactical bearing of small but important
+improvements in the material of war, have been dwelt on. To insist
+further upon the necessity of not letting slip a chance to beat the
+enemy in detail, would be thrown away on any one not already convinced
+by the bearing of April 9 on April 12. The abandonment of the attack
+upon Jamaica, after the defeat of the French fleet, shows
+conclusively that the true way to secure ulterior objects is to defeat
+the force which threatens them. There remains at least one criticism,
+delicate in its character, but essential to draw out the full
+teachings of these events; that is, upon the manner in which the
+victory was followed up, and the consequent effects upon the war in
+general.
+
+The liability of sailing-ships to injury in spars and sails, in other
+words, in that mobility which is the prime characteristic of naval
+strength, makes it difficult to say, after a lapse of time, what might
+or might not have been done. It is not only a question of actual
+damage received, which log-books may record, but also of the means for
+repair, the energy and aptitude of the officers and seamen, which
+differ from ship to ship. As to the ability of the English fleet,
+however, to follow up its advantages by a more vigorous pursuit on the
+12th of April, we have the authority of two most distinguished
+officers,--Sir Samuel Hood, the second in command, and Sir Charles
+Douglas, the captain of the fleet, or chief-of-staff to the admiral.
+The former expressed the opinion that twenty ships might have been
+taken, and said so to Rodney the next day; while the chief-of-staff
+was so much mortified by the failure, and by the manner in which the
+admiral received his suggestions, as seriously to contemplate
+resigning his position.[215]
+
+Advice and criticism are easy, nor can the full weight of a
+responsibility be felt, except by the man on whom it is laid; but
+great results cannot often be reached in war without risk and effort.
+The accuracy of the judgment of these two officers, however, is
+confirmed by inference from the French reports. Rodney justifies his
+failure to pursue by alleging the crippled condition of many ships,
+and other matters incident to the conclusion of a hard-fought battle,
+and then goes on to suggest what might have been done that night, had
+he pursued, by the French fleet, which "went off in a body of
+twenty-six ships-of-the-line."[216] These possibilities are rather
+creditable to his imagination, considering what the French fleet had
+done by day; but as regards the body of twenty-six[217] ships, De
+Vaudreuil, who, after De Grasse's surrender, made the signal for the
+ships to rally round his flag, found only ten with him next morning,
+and was not joined by any more before the 14th. During the following
+days five more joined him at intervals.[218] With these he went to the
+rendezvous at Cap Français, where he found others, bringing the whole
+number who repaired thither to twenty. The five remaining, of those
+that had been in the action, fled to Curaçoa, six hundred miles
+distant, and did not rejoin until May. The "body of twenty-six ships,"
+therefore, had no existence in fact; on the contrary, the French fleet
+was very badly broken up, and several of its ships isolated. As
+regards the crippled condition, there seems no reason to think the
+English had suffered more, but rather less, than their enemy; and a
+curious statement, bearing upon this, appears in a letter from Sir
+Gilbert Blane:--
+
+ "It was with difficulty we could make the French officers
+ believe that the returns of killed and wounded, made by our
+ ships to the admiral, were true; and one of them flatly
+ contradicted me, saying we always gave the world a false account
+ of our loss. I then walked with him over the decks of the
+ 'Formidable,' and bid him remark what number of shot-holes there
+ were, and _also how little her rigging had suffered_, and asked
+ if that degree of damage was likely to be connected with the
+ loss of more than fourteen men, which was our number killed, and
+ _the greatest of any in the fleet_, except the 'Royal Oak' and
+ 'Monarch.' He ... owned our fire must have been much better kept
+ up and directed than theirs."[219]
+
+There can remain little doubt, therefore, that the advantage was not
+followed up with all possible vigor. Not till five days after the
+battle was Hood's division sent toward San Domingo, where they picked
+up in the Mona Passage the "Jason" and the "Caton," which had
+separated before the battle and were on their way to Cap Français.
+These, and two small vessels with them, were the sole after-fruits of
+the victory. Under the conditions of England's war this cautious
+failure is a serious blot on Rodney's military reputation, and goes
+far to fix his place among successful admirals. He had saved Jamaica
+for the time; but he had not, having the opportunity, crushed the
+French fleet. He too, like De Grasse, had allowed the immediate
+objective to blind him to the general military situation, and to the
+factor which controlled it.
+
+To appreciate the consequences of this neglect, and the real
+indecisiveness of this celebrated battle, we must go forward a year
+and listen to the debates in Parliament on the conditions of peace, in
+February, 1783. The approval or censure of the terms negotiated by the
+existing ministry involved the discussion of many considerations; but
+the gist of the dispute was, whether the conditions were such as the
+comparative financial and military situations of the belligerents
+justified, or whether it would have been better for England to
+continue the war rather than submit to the sacrifices she had made. As
+regards the financial condition, despite the gloomy picture drawn by
+the advocates of the peace, there was probably no more doubt then than
+there is now about the comparative resources of the different
+countries. The question of military strength was really that of naval
+power. The ministry argued that the whole British force hardly
+numbered one hundred sail-of-the-line, while the navies of France and
+Spain amounted to one hundred and forty, not to speak of that of
+Holland.
+
+ "With so glaring an inferiority, what hopes of success could we
+ derive, either from the experience of the last campaign, or from
+ any new distribution of our force in that which would have
+ followed? In the West Indies we could not have had more than
+ forty-six sail to oppose to forty, which on the day that peace
+ was signed lay in Cadiz Bay, with sixteen thousand troops on
+ board, ready to sail for that quarter of the world, where they
+ would have been joined by twelve of the line from Havana and
+ ten from San Domingo.... Might we not too reasonably apprehend
+ that the campaign in the West Indies would have closed with the
+ loss of Jamaica itself, the avowed object of this immense
+ armament?"[220]
+
+These are certainly the reasonings of an avowed partisan, for which
+large allowances must be made. The accuracy of the statement of
+comparative numbers was denied by Lord Keppel, a member of the same
+party, and but lately at the head of the admiralty, a post which he
+had resigned because he disapproved the treaty.[221] English
+statesmen, too, as well as English seamen, must by this time have
+learned to discount largely the apparent, when estimating the real,
+power of the other navies. Nevertheless, how different would have been
+the appreciation of the situation, both moral and material, had Rodney
+reaped the full fruits of the victory which he owed rather to chance
+than to his own merit, great as that undeniably was.
+
+A letter published in 1809, anonymous, but bearing strong internal
+evidence of being written by Sir Gilbert Blane, the physician of the
+fleet and long on intimate terms with Rodney, who was a constant
+sufferer during his last cruise, states that the admiral "thought
+little of his victory on the 12th of April, 1782." He would have
+preferred to rest his reputation upon his combinations against De
+Guichen, April 17, 1780, and "looked upon that opportunity of beating,
+with an inferior fleet, such an officer, whom he considered the best
+in the French service, as one by which, but for the disobedience of
+his captains, he might have gained immortal renown."[222] Few students
+will be inclined to question this estimate of Rodney's merit on the
+two occasions. Fortune, however, decreed that his glory should depend
+upon a battle, brilliant in itself, to which his own qualities least
+contributed, and denied him success when he most deserved it. The
+chief action of his life in which merit and success met, the
+destruction of Langara's fleet off Cape St. Vincent, has almost
+passed into oblivion; yet it called for the highest qualities of a
+seaman, and is not unworthy of comparison with Hawke's pursuit of
+Conflans.[223]
+
+Within the two years and a half which had elapsed since Rodney was
+appointed to his command he had gained several important successes,
+and, as was remarked, had taken a French, a Spanish, and a Dutch
+admiral. "In that time he had added twelve line-of-battle ships, all
+taken from the enemy, to the British navy, and destroyed five more;
+and to render the whole still more singularly remarkable, the 'Ville
+de Paris' was said to be the only first-rate man-of-war that ever was
+taken and carried into port by any commander of any nation."
+Notwithstanding his services, the party spirit that was then so strong
+in England, penetrating even the army and navy, obtained his
+recall[224] upon the fall of Lord North's ministry, and his successor,
+a man unknown to fame, had already sailed when news arrived of the
+victory. In the fallen and discouraging state of English affairs at
+the time, it excited the utmost exultation, and silenced the
+strictures which certain parts of the admiral's previous conduct had
+drawn forth. The people were not in a humor to be critical, and amid
+the exaggerated notions that prevailed of the results achieved, no one
+thought of the failure to obtain greater. This impression long
+prevailed. As late as 1830, when Rodney's Life was first published, it
+was asserted "that the French navy had been so effectually crippled
+and reduced by the decisive victory of the 12th of April, as to be no
+longer in a condition to contest with Great Britain the empire of the
+seas." This is nonsense, excusable in 1782, but not to the calm
+thought of after days. The favorable terms obtained were due to the
+financial embarrassment of France, not to her naval humiliation; and
+if there was exaggeration in the contention of the advocates of peace
+that England could not save Jamaica, it is probable that she could not
+have recovered by arms the other islands restored to her by the
+treaty.
+
+The memory of De Grasse will always be associated with great services
+done to America. His name, rather than that of Rochambeau, represents
+the material succor which France gave to the struggling life of the
+young Republic, as Lafayette's recalls the moral sympathy so
+opportunely extended. The incidents of his life, subsequent to the
+great disaster which closed his active career, cannot be without
+interest to American readers.
+
+After the surrender of the "Ville de Paris," De Grasse accompanied the
+English fleet and its prizes to Jamaica, whither Rodney repaired to
+refit his ships, thus appearing as a captive upon the scene of his
+intended conquest. On the 19th of May he left the island, still a
+prisoner, for England. Both by naval officers and by the English
+people he was treated with that flattering and benevolent attention
+which comes easily from the victor to the vanquished, and of which his
+personal valor at least was not unworthy. It is said that he did not
+refuse to show himself on several occasions upon the balcony of his
+rooms in London, to the populace shouting for the valiant Frenchman.
+This undignified failure to appreciate his true position naturally
+excited the indignation of his countrymen; the more so as he had been
+unsparing and excessive in denouncing the conduct of his subordinates
+on the unlucky 12th of April.
+
+ "He bears his misfortune," wrote Sir Gilbert Blane, "with
+ equanimity; conscious, as he says, that he has done his duty....
+ He attributes his misfortune, not to the inferiority of his
+ force, but to the base desertion of his officers in the other
+ ships, to whom he made the signal to rally, and even hailed them
+ to abide by him, but was abandoned."[225]
+
+This was the key-note to all his utterances. Writing from the English
+flag-ship, the day after the battle, he "threw upon the greater part
+of his captains the misfortunes of the day. Some had disobeyed his
+signals; others, and notably the captains of the 'Languedoc' and
+'Couronne,' that is to say his next ahead and astern, had abandoned
+him."[226] He did not, however, confine himself to official reports,
+but while a prisoner in London published several pamphlets to the same
+effect, which he sent broadcast over Europe. The government, naturally
+thinking that an officer could not thus sully the honor of his corps
+without good reason, resolved to search out and relentlessly punish
+all the guilty. The captains of the "Languedoc" and "Couronne" were
+imprisoned as soon as they reached France, and all papers, logs, etc.,
+bearing upon the case were gathered together. Under all the
+circumstances it is not to be wondered at that on his return to
+France, De Grasse, to use his own words, "found no one to hold out a
+hand to him."[227] It was not till the beginning of 1784 that all the
+accused and witnesses were ready to appear before the court-martial;
+but the result of the trial was to clear entirely and in the most
+ample manner almost every one whom he had attacked, while the faults
+found were considered of a character entitled to indulgence, and were
+awarded but slight punishment. "Nevertheless," cautiously observes a
+French writer, "one cannot but say, with the Court, that the capture
+of an admiral commanding thirty ships-of-the-line is an historical
+incident which causes the regret of the whole nation."[228] As to the
+conduct of the battle by the admiral, the Court found that the danger
+of the "Zélé" on the morning of the 12th was not such as to justify
+bearing down for so long a time as was done; that the crippled ship
+had a breeze which was not then shared by the English, five miles away
+to the southward, and which carried her into Basse Terre at ten A.M.;
+that the engagement should not have been begun before all the ships
+had come into line; and finally, that the fleet should have been
+formed on the same tack as the English, because, by continuing to
+stand south, it entered the zone of calms and light airs at the north
+end of Dominica.[229]
+
+De Grasse was much dissatisfied with the finding of the Court, and was
+indiscreet enough to write to the minister of marine, protesting
+against it and demanding a new trial. The minister, acknowledging his
+protest, replied in the name of the king. After commenting upon the
+pamphlets that had been so widely issued, and the entire contradiction
+of their statements by the testimony before the Court, he concluded
+with these weighty words:--
+
+ "The loss of the battle cannot be attributed to the fault of
+ private officers.[230] It results, from the findings, that you
+ have allowed yourself to injure, by ill-founded accusations, the
+ reputation of several officers, in order to clear yourself in
+ public opinion of an unhappy result, the excuse for which you
+ might perhaps have found in the inferiority of your force, in
+ the uncertain fortune of war, and in circumstances over which
+ you had no control. His Majesty is willing to believe that you
+ did what you could to prevent the misfortunes of the day; but he
+ cannot be equally indulgent to your unjust imputations upon
+ those officers of his navy who have been cleared of the charges
+ against them. His Majesty, dissatisfied with your conduct in
+ this respect, forbids you to present yourself before him. I
+ transmit his orders with regret, and add my own advice to
+ retire, under the circumstances, to your province."
+
+De Grasse died in January, 1788. His fortunate opponent, rewarded with
+peerage and pension, lived until 1792. Hood was also created a peer,
+and commanded with distinction in the early part of the wars of the
+French Revolution, winning the enthusiastic admiration of Nelson, who
+served under him; but a sharp difference with the admiralty caused him
+to be retired before achieving any brilliant addition to his
+reputation. He died in 1816, at the great age of ninety-two.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[194] The curve, a, a', a'', represents the line which Hood proposed
+to follow with his fleet, the wind being supposed east-southeast. The
+positions B, B, B, refer to the proceedings of a subsequent day and
+have nothing to do with the diagram at A.
+
+[195] When a fleet is in line ahead, close to the wind, on one tack,
+and the ships go about together, they will, on the other tack, be on
+the same line, but not one ahead of the other. This formation was
+called bow-and-quarter line.
+
+[196] A spring is a rope taken from the stern or quarter of a ship at
+anchor, to an anchor properly placed, by which means the ship can be
+turned in a desired direction.
+
+[197] In the council of war of the allied fleets on the expediency of
+attacking the English squadron anchored at Torbay (p. 408) an opponent
+of the measure urged "that the whole of the combined fleets could not
+bear down upon the English in a line-of-battle abreast, that of course
+they must form the line-of-battle ahead, and go down upon the enemy
+singly, by which they would run the greatest risk of being shattered
+and torn to pieces," etc. (Beatson, vol. v. p. 396).
+
+[198] In war, as in cards, the state of the score must at times
+dictate the play; and the chief who never takes into consideration the
+effect which his particular action will have on the general result,
+nor what is demanded of him by the condition of things elsewhere, both
+political and military, lacks an essential quality of a great general.
+"The audacious manner in which Wellington stormed the redoubt of
+Francisco [at Ciudad Rodrigo], and broke ground on the first night of
+the investment, the more audacious manner in which he assaulted the
+place before the fire of the defence had in any way lessened, and
+before the counterscarp had been blown in, were the true causes of the
+sudden fall of the place. _Both the military and political state of
+affairs warranted this neglect of rules._ When the general terminated
+his order for the assault with this sentence, 'Ciudad Rodrigo _must_
+be stormed this evening,' he knew well that it would be nobly
+understood" (Napier's Peninsular War). "Judging that the honour of his
+Majesty's arms, _and the circumstances of the war in these seas_,
+required a considerable degree of enterprise, I felt myself justified
+in departing from the regular system" (Sir John Jervis's Report of the
+Battle of Cape St. Vincent).
+
+[199] By Kempenfeldt's attack upon De Guichen's convoy, and the
+following gale in December, 1781. See p. 408.
+
+[200] Kerguelen: Guerre Maritime de 1778. Letter of De Grasse to
+Kerguelen, dated Paris. January 8, 1783. p. 263.
+
+[201] See pp. 366, 426.
+
+[202] See Map IV. of the Atlantic Ocean, p. 532.
+
+[203] Weather quarter is behind, but on the windward side.
+
+[204] April 29, 1781, off Martinique, twenty-four ships to eighteen;
+January, 1782, thirty to twenty-two; April 9, 1782, thirty to twenty.
+
+[205] The difference of time from Trincomalee to the Saints is nine
+hours and a half.
+
+[206] The account of the transactions from April 9 to April 12 is
+based mainly upon the contemporary plates and descriptions of
+Lieutenant Matthews, R.N., and the much later "Naval Researches" of
+Capt. Thomas White, also of the British Navy, who were eye-witnesses,
+both being checked by French and other English narratives. Matthews
+and White are at variance with Rodney's official report as to the tack
+on which the English were at daybreak; but the latter is explicitly
+confirmed by private letters of Sir Charles Douglas, sent immediately
+after the battle to prominent persons, and is followed in the text.
+
+[207] Letter of Sir Charles Douglas, Rodney's chief-of-staff: "United
+Service Journal," 1833, Part I. p. 515.
+
+[208] De Grasse calls this distance three leagues, while some of his
+captains estimated it to be as great as five.
+
+[209] The French, in mid-channel, had the wind more to the eastward.
+
+[210] The positions of the French ships captured are shown by a cross
+in each of the three successive stages of the battle, B, C, D.
+
+[211] The distance of the weathermost French ships from the "Ville de
+Paris," when the signal to form line-of-battle was made, is variously
+stated at from six to nine miles.
+
+[212] The other two French ships taken were the "Ville de Paris,"
+which, in her isolated condition, and bearing the flag of the
+commander-in-chief, became the quarry around which the enemy's ships
+naturally gathered, and the "Ardent," of sixty-four guns, which
+appears to have been intercepted in a gallant attempt to pass from the
+van to the side of her admiral in his extremity. The latter was the
+solitary prize taken by the allied Great Armada in the English
+Channel, in 1779.
+
+[213] Official letter of the Marquis de Vaudreuil. Guérin: Histoire de
+la Marine Française, vol. v. p. 513.
+
+[214] See United Service Journal, 1834, Part II. pp. 109 and
+following.
+
+[215] See letter of Sir Howard Douglas in United Service Journal,
+1834, Part II. p. 97; also "Naval Evolutions," by same author. The
+letters of Sir Samuel Hood have not come under the author's eye.
+
+[216] Rodney's Life, vol. ii. p. 248.
+
+[217] There were only twenty-five in all.
+
+[218] Guérin, vol. v. p. 511.
+
+[219] Rodney's Life, vol. ii. p. 246.
+
+[220] Annual Register, 1783, p. 151.
+
+[221] Annual Register, 1783, p. 157; Life of Admiral Keppel, vol. ii.
+p. 403.
+
+[222] Naval Chronicle, vol. xxv. p. 404.
+
+[223] Page 404. Yet here also the gossip of the day, as reflected in
+the Naval Atalantis, imputed the chief credit to Young, the captain of
+the flag-ship. Sir Gilbert Blane stated, many years later, "When it
+was close upon sunset, it became a question whether the chase should
+be continued. After some discussion between the admiral and captain,
+at which I was present, the admiral being confined with the gout, it
+was decided to persist in the same course with the signal to engage to
+leeward." (United Service Journal, 1830, Part II. p. 479.)
+
+[224] Rodney was a strong Tory. Almost all the other distinguished
+admirals of the day, notably Keppel, Howe, and Barrington, were
+Whigs,--a fact unfortunate for the naval power of England.
+
+[225] Rodney's Life, vol. ii. p. 242.
+
+[226] Chevalier, p. 311.
+
+[227] Kerguelen: Guerre Maritime de 1778. Letter of De Grasse to
+Kerguelen, p. 263.
+
+[228] Troude: Batailles Navales. It is interesting to note in this
+connection that one of the ships near the French admiral, when he
+surrendered, was the "Pluton," which, though the extreme rear ship,
+had nevertheless thus reached a position worthy of the high reputation
+of her captain, D'Albert de Rions.
+
+[229] Troude, vol. ii. p. 147
+
+[230] That is, commanders of single ships.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+ CRITICAL DISCUSSION OF THE MARITIME WAR OF 1778.
+
+
+The war of 1778, between Great Britain and the House of Bourbon, which
+is so inextricably associated with the American Revolution, stands by
+itself in one respect. It was purely a maritime war. Not only did the
+allied kingdoms carefully refrain from continental entanglements,
+which England in accordance with her former policy strove to excite,
+but there was between the two contestants an approach to equality on
+the sea which had not been realized since the days of Tourville. The
+points in dispute, the objects for which the war was undertaken or at
+which it aimed, were for the most part remote from Europe; and none of
+them was on the continent with the single exception of Gibraltar, the
+strife over which, being at the extreme point of a rugged and
+difficult salient, and separated from neutral nations by the whole of
+France and Spain, never threatened to drag in other parties than those
+immediately interested.
+
+No such conditions existed in any war between the accession of Louis
+XIV. and the downfall of Napoleon. There was a period during the reign
+of the former in which the French navy was superior in number and
+equipment to the English and Dutch; but the policy and ambition of the
+sovereign was always directed to continental extension, and his naval
+power, resting on inadequate foundations, was ephemeral. During the
+first three-quarters of the eighteenth century there was practically
+no check to the sea power of England; great as were its effects upon
+the issues of the day, the absence of a capable rival made its
+operations barren of military lessons. In the later wars of the French
+Republic and Empire, the apparent equality in numbers of ships and
+weight of batteries was illusive, owing to the demoralization of the
+French officers and seamen by causes upon which it is not necessary
+here to enlarge. After some years of courageous but impotent effort,
+the tremendous disaster of Trafalgar proclaimed to the world the
+professional inefficiency of the French and Spanish navies, already
+detected by the keen eyes of Nelson and his brother officers, and upon
+which rested the contemptuous confidence that characterized his
+attitude, and to some extent his tactics, toward them. Thenceforward
+the emperor "turned his eyes from the only field of battle where
+fortune had been unfaithful to him, and deciding to pursue England
+elsewhere than upon the seas, undertook to restore his navy, but
+without reserving to it any share in a strife become more than ever
+furious.... Up to the last day of the Empire he refused to offer to
+this restored navy, full of ardor and confidence, the opportunity to
+measure itself with the enemy."[231] Great Britain resumed her old
+position as unquestioned mistress of the seas.
+
+The student of naval war will therefore expect to find a particular
+interest in the plans and methods of the parties to this great
+contest, and especially where they concern the general conduct of the
+whole war, or of certain large and clearly defined portions of it; in
+the strategic purpose which gave, or should have given, continuity to
+their actions from first to last, and in the strategic movements which
+affected for good or ill the fortunes of the more limited periods,
+which may be called naval campaigns. For while it cannot be conceded
+that the particular battles are, even at this day, wholly devoid of
+tactical instruction, which it has been one of the aims of the
+preceding pages to elicit, it is undoubtedly true that, like all the
+tactical systems of history, they have had their day, and their
+present usefulness to the student is rather in the mental training, in
+the forming of correct tactical habits of thought, than in supplying
+models for close imitation. On the other hand, the movements which
+precede and prepare for great battles, or which, by their skilful and
+energetic combinations, attain great ends without the actual contact
+of arms, depend upon factors more permanent than the weapons of the
+age, and therefore furnish principles of more enduring value.
+
+In a war undertaken for any object, even if that object be the
+possession of a particular territory or position, an attack directly
+upon the place coveted may not be, from the military point of view,
+the best means of obtaining it. The end upon which the military
+operations are directed may therefore be other than the object which
+the belligerent government wishes to obtain, and it has received a
+name of its own,--the objective. In the critical consideration of any
+war it is necessary, first, to put clearly before the student's eye
+the objects desired by each belligerent; then, to consider whether the
+objective chosen is the most likely, in case of success, to compass
+those objects; and finally, to study the merits or faults of the
+various movements by which the objective is approached. The minuteness
+with which such an examination is conducted will depend upon the
+extent of the work which the inquirer proposes to himself; but it will
+generally conduce to clearness if an outline, giving only the main
+features unencumbered by detail, should precede a more exhaustive
+discussion. When such principal lines are thoroughly grasped, details
+are easily referred to them, and fall into place. The effort here will
+be confined to presenting such an outline, as being alone fitted to
+the scope of this work.
+
+The principal parties to the War of 1778 were, on the one hand, Great
+Britain; on the other, the House of Bourbon, controlling the two great
+kingdoms of France and Spain. The American colonies, being already
+engaged in an unequal struggle with the mother-country, gladly
+welcomed an event so important to them; while in 1780 Holland was
+deliberately forced by England into a war from which she had nothing
+to gain and all to lose. The object of the Americans was perfectly
+simple,--to rid their country out of the hands of the English. Their
+poverty and their lack of military sea power, with the exception of a
+few cruisers that preyed upon the enemy's commerce, necessarily
+confined their efforts to land warfare, which constituted indeed a
+powerful diversion in favor of the allies and an exhausting drain upon
+the resources of Great Britain, but which it was in the power of the
+latter to stop at once by abandoning the contest. Holland, on the
+other hand, being safe from invasion by land, showed little desire for
+anything more than to escape with as little external loss as possible,
+through the assistance of the allied navies. The object of these two
+minor parties may therefore be said to have been the cessation of the
+war; whereas the principals hoped from its continuance certain changed
+conditions, which constituted their objects.
+
+With Great Britain also the object of the war was very simple. Having
+been led into a lamentable altercation with her most promising
+colonies, the quarrel had gone on step by step till she was threatened
+with their loss. To maintain forcible control when willing adhesion
+had departed, she had taken up arms against them, and her object in so
+doing was to prevent a break in those foreign possessions with which,
+in the eyes of that generation, her greatness was indissolubly
+connected. The appearance of France and Spain as active supporters of
+the colonists' cause made no change in England's objects, whatever
+change of objective her military plans may, or should, have undergone.
+The danger of losing the continental colonies was vastly increased by
+these accessions to the ranks of her enemies, which brought with them
+also a threat of loss, soon to be realized in part, of other valuable
+foreign possessions. England, in short, as regards the objects of the
+war, was strictly on the defensive; she feared losing much, and at
+best only hoped to keep what she had. By forcing Holland into war,
+however, she obtained a military advantage; for, without increasing
+the strength of her opponents, several important but ill-defended
+military and commercial positions were thereby laid open to her arms.
+
+The views and objects of France and Spain were more complex. The moral
+incentives of hereditary enmity and desire of revenge for the recent
+past doubtless weighed strongly, as in France did also the sympathy
+of the _salons_ and philosophers with the colonists' struggle for
+freedom; but powerfully as sentimental considerations affect the
+action of nations, only the tangible means by which it is expected to
+gratify them admit of statement and measurement. France might wish to
+regain her North American possessions; but the then living generation
+of colonists had too keen personal recollection of the old contests to
+acquiesce in any such wishes as to Canada. The strong inherited
+distrust of the French, which characterized the Americans of the
+revolutionary era, has been too much overlooked in the glow of
+gratitude which followed the effectual sympathy and assistance then
+given; but it was understood at the time, and France felt, that to
+renew those pretensions might promote, between people of the same race
+only recently alienated, a reconciliation by just concessions, which a
+strong and high-minded party of Englishmen had never ceased to
+advocate. She therefore did not avow, perhaps did not entertain, this
+object. On the contrary, she formally renounced all claim to any part
+of the continent which was then, or had recently been, under the power
+of the British crown, but stipulated for freedom of action in
+conquering and retaining any of the West India Islands, while all the
+other colonies of Great Britain were, of course, open to her attack.
+The principal objects at which France aimed were therefore the English
+West Indies and that control of India which had passed into English
+hands, and also to secure in due time the independence of the United
+States, after they had wrought a sufficient diversion in her favor.
+With the policy of exclusive trade which characterized that
+generation, the loss of these important possessions was expected to
+lessen that commercial greatness upon which the prosperity of England
+depended,--to weaken her and to strengthen France. In fact, the strife
+which should be greater may be said to have been the animating motive
+of France; all objects were summed up in the one supreme end to which
+they contributed,--maritime and political superiority over England.
+
+Preponderance over England, in combination with France, was also the
+aim of the equally humbled but less vigorous kingdom of Spain; but
+there was a definiteness in the injuries suffered and the objects
+specially sought by her which is less easily found in the broader
+views of her ally. Although no Spaniard then living could remember the
+Spanish flag flying over Minorca, Gibraltar, or Jamaica, the lapse of
+time had not reconciled the proud and tenacious nation to their loss;
+nor was there on the part of the Americans the same traditional
+objection to the renewal of Spanish sovereignty over the two Floridas
+that was felt with reference to Canada.
+
+Such, then, were the objects sought by the two nations, whose
+interposition changed the whole character of the American
+Revolutionary War. It is needless to say that they did not all appear
+among the causes, or pretexts, avowed for engaging in hostility; but
+sagacious English opinion of the day rightly noted, as embodying in a
+few words the real ground of action of the united Bourbon Courts, the
+following phrase in the French manifesto: "To avenge their respective
+injuries, and to put an end to that tyrannical empire which England
+has usurped, and claims to maintain upon the ocean." In short, as
+regards the _objects_ of the war the allies were on the offensive, as
+England was thrown upon the defensive.
+
+The tyrannical empire which England was thus accused, and not
+unjustly, of exercising over the seas, rested upon her great sea
+power, actual or latent; upon her commerce and armed shipping, her
+commercial establishments, colonies, and naval stations in all parts
+of the world. Up to this time her scattered colonies had been bound to
+her by ties of affectionate sentiment, and by the still stronger
+motive of self-interest through the close commercial connection with
+the mother-country and the protection afforded by the constant
+presence of her superior navy. Now a break was made in the girdle of
+strong ports upon which her naval power was based, by the revolt of
+the continental colonies; while the numerous trade interests between
+them and the West Indies, which were injured by the consequent
+hostilities, tended to divide the sympathies of the islands also. The
+struggle was not only for political possession and commercial use. It
+involved a military question of the first importance,--whether a chain
+of naval stations covering one of the shores of the Atlantic, linking
+Canada and Halifax with the West Indies, and backed by a thriving
+seafaring population, should remain in the hands of a nation which had
+so far used its unprecedented sea power with consistent, resolute
+aggressiveness, and with almost unbroken success.
+
+While Great Britain was thus embarrassed by the difficulty of
+maintaining her hold upon her naval bases, which were the defensive
+element of her naval strength, her offensive naval power, her fleet,
+was threatened by the growth of the armed shipping of France and
+Spain, which now confronted her upon the field which she had claimed
+as her own, with an organized military force of equal or superior
+material strength. The moment was therefore favorable for attacking
+the great Power whose wealth, reaped from the sea, had been a decisive
+factor in the European wars of the past century. The next question was
+the selection of the points of attack--of the principal _objectives_
+upon which the main effort of the assailants should be steadily
+directed, and of the secondary objectives by which the defence should
+be distracted and its strength dissipated.
+
+One of the wisest French statesmen of that day, Turgot, held that it
+was to the interest of France that the colonies should not achieve
+their independence. If subdued by exhaustion, their strength was lost
+to England; if reduced by a military tenure of controlling points, but
+not exhausted, the necessity of constant repression would be a
+continual weakness to the mother-country. Though this opinion did not
+prevail in the councils of the French government, which wished the
+ultimate independence of America, it contained elements of truth which
+effectually moulded the policy of the war. If benefit to the United
+States, by effecting their deliverance, were the principal object, the
+continent became the natural scene, and its decisive military points
+the chief objectives, of operations; but as the first object of France
+was not to benefit America, but to injure England, sound military
+judgment dictated that the continental strife, so far from being
+helped to a conclusion, should be kept in vigorous life. It was a
+diversion ready made to the hand of France and exhausting to Great
+Britain, requiring only so much support as would sustain a resistance
+to which the insurgents were bound by the most desperate alternatives.
+The territory of the thirteen colonies therefore should not be the
+principal objective of France; much less that of Spain.
+
+The commercial value of the English West Indies made them tempting
+objects to the French, who adapted themselves with peculiar readiness
+to the social conditions of that region, in which their colonial
+possessions were already extensive. Besides the two finest of the
+Lesser Antilles, Guadeloupe and Martinique, which she still retains,
+France then held Sta. Lucia and the western half of Hayti. She might
+well hope by successful war to add most of the English Antilles, and
+thus to round off a truly imperial tropical dependency; while, though
+debarred from Jamaica by the susceptibilities of Spain, it might be
+possible to win back that magnificent island for an allied and weaker
+nation. But however desirable as possessions, and therefore as
+objects, the smaller Antilles might be, their military tenure depended
+too entirely upon control of the sea for them to be in themselves
+proper objectives. The French government, therefore, forbade its naval
+commanders to occupy such as they might seize. They were to make the
+garrisons prisoners, destroy the defences, and so retire. In the
+excellent military port of Fort Royal, Martinique, in Cap Français,
+and in the strong allied harbor of Havana, a fleet of adequate size
+found good, secure, and well-distributed bases; while the early and
+serious loss of Sta. Lucia must be attributed to the mismanagement of
+the French fleet and the professional ability of the English admiral.
+On shore, in the West Indies, the rival powers therefore found
+themselves about equally provided with the necessary points of
+support; mere occupation of others could not add to their military
+strength, thenceforth dependent upon the numbers and quality of the
+fleets. To extend occupation further with safety, the first need was
+to obtain maritime supremacy, not only locally, but over the general
+field of war. Otherwise occupation was precarious, unless enforced by
+a body of troops so large as to entail expense beyond the worth of the
+object. The key of the situation in the West Indies being thus in the
+fleets, these became the true objectives of the military effort; and
+all the more so because the real _military_ usefulness of the West
+Indian ports in this war was as an intermediate base, between Europe
+and the American continent, to which the fleets retired when the
+armies went into winter quarters. No sound strategic operation on
+shore was undertaken in the West Indies except the seizure of Sta.
+Lucia by the English, and the abortive plan against Jamaica in 1782;
+nor was any serious attempt against a military port, as Barbadoes or
+Fort Royal, possible, until naval preponderance was assured either by
+battle or by happy concentration of force. The key of the situation,
+it must be repeated, was in the fleet.
+
+The influence of naval power, of an armed fleet, upon the war on the
+American continent has also been indicated in the opinions of
+Washington and Sir Henry Clinton; while the situation in the East
+Indies, regarded as a field by itself, has been so largely discussed
+under the head of Suffren's campaign, that it needs here only to
+repeat that everything there depended upon control of the sea by a
+superior naval force. The capture of Trincomalee, essential as it was
+to the French squadron which had no other base, was, like that of Sta.
+Lucia, a surprise, and could only have been effected by the defeat,
+or, as happened, by the absence of the enemy's fleet. In North America
+and India sound military policy pointed out, as the true objective,
+the enemy's fleet, upon which also depended the communications with
+the mother-countries. There remains Europe, which it is scarcely
+profitable to examine at length as a separate field of action, because
+its relations to the universal war are so much more important. It may
+simply be pointed out that the only two points in Europe whose
+political transfer was an object of the war were Gibraltar and
+Minorca; the former of which was throughout, by the urgency of Spain,
+made a principal objective of the allies. The tenure of both these
+depended, obviously, upon control of the sea.
+
+In a sea war, as in all others, two things are from the first
+essential,--a suitable base upon the frontier, in this case the
+seaboard, from which the operations start, and an organized military
+force, in this case a fleet, of size and quality adequate to the
+proposed operations. If the war, as in the present instance, extends
+to distant parts of the globe, there will be needed in each of those
+distant regions secure ports for the shipping, to serve as secondary,
+or contingent, bases of the local war. Between these secondary and the
+principal, or home, bases there must be reasonably secure
+communication, which will depend upon military control of the
+intervening sea. This control must be exercised by the navy, which
+will enforce it either by clearing the sea in all directions of
+hostile cruisers, thus allowing the ships of its own nation to pass
+with reasonable security, or by accompanying in force (convoying) each
+train of supply-ships necessary for the support of the distant
+operations. The former method aims at a widely diffused effort of the
+national power, the other at a concentration of it upon that part of
+the sea where the convoy is at a given moment. Whichever be adopted,
+the communications will doubtless be strengthened by the military
+holding of good harbors, properly spaced yet not too numerous, along
+the routes,--as, for instance, the Cape of Good Hope and the
+Mauritius. Stations of this kind have always been necessary, but are
+doubly so now, as fuel needs renewing more frequently than did the
+provisions and supplies in former days. These combinations of strong
+points at home and abroad, and the condition of the communications
+between them, may be called the strategic features of the general
+military situation, by which, and by the relative strength of the
+opposing fleets, the nature of the operations must be determined. In
+each of the three divisions of the field, Europe, America, and India,
+under which for sake of clearness the narrative has been given, the
+control of the sea has been insisted upon as the determining factor,
+and the hostile fleet therefore indicated as the true objective. Let
+the foregoing considerations now be applied to the whole field of
+war, and see how far the same conclusion holds good of it, and if so,
+what should have been the nature of the operations on either
+side.[232]
+
+In Europe the home base of Great Britain was on the English Channel,
+with the two principal arsenals of Plymouth and Portsmouth. The base
+of the allied powers was on the Atlantic, the principal military ports
+being Brest, Ferrol, and Cadiz. Behind these, within the
+Mediterranean, were the dock-yards of Toulon and Cartagena, over
+against which stood the English station Port Mahon, in Minorca. The
+latter, however, may be left wholly out of account, being confined to
+a defensive part during the war, as the British fleet was not able to
+spare any squadron to the Mediterranean. Gibraltar, on the contrary,
+by its position, effectually watched over detachments or
+reinforcements from within the Straits, provided it were utilized as
+the station of a body of ships adequate to the duty. This was not
+done; the British European fleet being kept tied to the Channel, that
+is, to home defence, and making infrequent visits to the Rock to
+convoy supplies essential to the endurance of the garrison. There was,
+however, a difference in the parts played by Port Mahon and Gibraltar.
+The former, being at the time wholly unimportant, received no
+attention from the allies until late in the war, when it fell after a
+six months' siege; whereas the latter, being considered of the first
+importance, absorbed from the beginning a very large part of the
+allied attack, and so made a valuable diversion in favor of Great
+Britain. To this view of the principal features of the natural
+strategic situation in Europe may properly be added the remark, that
+such aid as Holland might be inclined to send to the allied fleets had
+a very insecure line of communication, being forced to pass along the
+English base on the Channel. Such aid in fact was never given.
+
+In North America the local bases of the war at its outbreak were New
+York, Narragansett Bay, and Boston. The two former were then held by
+the English, and were the most important stations on the continent,
+from their position, susceptibility of defence, and resources. Boston
+had passed into the hands of the Americans, and was therefore at the
+service of the allies. From the direction actually given to the war,
+by diverting the active English operations to the Southern States in
+1779, Boston was thrown outside the principal theatre of operations,
+and became from its position militarily unimportant; but had the plan
+been adopted of isolating New England by holding the line of the
+Hudson and Lake Champlain, and concentrating military effort to the
+eastward, it will be seen that these three ports would all have been
+of decisive importance to the issue. South of New York, the Delaware
+and Chesapeake Bays undoubtedly offered tempting fields for maritime
+enterprise; but the width of the entrances, the want of suitable and
+easily defended points for naval stations near the sea, the wide
+dispersal of the land forces entailed by an attempt to hold so many
+points, and the sickliness of the locality during a great part of the
+year, should have excepted them from a principal part in the plan of
+the first campaigns. It is not necessary to include them among the
+local bases of the war. To the extreme south the English were drawn by
+the _ignis fatuus_ of expected support among the people. They failed
+to consider that even if a majority there preferred quiet to freedom,
+that very quality would prevent them from rising against the
+revolutionary government by which, on the English theory, they were
+oppressed; yet upon such a rising the whole success of this distant
+and in its end most unfortunate enterprise was staked. The local base
+of this war apart was Charleston, which passed into the hands of the
+British in May, 1780, eighteen months after the first expedition had
+landed in Georgia.
+
+The principal local bases of the war in the West Indies are already
+known through the previous narrative. They were for the English,
+Barbadoes, Sta. Lucia, and to a less degree Antigua. A thousand miles
+to leeward was the large island of Jamaica, with a dock-yard of great
+natural capabilities at Kingston. The allies held, in the first order
+of importance, Fort Royal in Martinique, and Havana; in the second
+order, Guadeloupe and Cap Français. A controlling feature of the
+strategic situation in that day, and one which will not be wholly
+without weight in our own, was the trade-wind, with its accompanying
+current. A passage to windward against these obstacles was a long and
+serious undertaking even for single ships, much more for larger
+bodies. It followed that fleets would go to the western islands only
+reluctantly, or when assured that the enemy had taken the same
+direction, as Rodney went to Jamaica after the Battle of the Saints,
+knowing the French fleet to have gone to Cap Français. This condition
+of the wind made the windward, or eastern, islands points on the
+natural lines of communication between Europe and America, as well as
+local bases of the naval war, and tied the fleets to them. Hence also
+it followed that between the two scenes of operations, between the
+continent and the Lesser Antilles, was interposed a wide central
+region into which the larger operations of war could not safely be
+carried except by a belligerent possessed of great naval superiority,
+or unless a decisive advantage had been gained upon one flank. In
+1762, when England held all the Windward Islands, with undisputed
+superiority at sea, she safely attacked and subdued Havana; but in the
+years 1779-1782 the French sea power in America and the French tenure
+of the Windward Islands practically balanced her own, leaving the
+Spaniards at Havana free to prosecute their designs against Pensacola
+and the Bahamas, in the central region mentioned.[233]
+
+Posts like Martinique and Sta. Lucia had therefore for the present war
+great strategic advantage over Jamaica, Havana, or others to leeward.
+They commanded the latter in virtue of their position, by which the
+passage westward could be made so much more quickly than the return;
+while the decisive points of the continental struggle were practically
+little farther from the one than from the other. This advantage was
+shared equally by most of those known as the Lesser Antilles; but the
+small island of Barbadoes, being well to windward of all, possessed
+peculiar advantages, not only for offensive action, but because it was
+defended by the difficulty with which a large fleet could approach it,
+even from so near a port as Fort Royal. It will be remembered that the
+expedition which finally sat down before St. Kitt's had been intended
+for Barbadoes, but could not reach it through the violence of the
+trade-wind. Thus Barbadoes, under the conditions of the time, was
+peculiarly fitted to be the local base and depot of the English war,
+as well as a wayside port of refuge on the line of communications to
+Jamaica, Florida, and even to North America; while Sta. Lucia, a
+hundred miles to leeward, was held in force as an advanced post for
+the fleet, watching closely the enemy at Fort Royal.
+
+In India the political conditions of the peninsula necessarily
+indicated the eastern, or Coromandel, coast as the scene of
+operations. Trincomalee, in the adjacent island of Ceylon, though
+unhealthy, offered an excellent and defensible harbor, and thus
+acquired first-rate strategic importance, all the other anchorages on
+the coast being mere open roadsteads. From this circumstance the
+trade-winds, or monsoons, in this region also had strategic bearing.
+From the autumnal to the spring equinox the wind blows regularly from
+the northeast, at times with much violence, throwing a heavy surf upon
+the beach and making landing difficult; but during the summer months
+the prevailing wind is southwest, giving comparatively smooth seas and
+good weather. The "change of the monsoon," in September and October,
+is often marked by violent hurricanes. Active operations, or even
+remaining on the coast, were therefore unadvisable from this time
+until the close of the northeast monsoon. The question of a port to
+which to retire during this season was pressing. Trincomalee was the
+only one, and its unique strategic value was heightened by being to
+windward, during the fine season, of the principal scene of war. The
+English harbor of Bombay on the west coast was too distant to be
+considered a local base, and rather falls, like the French islands
+Mauritius and Bourbon, under the head of stations on the line of
+communications with the mother-country.
+
+Such were the principal points of support, or bases, of the
+belligerent nations, at home and abroad. Of those abroad it must be
+said, speaking generally, that they were deficient in resources,--an
+important element of strategic value. Naval and military stores and
+equipments, and to a great extent provisions for sea use, had to be
+sent them from the mother-countries. Boston, surrounded by a thriving,
+friendly population, was perhaps an exception to this statement, as
+was also Havana, at that time an important naval arsenal, where much
+ship-building was done; but these were distant from the principal
+theatres of war. Upon New York and Narragansett Bay the Americans
+pressed too closely for the resources of the neighboring country to be
+largely available, while the distant ports of the East and West Indies
+depended wholly upon home. Hence the strategic question of
+communications assumed additional importance. To intercept a large
+convoy of supply-ships was an operation only secondary to the
+destruction of a body of ships-of-war; while to protect such by main
+strength, or by evading the enemy's search, taxed the skill of the
+governments and naval commanders in distributing the ships-of-war and
+squadrons at their disposal, among the many objects which demanded
+attention. The address of Kempenfeldt and the bad management of
+Guichen in the North Atlantic, seconded by a heavy gale of wind,
+seriously embarrassed De Grasse in the West Indies. Similar injury, by
+cutting off small convoys in the Atlantic, was done to Suffren in the
+Indian seas: while the latter at once made good part of these losses,
+and worried his opponents by the success of his cruisers preying on
+the English supply-ships.
+
+Thus the navies, by which alone these vital streams could be secured
+or endangered, bore the same relation to the maintenance of the
+general war that has already been observed of the separate parts. They
+were the links that bound the whole together, and were therefore
+indicated as the proper objective of both belligerents.
+
+The distance from Europe to America was not such as to make
+intermediate ports of supply absolutely necessary; while if difficulty
+did arise from an unforeseen cause, it was always possible, barring
+meeting an enemy, either to return to Europe or to make a friendly
+port in the West Indies. The case was different with the long voyage
+to India by the Cape of Good Hope. Bickerton, leaving England with a
+convoy in February, was thought to have done well in reaching Bombay
+the following September; while the ardent Suffren, sailing in March,
+took an equal time to reach Mauritius, whence the passage to Madras
+consumed two months more. A voyage of such duration could rarely be
+made without a stop for water, for fresh provision, often for such
+refitting as called for the quiet of a harbor, even when the stores on
+board furnished the necessary material. A perfect line of
+communications required, as has been said, several such harbors,
+properly spaced, adequately defended, and with abundant supplies, such
+as England in the present day holds on some of her main commercial
+routes, acquisitions of her past wars. In the war of 1778 none of the
+belligerents had such ports on this route, until by the accession of
+Holland, the Cape of Good Hope was put at the disposal of the French
+and suitably strengthened by Suffren. With this and the Mauritius on
+the way, and Trincomalee at the far end of the road, the
+communications of the allies with France were reasonably guarded.
+England, though then holding St. Helena, depended, for the refreshment
+and refitting of her India-bound squadrons and convoys in the
+Atlantic, upon the benevolent neutrality of Portugal, extended in the
+islands of Madeira and Cape Verde and in the Brazilian ports. This
+neutrality was indeed a frail reliance for defence, as was shown by
+the encounter between Johnstone and Suffren at the Cape Verde; but
+there being several possible stopping-places, and the enemy unable to
+know which, if any, would be used, this ignorance itself conferred no
+small security, if the naval commander did not trust it to the neglect
+of proper disposition of his own force, as did Johnstone at Porto
+Praya. Indeed, with the delay and uncertainty which then characterized
+the transmission of intelligence from one point to another, doubt
+where to find the enemy was a greater bar to offensive enterprises
+than the often slight defences of a colonial port.
+
+This combination of useful harbors and the conditions of the
+communications between them constitute, as has been said, the main
+strategic outlines of the situation. The navy, as the organized force
+linking the whole together, has been indicated as the principal
+objective of military effort. The method employed to reach the
+objective, the conduct of the war, is still to be considered.[234]
+
+Before doing this a condition peculiar to the sea, and affecting the
+following discussion, must be briefly mentioned; that is, the
+difficulty of obtaining information. Armies pass through countries
+more or less inhabited by a stationary population, and they leave
+behind them traces of their march. Fleets move through a desert over
+which wanderers flit, but where they do not remain; and as the waters
+close behind them, an occasional waif from the decks may indicate
+their passage, but tells nothing of their course. The sail spoken by
+the pursuer may know nothing of the pursued, which yet passed the
+point of parley but a few days or hours before. Of late, careful study
+of the winds and currents of the ocean has laid down certain
+advantageous routes, which will be habitually followed by a careful
+seaman, and afford some presumption as to his movements; but in 1778
+the data for such precision were not collected, and even had they
+been, the quickest route must often have been abandoned for one of the
+many possible ones, in order to elude pursuit or lying-in-wait. In
+such a game of hide-and-seek the advantage is with the sought, and the
+great importance of watching the outlets of an enemy's country, of
+stopping the chase before it has got away into the silent desert, is
+at once evident. If for any reason such a watch there is impossible,
+the next best thing is, not attempting to watch routes which may not
+be taken, to get first to the enemy's destination and await him there;
+but this implies a knowledge of his intentions which may not always be
+obtainable. The action of Suffren, when pitted against Johnstone, was
+throughout strategically sound, both in his attack at Porto Praya and
+in the haste with which he made for their common destination; while
+the two failures of Rodney to intercept the convoys to Martinique in
+1780 and 1782, though informed that they were coming, show the
+difficulty which attended lying-in-wait even when the point of arrival
+was known.
+
+Of any maritime expedition two points only are fixed,--the point of
+departure and that of arrival. The latter may be unknown to the enemy;
+but up to the time of sailing, the presence of a certain force in a
+port, and the indications of a purpose soon to move, may be assumed to
+be known. It may be of moment to either belligerent to intercept such
+a movement; but it is more especially and universally necessary to the
+defence, because, of the many points at which he is open to attack, it
+may be impossible for him to know which is threatened; whereas the
+offence proceeds with full knowledge direct to his aim, if he can
+deceive his opponent. The importance of blocking such an expedition
+becomes yet more evident should it at any time be divided between two
+or more ports,--a condition which may easily arise when the facilities
+of a single dock-yard are insufficient to fit out so many ships in
+the time allowed, or when, as in the present war, allied powers
+furnish separate contingents. To prevent the junction of these
+contingents is a matter of prime necessity, and nowhere can this be
+done so certainly as off the ports whence one or both is to sail. The
+defence, from its very name, is presumably the less strong, and is
+therefore the more bound to take advantage of such a source of
+weakness as the division of the enemy's force. Rodney in 1782 at Sta.
+Lucia, watching the French contingent at Martinique to prevent its
+union with the Spaniards at Cap Français, is an instance of correct
+strategic position; and had the islands been so placed as to put him
+between the French and their destination, instead of in their rear,
+nothing better could have been devised. As it was, he did the best
+thing possible under the circumstances.
+
+The defence, being the weaker, cannot attempt to block _all_ the ports
+where divisions of the enemy lie, without defeating his aim by being
+in inferior force before each. This would be to neglect the
+fundamental principles of war. If he correctly decide not to do this,
+but to collect a superior force before one or two points, it becomes
+necessary to decide which shall be thus guarded and which
+neglected,--a question involving the whole policy of the war after a
+full understanding of the main conditions, military, moral, and
+economic, in every quarter.
+
+The defensive was necessarily accepted by England in 1778. It had been
+a maxim with the best English naval authorities of the preceding era,
+with Hawke and his contemporaries, that the British navy should be
+kept equal in numbers to the combined fleets of the Bourbon
+kingdoms,--a condition which, with the better quality of the
+_personnel_ and the larger maritime population upon which it could
+draw, would have given a real superiority of force. This precaution,
+however, had not been observed during recent years. It is of no
+consequence to this discussion whether the failure was due to the
+inefficiency of the ministry, as was charged by their opponents, or to
+the misplaced economy often practised by representative governments
+in time of peace. The fact remains that, notwithstanding the notorious
+probability of France and Spain joining in the war, the English navy
+was inferior in number to that of the allies. In what have been called
+the strategic features of the situation, the home bases, and the
+secondary bases abroad, the advantage upon the whole lay with her. Her
+positions, if not stronger in themselves, were at least better
+situated, geographically, for strategic effect; but in the second
+essential for war, the organized military force, or fleet, adequate to
+offensive operations, she had been allowed to become inferior. It only
+remained, therefore, to use this inferior force with such science and
+vigor as would frustrate the designs of the enemy, by getting first to
+sea, taking positions skilfully, anticipating their combinations by
+greater quickness of movement, harassing their communications with
+their objectives, and meeting the principal divisions of the enemy
+with superior forces.
+
+It is sufficiently clear that the maintenance of this war, everywhere
+except on the American continent, depended upon the mother-countries
+in Europe and upon open communication with them. The ultimate crushing
+of the Americans, too, not by direct military effort but by
+exhaustion, was probable, if England were left unmolested to strangle
+their commerce and industries with her overwhelming naval strength.
+This strength she could put forth against them, if relieved from the
+pressure of the allied navies; and relief would be obtained if she
+could gain over them a decided preponderance, not merely material but
+moral, such as she had twenty years later. In that case the allied
+courts, whose financial weakness was well known, must retire from a
+contest in which their main purpose of reducing England to an inferior
+position was already defeated. Such preponderance, however, could only
+be had by fighting; by showing that, despite inferiority in numbers,
+the skill of her seamen and the resources of her wealth enabled her
+government, by a wise use of these powers, to be actually superior at
+the decisive points of the war. It could never be had by distributing
+the ships-of-the-line all over the world, exposing them to be beaten
+in detail while endeavoring to protect all the exposed points of the
+scattered empire.
+
+The key of the situation was in Europe, and in Europe in the hostile
+dock-yards. If England were unable, as she proved to be, to raise up a
+continental war against France, then her one hope was to find and
+strike down the enemy's navy. Nowhere was it so certainly to be found
+as in its home ports; nowhere so easily met as immediately after
+leaving them. This dictated her policy in the Napoleonic wars, when
+the moral superiority of her navy was so established that she dared to
+oppose inferior forces to the combined dangers of the sea and of the
+more numerous and well-equipped ships lying quietly at anchor inside.
+By facing this double risk she obtained the double advantage of
+keeping the enemy under her eyes, and of sapping his efficiency by the
+easy life of port, while her own officers and seamen were hardened by
+the rigorous cruising into a perfect readiness for every call upon
+their energies. "We have no reason," proclaimed Admiral Villeneuve in
+1805, echoing the words of the emperor, "to fear the sight of an
+English squadron. Their seventy-fours have not five hundred men on
+board; they are worn out by a two years' cruise."[235] A month later
+he wrote: "The Toulon squadron appeared very fine in the harbor, the
+crews well clothed and drilling well; but as soon as a storm came, all
+was changed. They were not drilled in storms."[236] "The emperor,"
+said Nelson, "now finds, if emperors hear truth, that his fleet
+suffers more in a night than ours in one year.... These gentlemen are
+not used to the hurricanes, which we have braved for twenty-one months
+without losing mast or yard."[237] It must be admitted, however, that
+the strain was tremendous both on men and ships, and that many English
+officers found in the wear and tear an argument against keeping their
+fleets at sea off the enemy's coast. "Every one of the blasts we
+endure," wrote Collingwood, "lessens the security of the country. The
+last cruise disabled five large ships and two more lately; several of
+them must be docked." "I have hardly known what a night of rest is
+these two months," wrote he again; "this incessant cruising seems to
+me beyond the powers of human nature. Calder is worn to a shadow,
+quite broken down, and I am told Graves is not much better."[1] The
+high professional opinion of Lord Howe was also adverse to the
+practice.
+
+Besides the exhaustion of men and ships, it must also be admitted that
+no blockade could be relied on certainly to check the exit of an
+enemy's fleet. Villeneuve escaped from Toulon, Missiessy from
+Rochefort. "I am here watching the French squadron in Rochefort,"
+wrote Collingwood, "but feel that it is not practicable to prevent
+their sailing; and yet, if they should get by me, I should be
+exceedingly mortified.... The only thing that can prevent their
+sailing is the apprehension that they may get among us, as they cannot
+know exactly where we are."[238]
+
+Nevertheless, the strain then was endured. The English fleets girdled
+the shores of France and Spain; losses were made good; ships were
+repaired; as one officer fell, or was worn out at his post, another
+took his place. The strict guard over Brest broke up the emperor's
+combinations; the watchfulness of Nelson, despite an unusual
+concurrence of difficulties, followed the Toulon fleet, from the
+moment of its starting, across the Atlantic and back to the shores of
+Europe. It was long before they came to blows, before strategy stepped
+aside and tactics completed the work at Trafalgar; but step by step
+and point by point the rugged but disciplined seamen, the rusty and
+battered but well-handled ships, blocked each move of their
+unpractised opponents. Disposed in force before each arsenal of the
+enemy, and linked together by chains of smaller vessels, they might
+fail now and again to check a raid, but they effectually stopped all
+grand combinations of the enemy's squadrons.
+
+The ships of 1805 were essentially the same as those of 1780. There
+had doubtless been progress and improvement; but the changes were in
+degree, not in kind. Not only so, but the fleets of twenty years
+earlier, under Hawke and his fellows, had dared the winters of the Bay
+of Biscay. "There is not in Hawke's correspondence," says his
+biographer, "the slightest indication that he himself doubted for a
+moment that it was not only possible, but his duty, to keep the sea,
+even through the storms of winter, and that he should soon be able to
+'make downright work of it.'"[239] If it be urged that the condition
+of the French navy was better, the character and training of its
+officers higher, than in the days of Hawke and Nelson, the fact must
+be admitted; nevertheless, the admiralty could not long have been
+ignorant that the number of such officers was still so deficient as
+seriously to affect the quality of the deck service, and the lack of
+seamen so great as to necessitate filling up the complements with
+soldiers. As for the _personnel_ of the Spanish navy, there is no
+reason to believe it better than fifteen years later, when Nelson,
+speaking of Spain giving certain ships to France, said, "I take it for
+granted not manned [by Spaniards], as that would be the readiest way
+to lose them again."
+
+In truth, however, it is too evident to need much arguing, that the
+surest way for the weaker party to neutralize the enemy's ships was to
+watch them in their harbors and fight them if they started. The only
+serious objection to doing this, in Europe, was the violence of the
+weather off the coasts of France and Spain, especially during the long
+nights of winter. This brought with it not only risk of immediate
+disaster, which strong, well-managed ships would rarely undergo, but a
+continual strain which no skill could prevent, and which therefore
+called for a large reserve of ships to relieve those sent in for
+repairs, or to refresh the crews.
+
+The problem would be greatly simplified if the blockading fleet could
+find a convenient anchorage on the flank of the route the enemy must
+take, as Nelson in 1804 and 1805 used Maddalena Bay in Sardinia when
+watching the Toulon fleet,--a step to which he was further forced by
+the exceptionally bad condition of many of his ships. So Sir James
+Saumarez in 1800 even used Douarnenez Bay, on the French coast, only
+five miles from Brest, to anchor the in-shore squadron of the
+blockading force in heavy weather. The positions at Plymouth and
+Torbay cannot be considered perfectly satisfactory from this point of
+view; not being, like Maddalena Bay, on the flank of the enemy's
+route, but like Sta. Lucia, rather to its rear. Nevertheless, Hawke
+proved that diligence and well-managed ships could overcome this
+disadvantage, as Rodney also afterward showed on his less tempestuous
+station.
+
+In the use of the ships at its disposal, taking the war of 1778 as a
+whole, the English ministry kept their foreign detachments in America,
+and in the West and East Indies, equal to those of the enemy. At
+particular times, indeed, this was not so; but speaking generally of
+the assignment of ships, the statement is correct. In Europe, on the
+contrary, and in necessary consequence of the policy mentioned, the
+British fleet was habitually much inferior to that in the French and
+Spanish ports. It therefore could be used offensively only by great
+care, and through good fortune in meeting the enemy in detail; and
+even so an expensive victory, unless very decisive, entailed
+considerable risk from the consequent temporary disability of the
+ships engaged. It followed that the English home (or Channel) fleet,
+upon which depended also the communications with Gibraltar and the
+Mediterranean, was used very economically both as to battle and
+weather, and was confined to the defence of the home coast, or to
+operations against the enemy's communications.
+
+India was so far distant that no exception can be taken to the policy
+there. Ships sent there went to stay, and could be neither reinforced
+nor recalled with a view to sudden emergencies. The field stood by
+itself. But Europe, North America, and the West Indies should have
+been looked upon as one large theatre of war, throughout which events
+were mutually dependent, and whose different parts stood in close
+relations of greater or less importance, to which due attention should
+have been paid.
+
+Assuming that the navies, as the guardians of the communications, were
+the controlling factors in the war, and that the source, both of the
+navies and of those streams of supplies which are called
+communications, was in the mother-countries, and there centralized in
+the chief arsenals, two things follow: First, the main effort of the
+Power standing on the defensive, of Great Britain, should have been
+concentrated before those arsenals; and secondly, in order to such
+concentration, the lines of communication abroad should not have been
+needlessly extended, so as to increase beyond the strictest necessity
+the detachments to guard them. Closely connected with the last
+consideration is the duty of strengthening, by fortification and
+otherwise, the vital points to which the communications led, so that
+these points should not depend in any way upon the fleet for
+protection, but only for supplies and reinforcements, and those at
+reasonable intervals. Gibraltar, for instance, quite fulfilled these
+conditions, being practically impregnable, and storing supplies that
+lasted very long.
+
+If this reasoning be correct, the English dispositions on the American
+continent were very faulty. Holding Canada, with Halifax, New York,
+and Narragansett Bay, and with the line of the Hudson within their
+grip, it was in their power to isolate a large, perhaps decisive, part
+of the insurgent territory. New York and Narragansett Bay could have
+been made unassailable by a French fleet of that day, thus assuring
+the safety of the garrisons against attacks from the sea and
+minimizing the task of the navy; while the latter would find in them a
+secure refuge, in case an enemy's force eluded the watch of the
+English fleet before a European arsenal and appeared on the coast.
+Instead of this, these two ports were left weak, and would have fallen
+before a Nelson or a Farragut, while the army in New York was twice
+divided, first to the Chesapeake and afterward to Georgia, neither
+part of the separated forces being strong enough for the work before
+it. The control of the sea was thus used in both cases to put the
+enemy between the divided portions of the English army, when the
+latter, undivided, had not been able to force its way over the ground
+thus interposed. As the communication between the two parts of the
+army depended wholly upon the sea, the duty of the navy was increased
+with the increased length of the lines of communication. The necessity
+of protecting the seaports and the lengthened lines of communication
+thus combined to augment the naval detachments in America, and to
+weaken proportionately the naval force at the decisive points in
+Europe. Thus also a direct consequence of the southern expedition was
+the hasty abandonment of Narragansett Bay, when D'Estaing appeared on
+the coast in 1779, because Clinton had not force enough to defend both
+it and New York.[240]
+
+In the West Indies the problem before the English government was not
+to subdue revolted territory, but to preserve the use of a number of
+small, fruitful islands; to keep possession of them itself, and to
+maintain their trade as free as possible from the depredations of the
+enemy. It need not be repeated that this demanded predominance at sea
+over both the enemy's fleets and single cruisers,--"commerce-destroyers,"
+as the latter are now styled. As no vigilance can confine all these to
+their ports, the West Indian waters must be patrolled by British
+frigates and lighter vessels; but it would surely be better, if
+possible, to keep the French fleet away altogether than to hold it in
+check by a British fleet on the spot, of only equal force at any time,
+and liable to fall, as it often did, below equality. England, being
+confined to the defensive, was always liable to loss when thus
+inferior. She actually did lose one by one, by sudden attack, most of
+her islands, and at different times had her fleet shut up under the
+batteries of a port; whereas the enemy, when he found himself
+inferior, was able to wait for reinforcements, knowing that he had
+nothing to fear while so waiting.[241]
+
+Nor was this embarrassment confined to the West Indies. The nearness
+of the islands to the American continent made it always possible for
+the offence to combine his fleets in the two quarters before the
+defence could be sure of his purpose; and although such combinations
+were controlled in some measure by well-understood conditions of
+weather and the seasons, the events of 1780 and 1781 show the
+perplexity felt from this cause by the ablest English admiral, whose
+dispositions, though faulty, but reflected the uncertainties of his
+mind. When to this embarrassment, which is common to the defensive in
+all cases, is added the care of the great British trade upon which the
+prosperity of the empire mainly depended, it must be conceded that the
+task of the British admiral in the West Indies was neither light nor
+simple.
+
+In Europe, the safety of England herself and of Gibraltar was gravely
+imperilled by the absence of these large detachments in the Western
+Hemisphere, to which may also be attributed the loss of Minorca. When
+sixty-six allied ships-of-the-line confronted the thirty-five which
+alone England could collect, and drove them into their harbors, there
+was realized that mastery of the Channel which Napoleon claimed would
+make him beyond all doubt master of England. For thirty days, the
+thirty ships which formed the French contingent had cruised in the Bay
+of Biscay, awaiting the arrival of the tardy Spaniards; but they were
+not disturbed by the English fleet. Gibraltar was more than once
+brought within sight of starvation, through the failure of
+communications with England; and its deliverance was due, not to the
+power of the English navy suitably disposed by its government, but to
+the skill of British officers and the inefficiency of the Spaniards.
+In the great final relief, Lord Howe's fleet numbered only thirty-four
+to the allied forty-nine.
+
+Which, then, in the difficulties under which England labored, was the
+better course,--to allow the enemy free exit from his ports and
+endeavor to meet him by maintaining a sufficient naval force on each
+of the exposed stations, or to attempt to watch his arsenals at home,
+under all the difficulties of the situation, not with the vain hope of
+preventing every raid, or intercepting every convoy, but with the
+expectation of frustrating the greater combinations, and of following
+close at the heels of any large fleet that escaped? Such a watch must
+not be confounded with a blockade, a term frequently, but not quite
+accurately, applied to it. "I beg to inform your Lordship," wrote
+Nelson, "that the port of Toulon has never been blockaded by me; quite
+the reverse. Every opportunity has been offered the enemy to put to
+sea, for it is there we hope to realize the hopes and expectations of
+our country." "Nothing," he says again, "ever kept the French fleet in
+Toulon or Brest when they had a mind to come out;" and although the
+statement is somewhat exaggerated, it is true that the attempt to shut
+them up in port would have been hopeless. What Nelson expected by
+keeping near their ports, with enough lookout ships properly
+distributed, was to know when they sailed and what direction they
+took, intending, to use his own expression, to "follow them to the
+antipodes." "I am led to believe," he writes at another time, "that
+the Ferrol squadron of French ships will push for the Mediterranean.
+If it join that in Toulon, it will much outnumber us; but I shall
+never lose sight of them, and Pellew (commanding the English squadron
+off Ferrol) will soon be after them." So it happened often enough
+during that prolonged war that divisions of French ships escaped,
+through stress of weather, temporary absence of a blockading fleet, or
+misjudgment on the part of its commander; but the alarm was quickly
+given, some of the many frigates caught sight of them, followed to
+detect their probable destination, passed the word from point to point
+and from fleet to fleet, and soon a division of equal force was after
+them, "to the antipodes" if need were. As, according to the
+traditional use of the French navy by French governments, their
+expeditions went not to fight the hostile fleet, but with "ulterior
+objects," the angry buzz and hot pursuit that immediately followed was
+far from conducive to an undisturbed and methodical execution of the
+programme laid down, even by a single division; while to great
+combinations, dependent upon uniting the divisions from different
+ports, they were absolutely fatal. The adventurous cruise of Bruix,
+leaving Brest with twenty-five ships-of-the-line in 1799, the rapidity
+with which the news spread, the stirring action and individual
+mistakes of the English, the frustration of the French projects[242]
+and the closeness of the pursuit,[243] the escape of Missiessy from
+Rochefort in 1805, of the divisions of Willaumez and Leissegues from
+Brest in 1806,--all these may be named, along with the great Trafalgar
+campaign, as affording interesting studies of a naval strategy
+following the lines here suggested; while the campaign of 1798,
+despite its brilliant ending at the Nile, may be cited as a case where
+failure nearly ensued, owing to the English having no force before
+Toulon when the expedition sailed, and to Nelson being insufficiently
+provided with frigates. The nine weeks' cruise of Ganteaume in the
+Mediterranean, in 1808, also illustrates the difficulty of controlling
+a fleet which has been permitted to get out, unwatched by a strong
+force, even in such narrow waters.
+
+ [Illustration: NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN.]
+
+No parallel instances can be cited from the war of 1778, although the
+old monarchy did not cover the movements of its fleets with the
+secrecy enforced by the stern military despotism of the Empire. In
+both epochs England stood on the defensive; but in the earlier war she
+gave up the first line of the defence, off the hostile ports, and
+tried to protect all parts of her scattered empire by dividing the
+fleet among them. It has been attempted to show the weakness of the
+one policy, while admitting the difficulties and dangers of the other.
+The latter aims at shortening and deciding the war by either shutting
+up or forcing battle upon the hostile navy, recognizing that this is
+the key of the situation, when the sea at once unites and separates
+the different parts of the theatre of war. It requires a navy equal in
+number and superior in efficiency, to which it assigns a limited field
+of action, narrowed to the conditions which admit of mutual support
+among the squadrons occupying it. Thus distributed, it relies upon
+skill and watchfulness to intercept or overtake any division of the
+enemy which gets to sea. It defends remote possessions and trade by
+offensive action against the fleet, in which it sees their real enemy
+and its own principal objective. Being near the home ports, the relief
+and renewal of ships needing repairs are accomplished with the least
+loss of time, while the demands upon the scantier resources of the
+bases abroad are lessened. The other policy, to be effective, calls
+for superior numbers, because the different divisions are too far
+apart for mutual support. Each must therefore be equal to any probable
+combination against it, which implies superiority everywhere to the
+force of the enemy actually opposed, as the latter may be unexpectedly
+reinforced. How impossible and dangerous such a defensive strategy is,
+when not superior in force, is shown by the frequent inferiority of
+the English abroad, as well as in Europe, despite the effort to be
+everywhere equal. Howe at New York in 1778, Byron at Grenada in 1779,
+Graves off the Chesapeake in 1781, Hood at Martinique in 1781 and at
+St. Kitt's in 1782, all were inferior, at the same time that the
+allied fleet in Europe overwhelmingly outnumbered the English. In
+consequence, unseaworthy ships were retained, to the danger of their
+crews and their own increasing injury, rather than diminish the force
+by sending them home; for the deficiencies of the colonial dock-yards
+did not allow extensive repairs without crossing the Atlantic. As
+regards the comparative expense of the two strategies, the question is
+not only which would cost the more in the same time, but which would
+most tend to shorten the war by the effectiveness of its action.
+
+The military policy of the allies is open to severer condemnation than
+that of England, by so much as the party assuming the offensive has by
+that very fact an advantage over the defensive. When the initial
+difficulty of combining their forces was overcome,--and it has been
+seen that at no time did Great Britain seriously embarrass their
+junction,--the allies had the choice open to them where, when, and how
+to strike with their superior numbers. How did they avail themselves
+of this recognized enormous advantage? By nibbling at the outskirts of
+the British Empire, and knocking their heads against the Rock of
+Gibraltar. The most serious military effort made by France, in sending
+to the United States a squadron and division of troops intended to be
+double the number of those which actually reached their destination,
+resulted, in little over a year, in opening the eyes of England to the
+hopelessness of the contest with the colonies and thus put an end to a
+diversion of her strength which had been most beneficial to her
+opponents. In the West Indies one petty island after another was
+reduced, generally in the absence of the English fleet, with an ease
+which showed how completely the whole question would have been solved
+by a decisive victory over that fleet; but the French, though favored
+with many opportunities, never sought to slip the knot by the simple
+method of attacking the force upon which all depended. Spain went her
+own way in the Floridas, and with an overwhelming force obtained
+successes of no military value. In Europe the plan adopted by the
+English government left its naval force hopelessly inferior in numbers
+year after year; yet the operations planned by the allies seem in no
+case seriously to have contemplated the destruction of that force. In
+the crucial instance, when Derby's squadron of thirty sail-of-the-line
+was hemmed in the open roadstead of Torbay by the allied forty-nine,
+the conclusion of the council of war not to fight only epitomized the
+character of the action of the combined navies. To further embarrass
+their exertions in Europe, Spain, during long periods, obstinately
+persisted in tying down her fleet to the neighborhood of Gibraltar;
+but there was at no time practical recognition of the fact that a
+severe blow to the English navy in the Straits, or in the English
+Channel, or on the open sea, was the surest road to reduce the
+fortress, brought more than once within measurable distance of
+starvation.
+
+In the conduct of their offensive war the allied courts suffered from
+the divergent counsels and jealousies which have hampered the
+movements of most naval coalitions. The conduct of Spain appears to
+have been selfish almost to disloyalty, that of France more faithful,
+and therefore also militarily sounder; for hearty co-operation and
+concerted action against a common objective, wisely chosen, would have
+better forwarded the objects of both. It must be admitted, too, that
+the indications point to inefficient administration and preparation on
+the part of the allies, of Spain especially; and that the quality of
+the _personnel_[244] was inferior to that of England. Questions of
+preparation and administration, however, though of deep military
+interest and importance, are very different from the strategic plan or
+method adopted by the allied courts in selecting and attacking their
+objectives, and so compassing the objects of the war; and their
+examination would not only extend this discussion unreasonably, but
+would also obscure the strategic question by heaping up unnecessary
+details foreign to its subject.
+
+As regards the strategic question, it may be said pithily that the
+phrase "ulterior objects" embodies the cardinal fault of the naval
+policy. Ulterior objects brought to nought the hopes of the allies,
+because, by fastening their eyes upon them, they thoughtlessly passed
+the road which led to them. Desire eagerly directed upon the ends in
+view--or rather upon the partial, though great, advantages which they
+constituted their ends--blinded them to the means by which alone they
+could be surely attained; hence, as the result of the war, everywhere
+failure to attain them. To quote again the summary before given, their
+object was "to avenge their respective injuries, and to put an end to
+that tyrannical empire which England claims to maintain upon the
+ocean." The revenge they had obtained was barren of benefit to
+themselves. They had, so that generation thought, injured England by
+liberating America; but they had not righted their wrongs in Gibraltar
+and Jamaica, the English fleet had not received any such treatment as
+would lessen its haughty self-reliance, the armed neutrality of the
+northern powers had been allowed to pass fruitlessly away, and the
+English empire over the seas soon became as tyrannical and more
+absolute than before.
+
+Barring questions of preparation and administration, of the fighting
+quality of the allied fleets as compared with the English, and looking
+only to the indisputable fact of largely superior numbers, it must be
+noted as the supreme factor in the military conduct of the war, that,
+while the allied powers were on the offensive and England on the
+defensive, the attitude of the allied fleets in presence of the
+English navy was habitually defensive. Neither in the greater
+strategic combinations, nor upon the battlefield, does there appear
+any serious purpose of using superior numbers to crush fractions of
+the enemy's fleet, to make the disparity of numbers yet greater, to
+put an end to the empire of the seas by the destruction of the
+organized force which sustained it. With the single brilliant
+exception of Suffren, the allied navies avoided or accepted action;
+they never imposed it. Yet so long as the English navy was permitted
+thus with impunity to range the seas, not only was there no security
+that it would not frustrate the ulterior objects of the campaign, as
+it did again and again, but there was always the possibility that by
+some happy chance it would, by winning an important victory, restore
+the balance of strength. That it did not do so is to be imputed as a
+fault to the English ministry; but if England was wrong in permitting
+her European fleet to fall so far below that of the allies, the latter
+were yet more to blame for their failure to profit by the mistake. The
+stronger party, assuming the offensive, cannot plead the perplexities
+which account for, though they do not justify, the undue dispersal of
+forces by the defence anxious about many points.
+
+The national bias of the French, which found expression in the line of
+action here again and for the last time criticised, appears to have
+been shared by both the government and the naval officers of the day.
+It is the key to the course of the French navy, and, in the opinion of
+the author, to its failure to achieve more substantial results to
+France from this war. It is instructive, as showing how strong a hold
+tradition has over the minds of men, that a body of highly
+accomplished and gallant seamen should have accepted, apparently
+without a murmur, so inferior a rôle for their noble profession. It
+carries also a warning, if these criticisms are correct, that current
+opinions and plausible impressions should always be thoroughly
+tested; for if erroneous they work sure failure, and perhaps disaster.
+
+There was such an impression largely held by French officers of that
+day, and yet more widely spread in the United States now, of the
+efficacy of commerce-destroying as a main reliance in war, especially
+when directed against a commercial country like Great Britain. "The
+surest means in my opinion," wrote a distinguished officer,
+Lamotte-Picquet, "to conquer the English is to attack them in their
+commerce." The harassment and distress caused to a country by serious
+interference with its commerce will be conceded by all. It is
+doubtless a most important secondary operation of naval war, and is
+not likely to be abandoned till war itself shall cease; but regarded
+as a primary and fundamental measure, sufficient in itself to crush an
+enemy, it is probably a delusion, and a most dangerous delusion, when
+presented in the fascinating garb of cheapness to the representatives
+of a people. Especially is it misleading when the nation against whom
+it is to be directed possesses, as Great Britain did and does, the two
+requisites of a strong sea power,--a wide-spread healthy commerce and
+a powerful navy. Where the revenues and industries of a country can be
+concentrated into a few treasure-ships, like the flota of Spanish
+galleons, the sinew of war may perhaps be cut by a stroke; but when
+its wealth is scattered in thousands of going and coming ships, when
+the roots of the system spread wide and far, and strike deep, it can
+stand many a cruel shock and lose many a goodly bough without the life
+being touched. Only by military command of the sea by prolonged
+control of the strategic centres of commerce, can such an attack be
+fatal;[245] and such control can be wrung from a powerful navy only
+by fighting and overcoming it. For two hundred years England has been
+the great commercial nation of the world. More than any other her
+wealth has been intrusted to the sea in war as in peace; yet of all
+nations she has ever been most reluctant to concede the immunities of
+commerce and the rights of neutrals. Regarded not as a matter of
+right, but of policy, history has justified the refusal; and if she
+maintain her navy in full strength, the future will doubtless repeat
+the lesson of the past.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The preliminaries of the peace between Great Britain and the allied
+courts, which brought to an end this great war, were signed at
+Versailles, January 20, 1783, an arrangement having been concluded
+between Great Britain and the American Commissioners two months
+before, by which the independence of the United States was conceded.
+This was the great outcome of the war. As between the European
+belligerents, Great Britain received back from France all the West
+India Islands she had lost, except Tobago, and gave up Sta. Lucia. The
+French stations in India were restored; and Trincomalee being in the
+possession of the enemy, England could not dispute its return to
+Holland, but she refused to cede Negapatam. To Spain, England
+surrendered the two Floridas and Minorca, the latter a serious loss
+had the naval power of Spain been sufficient to maintain possession of
+it; as it was, it again fell into the hands of Great Britain in the
+next war. Some unimportant redistribution of trading-posts on the west
+coast of Africa was also made.
+
+Trivial in themselves, there is but one comment that need be made upon
+these arrangements. In any coming war their permanency would depend
+wholly upon the balance of sea power, upon that empire of the seas
+concerning which nothing conclusive had been established by the war.
+
+The definitive treaties of peace were signed at Versailles, September
+3, 1783.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[231] Jurien de la Gravière: Guerres Maritimes, vol. ii. p. 255.
+
+[232] See map of the Atlantic Ocean, p. 532.
+
+[233] It may be said here in passing, that the key to the English
+possessions in what was then called West Florida was at Pensacola and
+Mobile, which depended upon Jamaica for support; the conditions of the
+country, of navigation, and of the general continental war forbidding
+assistance from the Atlantic. The English force, military and naval,
+at Jamaica was only adequate to the defence of the island and of
+trade, and could not afford sufficient relief to Florida. The capture
+of the latter and of the Bahamas was effected with little difficulty
+by overwhelming Spanish forces, as many as fifteen ships-of-the-line
+and seven thousand troops having been employed against Pensacola.
+These events will receive no other mention. Their only bearing upon
+the general war was the diversion of this imposing force from joint
+operations with the French, Spain here, as at Gibraltar, pursuing her
+own aims instead of concentrating upon the common enemy,--a policy as
+shortsighted as it was selfish.
+
+[234] In other words, having considered the objects for which the
+belligerents were at war and the proper objectives upon which their
+military efforts should have been directed to compass the objects, the
+discussion now considers how the military forces should have been
+handled; by what means and at what point the objective, being mobile,
+should have been assailed.
+
+[235] Orders of Admiral Villeneuve to the captains of his fleet, Dec.
+20, 1804.
+
+[236] Letter of Villeneuve, January, 1805.
+
+[237] Letters and Despatches of Lord Nelson.
+
+[238] Life and Letters of Lord Collingwood.
+
+[239] Burrows: Life of Lord Hawke.
+
+[240] Of this Rodney said: "The evacuating Rhode Island was the most
+fatal measure that could possibly be adopted. It gave up the best and
+noblest harbor in America, from whence squadrons, in forty-eight
+hours, could blockade the three capital cities of America, namely,
+Boston, New York, and Philadelphia." The whole letter, private to the
+First Lord of the Admiralty, is worth reading. (Life of Rodney, vol.
+ii. p. 429.)
+
+[241] The loss of Sta. Lucia does not militate against this statement,
+being due to happy audacity and skill on the part of the English
+admiral, and the professional incapacity of the commander of the
+greatly superior French fleet.
+
+[242] The plan of campaign traced by the Directory for Bruix became
+impossible of execution; the delay in the junction of the French and
+Spanish squadrons having permitted England to concentrate sixty ships
+in the Mediterranean.--_Troude_, vol. iii. p. 158.
+
+[243] The combined squadrons of France and Spain, under Bruix, reached
+Brest on their return only twenty-four hours before Lord Keith, who
+had followed them from the Mediterranean. (James: Naval History of
+Great Britain.)
+
+[244] The high professional attainments of many of the French officers
+is not overlooked in this statement. The quality of the _personnel_
+was diluted by an inferior element, owing to the insufficient number
+of good men. "The _personnel_ of our crews had been seriously affected
+by the events of the campaign of 1779. At the beginning of 1780 it was
+necessary either to disarm some ships, or to increase the proportion
+of soldiers entering into the composition of the crews. The minister
+adopted the latter alternative. New regiments, drawn from the land
+army, were put at the disposal of the navy. The corps of officers, far
+from numerous at the beginning of hostilities, had become completely
+inadequate. Rear-Admiral de Guichen met the greatest difficulty in
+forming the complements, both officers and crews, for his squadron. He
+took the sea, February 3, with ships 'badly manned,' as he wrote to
+the minister." (Chevalier: Hist. de la Marine Française, p. 184.)
+"During the last war [of 1778] we had met the greatest difficulty in
+supplying officers to our ships. If it had been easy to name admirals,
+commodores, and captains, it had been impossible to fill the vacancies
+caused by death, sickness, or promotion among officers of the rank of
+lieutenant and ensign." (Chevalier: Marine Française sous la
+République, p. 20.)
+
+[245] The vital centre of English commerce is in the waters surrounding
+the British Islands; and as the United Kingdom now depends largely upon
+external sources of food-supply, it follows that France is the nation
+most favourably situated to harass it by commerce-destroying, on
+account of her nearness and her possession of ports both on the
+Atlantic and the North Sea. From these issued the privateers which in
+the past preyed upon English shipping. The position is stronger now
+than formerly, Cherbourg presenting a good Channel port which France
+lacked in the old wars. On the other hand steam and railroads have made
+the ports on the northern coasts of the United Kingdom more available,
+and British shipping need not, as formerly, focus about the Channel.
+
+Much importance has been attached to the captures made during the late
+summer manoeuvres (1888) by cruisers in and near the English Channel.
+The United States must remember that such cruisers were near their
+home ports. Their line of coal-supply may have been two hundred miles;
+it would be a very different thing to maintain them in activity three
+thousand miles from home. The furnishing of coal, or of such
+facilities as cleaning the bottom or necessary repairs, in such a
+case, would be so unfriendly to Great Britain, that it may well be
+doubted if any neighboring neutral nation would allow them.
+
+Commerce-destroying by independent cruisers depends upon wide
+dissemination of force. Commerce-destroying through control of a
+strategic centre by a great fleet depends upon concentration of force.
+Regarded as a primary, not as a secondary, operation, the former is
+condemned, the latter justified, by the experience of centuries.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+_Alberoni_, Cardinal, minister to Philip V. of Spain, 233;
+ naval and general policy of, 234-236;
+ failure of his schemes, 238;
+ dismissed, 239.
+
+_Anson_, British Admiral, expedition to the Pacific, 261;
+ captures a French squadron, 271.
+
+_Arbuthnot_, British Admiral, engagement with French fleet off the
+ Chesapeake, 385-387.
+
+_Armed Neutrality_, the, of the Baltic powers, 405.
+
+_Arnold_, Benedict, treason of, 382;
+ expedition to James River, 385.
+
+
+_Barbadoes_, strategic value of, 348, 393, 518;
+ ineffectual attempt of the French against, 469.
+
+_Barrington_, British Admiral, energy of, 365;
+ takes Sta. Lucia and resists an attack by superior French fleet, 366;
+ second in command at battle of Grenada, 368;
+ refuses the command of the Channel fleet, 404;
+ a whig in politics, 500.
+
+_Battles_, Land, Austerlitz, 24, 47;
+ Blenheim, 213;
+ Boyne, 41, 185-187;
+ Camden, 382, 384;
+ Ciudad Rodrigo, storming of, 475 (note);
+ Jena, 47;
+ Metaurus, 19, 20;
+ Plassey, 306;
+ Savannah, assault on, 376;
+ Yorktown, capitulation of, 390.
+
+_Battles_, Naval (_the list of the principal naval battles,
+ with plans, will be found on pp. xxiii, xxiv_),
+ Actium, 13;
+ Agosta, 165;
+ Boscawen and De la Clue, 299;
+ Byng off Minorca, 286,
+ _plan_ 265;
+ Cape Passaro, 63, 237;
+ Chesapeake. 372-374, 389, 391;
+ Copenhagen, 361;
+ La Hougue, 189-191,
+ _plan_ 183;
+ Lepanto, 13, 50;
+ Lowestoft, 108;
+ Malaga, 110, 211, 229;
+ Mobile, 287, 354, 355, 361;
+ Navarino, 13 (note);
+ New Orleans, 354-356;
+ Nile, 10, 11, 80, 81, 358, 361, 366, 533;
+ Pocock and D'Aché, 307-310,
+ _plan_ 162;
+ Port Hudson, 355, 361;
+ Rio de Janeiro, expedition against, 230;
+ Rodney and Langara, 404, 500 (and note);
+ Schoneveldt 152;
+ Sta. Lucia, 366, 425, 478;
+ St Vincent, 11, 356, 358, 476 (note),
+ _plan_ 146;
+ Suffren and Hughes, fifth action, 463;
+ Trafalgar, 9, 11, 12, 23 (note), 24, 47, 85, 353, 354, 357, 438;
+ Vigo galleons, 207.
+
+_Benbow_, British Admiral,
+ sent to West Indies, 207;
+ treason of his captains, 207;
+ killed in battle. 207.
+
+_Bickerton_, British Admiral,
+ conducts a powerful convoy to the East Indies, 452;
+ arrived in India, 458;
+ activity of, 458, 520;
+ effects of arrival of, 459, 461.
+
+_Blane_, Sir Gilbert, physician to British fleet, letters of, 497, 499,
+ 500(note), 501.
+
+_Blockade_,
+ of French ports by English fleets, 23 (note), 30, 210, 296, 297, 383,
+ 387, 402 (and note), 413, 525-527, 532, 533;
+ of Southern coast of United States, 43, 44, 87 (note);
+ Napoleon forces England to, 81;
+ with consequent effect on American privateering, 137;
+ definition of efficient, 85;
+ dangers to United States from, 86, 87;
+ offensive and defensive use of, 87 (note);
+ declaration of the Armed Neutrality concerning, 405;
+ position taken off an enemy's port not necessarily a blockade in
+ strict sense of the word, 532.
+
+_Boscawen_, British Admiral,
+ expedition to India, failure of, 277;
+ intercepts French ships off the St. Lawrence, 284;
+ takes Louisburg, 294;
+ disperses or destroys French fleet from Toulon, 298.
+
+_Burgoyne_, British General,
+ expedition from Canada, 343;
+ effect of his surrender, 346.
+
+_Bussy_, French General,
+ second to Dupleix in India, 305;
+ intrigues with nabob of Bengal, 306;
+ invades Orissa, 307;
+ again sent to India during American Revolution, 459;
+ delayed _en route_, 460;
+ reaches India, 461;
+ besieged in Cuddalore by the English, 462;
+ relieved by Suffren, 463.
+
+_Byng_, Sir George, British Admiral,
+ sent to Mediterranean, 236;
+ destroys Spanish fleet at Cape Passaro, 237;
+ policy at Messina, 238.
+
+_Byng_, John, British Admiral,
+ sails to relieve Port Mahon, 286;
+ action with the French fleet, 286-288;
+ returns to Gibraltar, is relieved, tried, 290,
+ and shot, 291.
+
+_Byron_, British Admiral,
+ commander-in-chief at Battle of Grenada, 367-371.
+
+
+_Cape of Good Hope_,
+ a half-way naval station, 28, 514;
+ discovery of passage round, 37, 38, 141;
+ acquired by Holland, 97;
+ acquired by England during the Napoleonic wars, 327;
+ English expedition against, 421;
+ saved by Suffren, 422-425, 427;
+ utility to France, 460, 520;
+ Suffren's reception at, 464, 465.
+
+_Carlos_ III.,
+ King of the Two Sicilies, 248, 249;
+ enters into Bourbon Family Compact, 249;
+ forced to withdraw his troops by a British commodore, 252, 264, 304;
+ succeeds to the Spanish throne, 304;
+ enters into secret alliance with France, 312, 313;
+ losses in Seven Years' War, 315, 317;
+ again enters alliance with France against England, 401, 402.
+
+_Charles_, Archduke,
+ claimant to Spanish throne as Carlos III., 206;
+ lands at Lisbon, 208;
+ lands in Catalonia and takes Barcelona, 213;
+ takes and loses Madrid, 214;
+ antipathy of Spaniards to, 214, 216;
+ inherits empire of Austria and elected Emperor Charles VI. of
+ Germany, 217;
+ makes, as king of Spain, secret commercial treaty with England, 221;
+ discontented with Treaty of Utrecht, 222, 234;
+ renounces claim to Spanish throne, 235;
+ joins Quadruple Alliance, 236;
+ obtains Naples and Sicily, 239;
+ loses Naples and Sicily, 248;
+ dies, leaving no son, 262;
+ succeeded by Maria Theresa, 262.
+
+_Charles_ II., naval policy of, 60, 61;
+ restoration of, 90;
+ political motives, 100;
+ cedes Dunkirk, 105;
+ policy of commerce-destroying, 131;
+ bargains with Louis XIV., 143;
+ declares war against Holland, 144;
+ makes peace with Holland, 158;
+ forms alliance with Holland, 166;
+ dies, 175.
+
+_Choiseul_, minister to Louis XV., 297;
+ plans for invading England and Scotland, 297, 300;
+ makes close alliance with Spain, 311-313;
+ policy after Seven Years' War, 330-336;
+ naval reforms, 331-333;
+ supports Spain in dispute with England over the Falkland Islands, 336;
+ dismissed, 336.
+
+_Clerk_, John,
+ work on Naval Tactics, 77 (and note), 163-165, 289.
+
+_Clinton_, Sir Henry, British General,
+ expedition up the Hudson, 343;
+ commander-in-chief in America, 360, 365, 401;
+ opinions as to influence of sea power, 385, 401;
+ sends detachments to the Chesapeake, 385, 387;
+ directs Cornwallis to occupy Yorktown, 387;
+ outwitted by Washington and Rochambeau, 387.
+
+_Clive_, Robert, afterward Lord,
+ letter of. 275 (note);
+ Indian career begins, 282;
+ retakes Calcutta, 305;
+ defeats nabob of Bengal, takes Chandernagore, and wins battle of
+ Plassey, 306;
+ reduces Bengal, 306.
+
+_Colbert_
+ becomes minister under Louis XIV., 70;
+ commercial and naval policy, 70-74, 105, 106, 169, 174;
+ thwarted by the king, 170;
+ his trust in the resources of France, 198.
+
+_Collingwood_, British Admiral,
+ leads a column at Trafalgar, 353;
+ his conduct at battle of Cape St. Vincent, 355, 356;
+ reverses Nelson's orders after his death, 358;
+ loss in his ship at Trafalgar, 438 (note);
+ blockading duty off French coast (letters), 526.
+
+_Colonies_:
+ origin of, 27;
+ character of, 28;
+ effect on England of, 29, 82, 83, 255, 326-328, 392-394, 396, 414;
+ weakness of Spain through, 30, 41, 42, 202, 261, 312, 327, 345, 346;
+ effect of national character on, 55-58, 255, 256;
+ growth of English colonial system, 60, 62, 64, 217, 220, 228, 251,
+ 291, 305-307, 310, 321, 327;
+ Colbert's policy, 70, 71, 106;
+ navy essential to security of, 41, 42, 74, 75, 82, 329, 367, 373,
+ 401, 416, 424, 434, 511, 529, 541;
+ support to sea power by, 83, 212, 329, 415, 510, 511, 514, 520, 521;
+ Dutch, 96, 97, 258;
+ New York and New Jersey seized by English, 107, 132;
+ loss of French colonies, 219, 291, 294, 295, 304, 314, 321, 322;
+ loss of Spanish colonies, 219, 315-317, 321;
+ French colonial policy, 242, 254, 255, 257, 258, 273-278, 282, 283, 306;
+ Spanish colonial policy, 245-247, 250;
+ colonial expansion the characteristic motive of the wars from 1739
+ to 1783, 254, 281-284, 291, 508-510;
+ value of smaller West India islands, 256, 374, 512, 513;
+ the English in India, 257, 282, 305, 307, 348, 349, 419, 420, 459;
+ Vernon's and Anson's expedition against Spanish, 261;
+ Florida and the Bahamas recovered by Spain, 517 (note).
+ British North American, character of, 255, 283;
+ extension over all the continent east of the Mississippi, 65, 321;
+ quarrel with mother-country, 334, 341;
+ military situation of, 341-344;
+ alliance with France, 350;
+ effect of sea power upon their struggle, 397, 524;
+ object of, 507, 508;
+ policy of France in their struggle, 359, 511, 512;
+ distribution of colonial possessions at peace of 1783, 540.
+
+_Commander-in-chief_,
+ position of a naval, in battle, 353-358;
+ question raised by action of the Due de Chartres, 352;
+ illustrated by practice of Howe, Nelson, Farragut, 353-358;
+ orders of French government, 353.
+
+_Commerce_,
+ attempts to control by force, 1, 62, 63, 100, 101, 107, 245, 247;
+ trade routes, 25, 32, 33, 37, 38, 141, 142;
+ water carriage easier and cheaper than land, 25;
+ advantages of rivers and inlets to, 25, 35, 36;
+ secure seaports and a navy necessary to security of, 26-28, 74-76,
+ 82, 83, 134, 135;
+ the basis of a healthy navy, 28, 45, 46, 82;
+ war upon (see commerce-destroying);
+ influence of Baltic trade upon sea power, 32, 62, 239, 240, 405;
+ effect of Central American Canal on, 33, 325;
+ effect of physical conditions on, 36-39;
+ decay of Spanish, 41, 50-52;
+ effect of national character on, 50-55;
+ solicitude of English government concerning, 60, 62, 63, 65, 66,
+ 143, 206, 218, 220, 240, 241, 247, 269, 270;
+ the Navigation Act, 60;
+ influence of the wealth of England on history, 64, 187, 197, 216,
+ 218, 227, 279, 295;
+ commercial spirit of the Dutch, 49, 52, 55, 57, 68, 69, 98;
+ Colbert's policy for developing, 70, 71, 101, 102, 105, 106, 169;
+ decay of French, under Louis XIV., 73, 107, 167, 169, 170, 198, 199,
+ 219, 226-228;
+ improvement of French, under Louis XV., 74, 242, 243;
+ government influence on, 70, 71, 82, 101, 105, 106;
+ dangers to United States, by blockades, 84-87;
+ commercial policy of United States, 84, 88;
+ French, in 1660, 93;
+ Dutch, in 1660, 95-97, 131;
+ rivalry of English and Dutch, 100, 107;
+ Leibnitz's proposition to Louis XIV. to seize Egypt, 141, 142;
+ influence of Dutch wealth, 167, 176, 187, 197, 270, 279;
+ sufferings of Dutch, 38, 160, 167, 168;
+ gains to English, by policy of Louis XIV. 167, 170;
+ effect of injury to, in hastening war, 176, 177;
+ bearing of, upon War of Spanish Succession, 201-204, 207, 209;
+ Methuen Treaty of, with Portugal, 206, 228;
+ concession to England of the Asiento, or slave trade, 217, 220, 245;
+ growth of English, during eighteenth century, 220, 223-226, 228,
+ 229, 233, 241, 245, 319, 323, 328;
+ secret treaty of, made with England by claimant to Spanish throne, 221;
+ decay of Dutch, in early part of eighteenth century, 69, 220-222, 224;
+ English, contraband with Spanish America, 240, 241, 245-247;
+ sufferings of, 1740-1748, 279, 280;
+ sufferings of, 1756-1763, 311, 312, 317-319;
+ prosperity of English commerce, 1756-1763, 297, 318, 319, 323;
+ effect of commercial interests on the results at Yorktown, 392;
+ great centre of English, 539 (note);
+ policy of Great Britain as to neutral, 540.
+
+_Commerce-Destroying_ (Cruising Warfare),
+ a strategic question, 8;
+ dependence on geographical position, 31;
+ diffusion of effort, 31;
+ disadvantageous position of United States, 31, 540 (note);
+ Spanish treasure-ships, 41, 51, 207, 262, 313, 316;
+ English and Dutch commerce defy, 51, 133, 134, 135, 206, 229, 297,
+ 317, 318, 319, 539, 540;
+ Charles II. resorts to it as a substitute for great fleets, 131;
+ disastrous results, 132;
+ discussion of, as a principal mode of warfare, 132-136;
+ dependent upon a near base or upon powerful fleets, 132, 196, 230, 314;
+ illustrations, 1652-1783, 133-136;
+ injurious reaction on the nation relying upon it, 136;
+ illustrations, 136-138;
+ mistaken conclusions drawn from American privateering in 1812, and
+ from the Confederate cruisers, 137, 138;
+ effect of great navies, 138;
+ illustrations, after battle of Solebay, 148;
+ after battle of Texel, 154;
+ decline of Dutch navy, 160,
+ and consequent increase of commerce-destroying by French privateers, 167;
+ in the war of 1689-1697, discussion, 193-196;
+ in the war of 1702-1713, 228-230;
+ in war of 1739-1748, 280;
+ in Seven Years' War, 295, 297, 311, 314, 316, 317-319 (discussion),
+ 329 (note);
+ in American Revolution, 344, 382, 392, 400, 404, 408 (and note),
+ 409, 443, 445, 452, 460, 530, 539, 540 (and note);
+ French privateering, 133, 135, 167, 195, 196, 229, 280, 314, 317-319;
+ peculiar character of French privateering, 1689-1713, 194-196, 229, 230.
+
+_Conflans_, French Admiral,
+ commands fleet intended for invasion of England, 300;
+ sails from Brest, 301;
+ encounters Hawke and is defeated by him, 302-304.
+
+_Cornwallis_, British General,
+ wins battle of Camden, 382;
+ overruns Southern States, 384;
+ marches into Virginia, 385;
+ takes position at Yorktown, 387;
+ surrounded by enemies, 389,
+ capitulates, 390.
+
+_Cornwallis_, Captain British navy,
+ gallant conduct in Hood's action at St. Christopher, 472.
+
+_Corsica_,
+ island of, naturally Italian, 32;
+ a dependency of Genoa, 201;
+ Genoa cedes fortified harbors to France, 292;
+ whole island ceded to France, 334;
+ strategic value, 335.
+
+_Cromwell_, Oliver,
+ naval policy of, 60;
+ issues Navigation Act, 60;
+ condition of navy under, 60, 61, 101, 127;
+ takes Jamaica, 60;
+ takes Dunkirk, 105.
+
+
+_D'Aché_, French Commodore,
+ reaches India, 307;
+ first and second battles with Pocock, 308;
+ ill-will to the French governor, Lally, 307, 309;
+ goes to the Isle of France, 309;
+ return to the peninsula, and third battle with Pocock, 310;
+ abandons the peninsula, 310.
+
+_De Barras_, French Commodore,
+ commands French squadron at Newport, and takes part in operations
+ against Cornwallis, 389-392.
+
+_De la Clue_, French Commodore,
+ sails from Toulon to join Brest fleet, 298;
+ encounters and beaten by Boscawen, 299.
+
+_D'Estaing_, French Admiral,
+ transferred from the army to the navy, 371;
+ long passage from Toulon to the Delaware, 359;
+ fails to attack the British fleet in New York, 361;
+ runs British batteries at Newport, 361;
+ sails in pursuit of Howe's fleet, and receives injuries in a gale, 362;
+ goes to Boston, 363;
+ foiled by Howe on all points, 363, 364;
+ goes to West Indies, 365;
+ failure at Sta. Lucia, 366;
+ capture of St. Vincent and Grenada, 367;
+ action with Byron's fleet, 367-371;
+ professional character, 371, 375;
+ ineffectual assault on Savannah, 376;
+ return to France, 376.
+
+_D'Estrées_, French Admiral,
+ commands French contingent to the allied fleet at Solebay, 147;
+ at Schoneveldt, 151;
+ at the Texel, 152;
+ equivocal action at the battle of the Texel, 153, 155;
+ notice of, 170.
+
+_De Grasse_, French Admiral,
+ sails from Brest for West Indies, 383;
+ partial action with Hood off Martinique, 383, 384;
+ takes Tobago, and goes thence to San Domingo, 384;
+ determines to go to Chesapeake Bay, 388;
+ thoroughness of his action, 388, 392;
+ anchors in Lynnhaven Bay, 388;
+ skilful management when opposed by Graves, 389;
+ share in results at Yorktown, 399;
+ declines to remain longer in the United States, 400, 418, 469;
+ return to West Indies, and expedition against St. Kitt's Island, 469;
+ outgeneralled by Hood, 470-476;
+ criticisms upon his actions, 392, 476-478, 483, 489, 494;
+ return to Martinique, 479;
+ in command of combined fleet in expedition against Jamaica, 479;
+ sails from Martinique, 480;
+ partial action of April 9, 1782, 481-483;
+ battle of the Saints, 486-490;
+ surrenders with his flag-ship, 489;
+ later career and death, 501-503;
+ findings of the court-martial on, 503.
+
+_De Guichen_, French Admiral,
+ wary tactics of, 7, 413, 433;
+ takes command in West Indies, 376;
+ actions with Rodney, 378-381;
+ returns to France, 381, 405;
+ chief command of allied fleets in Europe, 407, 408;
+ abortive action at Torbay, 408 (and note);
+ injuries to convoy under his care, 408;
+ Rodney's opinion of, 499;
+ difficulty in manning his fleet, 536 (note).
+
+_D'Orvilliers_, French Admiral,
+ instructions to, 339, 340;
+ appointed to command Brest fleet, 339;
+ commander-in-chief at battle of Ushant, 350-352;
+ commands allied fleets in English Channel, 1779, 402 (and note);
+ retires from the navy, 403.
+
+_De Rions_, d'Albert, Captain in French navy,
+ leads in the attack on Hood's position at St. Kitt's, 474;
+ Suffren's opinion of, 474;
+ gallantry at time of De Grasse's defeat, 502 (note).
+
+_De Ternay_, French Commodore,
+ commands fleet which convoys Rochambeau to America, 382;
+ position occupied in Newport, 394-396;
+ Washington's memorandum to, 397.
+
+_De Vaudreuil_, French Commodore,
+ second in command to De Grasse, 494;
+ conducts partial attack of April 9, 1782, 482, 494;
+ assumes command after De Grasse's capture, 497.
+
+_Derby_, British Admiral,
+ relieves Gibraltar, 407, 414 (note);
+ retreats before superior allied fleet, 408.
+
+_Destouches_, French Commodore,
+ engagement with English fleet off the Chesapeake, 385-387.
+
+_Douglas_, Sir Charles, Captain British navy,
+ chief of staff to Rodney, 485 (note);
+ letters of, 486 (and note), 490, 493;
+ credit of breaking French line claimed for, 490;
+ opinion as to Rodney's failure to pursue his success, 496.
+
+_Dubois_, Cardinal,
+ minister of Philippe d'Orleans, 233;
+ his policy, 233, 235, 237, 239, 241;
+ death, 241.
+
+_Duguay-Trouin_, French privateer,
+ expedition against Rio de Janeiro, 230.
+
+_Dupleix_,
+ advances the power of France in India, 243;
+ his ambition and policy, 258, 274, 282;
+ problem before him in India, 275;
+ foiled by lack of sea power, 276, 278;
+ quarrel with La Bourdonnais, 276;
+ seizes Madras, 276;
+ successful defence of Pondicherry, 277;
+ extends his power in the peninsula, 282;
+ is recalled to France, 282.
+
+_Duquesne_, French Admiral,
+ compares French and Dutch officers, 129;
+ commands at battle of Stromboli, 160-162;
+ tactics of, 163-165;
+ commands at battle of Agosta, 165.
+
+
+_Egypt_,
+ Napoleon's expedition to, 10, 11;
+ Leibnitz proposes to Louis XIV. to seize, 141;
+ commanding commercial and strategic position of, 141, 142;
+ occupation of, by England, 22, 328;
+ importance of, to India, 328.
+
+_Elliott_, British General,
+ commands at Gibraltar during the great siege, 411.
+
+_England_, See under Colonies, Commerce, Commerce-Destroying,
+ Geographical Position, Government, Inhabitants, character and number
+ of, Naval Policy, Naval Tactics, Sea Power, Strategy.
+
+_Extent of Territory_,
+ its effect upon the sea power of a country, 42-44.
+
+
+_Falkland Islands_,
+ dispute concerning, 335.
+
+_Farragut_, American Admiral,
+ at Mobile, 164, 287, 361;
+ at Port Hudson, 361;
+ at New Orleans, 354, 356;
+ practice of, as to his position in order of battle, 354-356.
+
+_Fleuri_, Cardinal,
+ minister of Louis XV., 241;
+ peace policy, 241, 243, 253;
+ commercial expansion of France under, 242, 248;
+ accord with Walpole, 241, 244, 252;
+ policy, continental rather than maritime, 243, 244, 251, 253;
+ supports claimant to Polish throne, 247;
+ arranges Bourbon Family Compact with Spain, 244, 248;
+ acquires Bar and Lorraine for France, 249;
+ allows the navy to decay, 244, 249, 252, 253;
+ death, 253.
+
+_France._
+ See under Colonies, Commerce, Commerce-Destroying, Geographical
+ Position, Government, Inhabitants, character and number of Naval
+ Policy, Naval Tactics, Sea-Power, Strategy.
+
+_Frederick_, King of Prussia,
+ seizes Silesia, 262;
+ Silesia ceded to, 278;
+ opens Seven Years' War, 292;
+ desperate struggle of, 295, 305;
+ losses in the war, 324;
+ results of the war to, 324;
+ partition of Poland, 336.
+
+
+_Gardiner's Bay_, Long Island,
+ useful as a base of operations to an enemy of the United States, 212,
+ station of English fleet, 386.
+
+_Geographical Position_,
+ its effect upon the sea power of countries, 29-35.
+
+_Gibraltar_,
+ strategic question, 12;
+ taken by Rooke, 210;
+ strategic value, 212;
+ value to England, 29, 32, 220, 298, 328, 414;
+ offers to restore to Spain, 236, 298;
+ attacks on, 212, 245, 411;
+ siege of, 403-412.
+
+_Government_,
+ character and policy of, effect upon the sea power of countries, 58-88;
+ English, 59-67;
+ Dutch, 67-69;
+ French, 69-82;
+ United States, 83-88.
+
+_Graves_, British Admiral,
+ commanding in New York, sails to relieve Cornwallis, 389;
+ out-manoeuvred by De Grasse, 391;
+ criticisms on, 390, 391.
+
+_Graves_, British Captain, afterward admiral,
+ urges Rodney to attack French squadron anchored in Newport, 396;
+ second to Nelson at Copenhagen, 396 (note);
+ blockading on French coast, 526.
+
+_Great Britain._ See England.
+
+
+_Hannibal._ See Second Punic War, 13-21.
+
+_Havana_,
+ strategic value of, 315, 517, 519;
+ taken by the English, 315;
+ restored at Peace of Paris, 321, 322.
+
+_Hawke_, Sir Edward, afterward Lord, British Admiral,
+ distinguishes himself at the battle of Toulon, 266;
+ captures a French squadron, 271-273;
+ seizes French shipping in the Atlantic, 285;
+ relieves Byng in the Mediterranean, 290;
+ blockade of Brest, 300, 527;
+ brilliant action in Quiberon Bay, 300-304;
+ maxim as to strength of English fleet, 523.
+
+_Henry IV._, of France,
+ policy of, 59, 69, 92, 93.
+
+_Herbert_, British Admiral,
+ commands allied English and Dutch fleets at battle of Beachy Head, 182.
+
+_Holland._ See under Colonies, Commerce, Commerce-Destroying,
+ Geographical Position, Government, Inhabitants, character and number
+ of, Naval Policy, Naval Tactics (Ruyter's), Sea Power, Strategy.
+
+_Hood_, Sir Samuel, afterward Lord, British Admiral,
+ trait of subordination in, 356 (note);
+ action with De Grasse off Martinique, 383;
+ sent by Rodney to America with fourteen ships, 389, 390;
+ second in command in action off Chesapeake, 391;
+ temporary chief command in West Indies, 469;
+ brilliant action at St. Christopher's Island, 470-476;
+ junction with Rodney, 479;
+ partial action of April 9, 1782, 481-483;
+ at battle of the Saints, 486-490, 491-493;
+ De Grasse's flag-ship strikes to his, 489;
+ opinion as to Rodney's failure to pursue his advantage, 496;
+ captures four French ships, 498;
+ later career and death, 504.
+
+_Hoste_, Paul,
+ work on naval tactics, 77, 147, 182, 184.
+
+_Howe_, Lord, British Admiral,
+ naval policy of, 9;
+ at Philadelphia, 360;
+ at New York, 360;
+ at Newport, 361;
+ energy and skill of, 363, 364;
+ commands Channel fleet, 408;
+ relieves Gibraltar, 412;
+ a whig in politics, 500;
+ opinion as to blockades, 526.
+
+_Howe_, Sir William, British General,
+ commander-in-chief in America, 343;
+ expedition to the Chesapeake, 343, 468, 529, 530;
+ indolence of, 364.
+
+_Hughes_, Sir Edward, British Admiral,
+ arrives in India, 349;
+ takes Negapatam and Trincomalee, 349;
+ first meeting with Suffren, 427;
+ task in India, 428;
+ first battle with Suffren's squadron, 430-434;
+ second battle with Suffren, 437-441;
+ contemporary criticisms on, 442;
+ third battle with Suffren, 446-448;
+ tactics of, 431, 449, 453, 456, 462:
+ slowness of, loses Trincomalee, 450, 451;
+ fourth battle with Suffren, 453-455;
+ praise bestowed by, upon his captains, 456;
+ goes to Bombay from Coromandel coast, 458;
+ returns to Madras, 461;
+ supports English siege of Cuddalore, 462;
+ fifth battle with Suffren, 463;
+ abandons the field, 463;
+ death, 467.
+
+_Hyder Ali_, Sultan of Mysore, 419;
+ war upon the English, 420;
+ denied the aid of the French squadron, 421;
+ Suffren communicates with, 443;
+ visited by Suffren, 450;
+ negotiations of Suffren with, 459, 460;
+ death of, 461.
+
+
+_Inhabitants_, character of,
+ effect upon the sea power of a country, 50-58.
+
+_Inhabitants_, number of,
+ effect upon the sea power of a country, reserve strength, 44-49.
+
+_Italy_,
+ geographical position of, 32;
+ physical conformation of, 39, 40;
+ necessity for a navy, 40;
+ Sicilian revolt against Spain, 1674, 159;
+ Spanish possessions in, 1700, 201;
+ Sardinia taken by allied fleets, 215;
+ disposition of Spanish provinces in, at peace of 1713, 219;
+ Sicily transferred to Austria, and Sardinia to House of Savoy, 1719, 239;
+ Spanish expedition into, 248;
+ foundation of Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, 248;
+ Spanish operations against Austria, 1741, 263, 264;
+ King of Naples forced to withdraw troops from Spanish army by English
+ fleet, 263;
+ disposition of provinces of, at peace of 1748, 278;
+ transfer of Corsica to France by Genoa, 292, 334;
+ acquisition of Malta by England, 327.
+
+
+_Jamaica_,
+ taken by English, under Cromwell, 60;
+ wish of Spain to recover, 345, 510, 512;
+ strategic value of, 394, 517, 518;
+ combined expedition against, 479;
+ frustrated by Rodney's victory over De Grasse, 496;
+ Rodney repairs to, after his victory, 501, 517.
+
+_James II._,
+ a seaman by profession, 61, 115;
+ commands at battle of Lowestoft, as Duke of York, 109;
+ commands at the battle of Solebay, 147;
+ deprived of the command, 151;
+ succeeds to the throne, 175;
+ interest in the navy, 175, 177, 178;
+ flight from England, 178;
+ lands in Ireland, 179;
+ defeated at the Boyne, 186;
+ at Cape La Hougue, 188;
+ death, 205.
+
+_Jenkins_,
+ captain of a merchant brig, the story of his ears, 250.
+
+_Jervis_, Sir John, afterward Earl St. Vincent, British Admiral,
+ naval policy of, 9;
+ tactics at Cape St. Vincent, 11, 147, 167, 476 (note);
+ testimony at Keppel's court-martial, 352.
+
+_Johnstone_, British Commodore,
+ sails for Cape of Good Hope, 421;
+ commissioner to American Congress, 421 (note);
+ attacked by Suffren at the Cape Verde Islands, 421-425;
+ anticipated by Suffren at the Cape, 427;
+ returns unsuccessful to England, 427.
+
+
+_Kempenfeldt_, British Admiral,
+ cuts off part of De Guichen's convoy, 408, 414, 417, 475.
+
+_Keppel_, Lord, British Admiral,
+ appointed to command Channel fleet, 341;
+ battle of Ushant, 350-352;
+ head of admiralty and disapproves treaty of peace, 499;
+ a whig in politics, 500.
+
+_King_, British Commodore,
+ stubborn defence of the "Exeter," 449;
+ visits Suffren at the Cape of Good Hope, 465.
+
+
+_La Bourdonnais_,
+ governor of the Isle of France, 243, 273;
+ his active administration, 273;
+ prepares to attack English commerce in the East Indies, 273;
+ takes and ransoms Madras, quarrels with Dupleix, squadron wrecked,
+ returns to France, and dies, 276.
+
+_L'Étenduère_, French commodore,
+ brilliant defence of, 272.
+
+_Lafayette_, Marquis de,
+ arrival in America, 345;
+ operations in Virginia, 385;
+ expressions of Washington to, as to necessity of naval help, 397, 400;
+ associations of his name to Americans, 501.
+
+_La Galissonière_, French Admiral,
+ commands the fleet in the expedition to Minorca, 285;
+ defeats Byng's attempt to relieve Port Mahon, 286-288.
+
+_Lally_, French governor of India,
+ reaches India, 307;
+ quarrels with Commodore D'Aché, 307;
+ takes Fort St. David, 308;
+ besieges Madras, but fails, 310;
+ fall of French power under, 310.
+
+_Langara_, Spanish Admiral,
+ defeated and captured by Rodney, 403, 404, 499;
+ action at Toulon in 1793, 156.
+
+_Leibnitz_,
+ proposes to Louis XIV. the occupation of Egypt, 106, 107, 141, 142.
+
+_Louis XIV._,
+ growth of French navy under, 72;
+ enmity to Holland, 73;
+ policy of, 73, 103-105, 140, 143, 205;
+ naval policy of, 72, 74, 107, 133, 141-143, 155, 159, 166, 174,
+ 178-181, 194-196;
+ assumes personal government, 90;
+ initiates general wars, 91;
+ condition of France at accession of, 93;
+ commercial policy of, 54, 105, 167, 169, 170, 176;
+ aggressions of, 139, 173;
+ declares war against Holland, 144;
+ campaign in Holland, 149-151;
+ evacuates Holland, 158;
+ Sicilian episode, 159-166;
+ peace with Holland, 168;
+ declares war against Germany, 177;
+ against Holland, 178;
+ supports invasion of Ireland, 179-186;
+ plans invasion of England, 188-191;
+ concessions by, at peace of Ryswick, 197;
+ effect of policy of, on sea-power, 198-200;
+ accepts bequest of Spanish throne to his grandson, 203;
+ reduced to extremities in War of Spanish Succession, 215, 216;
+ humiliating concessions at peace of Utrecht, 219-221;
+ exhaustion of France under, 227;
+ privateering under, 133, 134, 195, 230;
+ death of, 232.
+
+_Louis XV._,
+ ascends throne, 232;
+ condition of French commerce under, 74, 242-244, 279, 280, 311, 318;
+ condition of French navy, 74-77, 244, 252-254, 259, 276, 279, 280,
+ 288, 291, 311;
+ restoration of the navy, 76, 331-333;
+ defensive alliance with Spain, 248, 263-268;
+ offensive alliance with Spain, 313, 333;
+ death, 336.
+
+_Louis XVI._,
+ begins to reign, 336;
+ naval policy of, 78-80, 337-340, 402, 403, 452;
+ general policy of, 336, 337, 345, 359, 382, 419, 509-512, 535-540;
+ treaty with the United States, 346;
+ breach with England, 350.
+
+_Louisburg_, Cape Breton Island,
+ strategic importance of, 28, 294, 328;
+ retained by France at Peace of Utrecht, 219;
+ taken by New England colonists, 269;
+ restored to France at peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 277;
+ taken by Boscawen, 294.
+
+
+_Madras_,
+ capital of a British presidency in India, 257;
+ taken by French, 276;
+ exchanged for Louisburg at peace of 1748, 277;
+ besieged by French in 1759, 310;
+ danger from Hyder Ali in 1780, 420;
+ principal British naval station during the struggle, 1781-1783, 429,
+ 437, 444, 450, 451;
+ danger of roadstead, in northeast monsoon. 458, 518, 519.
+
+_Mahrattas_, the,
+ position in India of, and war with English, 419, 420;
+ peace with the English, 459, 461.
+
+_Maria Theresa_,
+ ascends Austrian throne, 262;
+ war with Prussia, France, and Spain, 262, 263;
+ war with Prussia, in alliance with France and Russia, 292.
+
+_Martinique_, French West India Island,
+ base for commerce-destroying, 31, 135, 314;
+ taken by the English, 135, 314;
+ effects of this conquest, 318;
+ restored to France at peace of Paris, 321;
+ principal base of French navy in West Indies. 348, 366, 469, 479;
+ actions near, 378, 383;
+ strategic position of, 480, 517, 518, 523.
+
+_Matthews_, British Admiral,
+ commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean and minister to Sardinia, 263;
+ action with combined French and Spanish fleets, 265-267;
+ court-martialled and cashiered, 268.
+
+_Mazarin_, Cardinal,
+ policy of, 70, 93;
+ death, 90.
+
+_Mediterranean Sea_,
+ control of, influence on Second Punic war, 14-21;
+ strategic points in, 13, 20, 22, 23, 32, 62, 63, 82, 141, 142, 202,
+ 203, 215, 220, 285, 298, 327, 328, 335, 393, 515;
+ advantage of strategic study of, 33;
+ analogy to Caribbean Sea, 33;
+ increase of English power in, 206, 210, 212, 215, 219, 220, 229,
+ 235, 239, 263, 322, 327, 328;
+ Austria established in, 239;
+ Sardinia given to House of Savoy, 239;
+ foundation of Bourbon Kingdom of Two Sicilies, 248,
+ strengthens France in, 249;
+ English navy in, 193, 206, 208, 210-216, 263-268, 286-291, 296, 298,
+ 412, 515, 532, 533;
+ France acquires Corsica, 334, 335;
+ England loses Minorca in American Revolution, 409, 540.
+
+_Monk_, British General and Admiral,
+ saying about Dutch trade, 107;
+ commands English fleet in the Four Days' Battle, 117-126;
+ tactics of, 121, 124;
+ merits of, 126;
+ opposition to laying up the heavy ships, 131;
+ death, 127.
+
+_Morogues_, Bigot de,
+ work on Naval Tactics, 10, 77, 288.
+
+
+_Napoleon I._,
+ recommends study of military history, 2;
+ Egyptian expedition, 10, 107;
+ Trafalgar campaign, 11, 12, 23, 24 (note), 119, 532, 533;
+ favorite objective, 47;
+ naval policy, 81, 506;
+ influence of French navy on American privateering in 1812, 137.
+
+_Naval Policy_,
+ value of reserve force, 48;
+ colonial, 56,
+ in peace, 82;
+ in war, 82;
+ soldiers commanding ships, 127;
+ commerce-destroying and privateering (see Commerce-destroying)
+ Bourbon Family compact, 248, 313;
+ significance of the wars from 1739 to 1783, 254;
+ Dutch, 67-69, 95-99, 108, 109, 126, 174, 201-204, 217, 218, 222, 406;
+ English, 59-67, 78, 100, 101, 105, 107, 131, 140, 143, 174, 175,
+ 192-196, 201-204, 206, 224, 225, 229, 238-241, 244, 245, 264, 293,
+ 326-328, 406, 417, 442, 451, 452, 505, 540;
+ French, 29, 54, 69-81, 93, 104, 105-107, 166, 167-170, 177, 187,
+ 197, 199, 212, 226, 238, 242-244, 252, 282, 287-290, 291, 309, 311,
+ 322, 331-334, 337, 340, 359, 382, 408 (and note), 451, 452, 459,
+ 460, 506, 510, 511;
+ maritime inscription, 45;
+ Leibnitz's proposition to Louis XIV., 141, 142;
+ Italian, 39, 40;
+ Spanish, 41, 51, 94, 156, 246, 312, 333, 348, 401, 407, 510, 517
+ (note), 535, 536;
+ United States, 26, 33, 34, 38, 39, 42, 49, 83-88, 325, 326, 539, 540
+ (note).
+
+
+_Naval Tactics_,
+ unsettled condition of modern, 2;
+ qualities of galleys, steamers, and sailing-ships, 3-5;
+ windward and leeward positions, 6,
+ change of, from age to age, 9, 10, 22, 130, 506;
+ fireships, 109, 110, 113, 114;
+ torpedo-cruisers, 111;
+ group formation, 112;
+ close-hauled line-of-battle, 115;
+ breaking the line, 124, 147, 265, 268, 286, 380, 381, 488, 491;
+ refusing the van, 148, 152, 157, 183, 190, 266, 432, 434;
+ concentration by defiling, 308, 387, 470, 492;
+ concentration by doubling, 125, 147, 183, 272, 378, 379, 432, 433,
+ 438-441;
+ general chase with _mêlée_, 3, 4, 184, 237, 271, 299, 302, 303,
+ 367-369, 404, 481, 482, 486;
+ French, in eighteenth century, 79, 80, 114, 163, 164, 287-290, 338,
+ 340, 351, 372, 383, 425, 426, 431, 474 (and note), 476, 478, 482,
+ 483, 486-488, 494, 538;
+ English, in eighteenth century, 127-129, 163, 211, 237, 265, 268,
+ 271, 286, 287, 299, 303, 307, 350, 352, 369, 377-381, 386, 389,
+ 391, 404, 412, 442, 447, 449, 453-455, 462, 463, 470-473, 476 (and
+ note), 486-490;
+ Monk's, 121;
+ Ruyter's, 145, 147, 148, 152, 154, 157, 161;
+ Duquesne's, 161-163, 165;
+ Herbert's, 182;
+ Tourville's, 182, 184, 185, 187, 189;
+ Rooke's, 211;
+ Byng's, 286;
+ Hawke's, 271, 272, 303;
+ Keppel's and D'Orvilliers, 351;
+ Barrington's, 366;
+ Byron's, 367-369;
+ D'Estaing's, 369, 370;
+ Rodney's, 377-379, 404, 488, 491;
+ De Grasse's, 383, 389, 471-474, 481-483, 485-489;
+ Arbuthnot and Destouches's, 386;
+ Graves's, 389, 391;
+ Suffren's, 425, 426, 432, 433, 439, 455, 465;
+ Hood's, 472, 473;
+ Clerk's work on, 77, 163, 211;
+ Hoste's work on, 77;
+ Morogues' work on, 77;
+ position of commander-in-chief in battle, 353-358;
+ effect on, of changes in naval material, 2-5, 9, 10, 22, 109, 116,
+ 384 (note), 386 (note), 493-495.
+
+_Navies_, condition of:
+ _British_, under Cromwell, 62;
+ under Charles II., 61, 101;
+ character of vessels, 1660, 101;
+ qualities of officers, 1660, 126-129;
+ decline of, under Charles II., 174;
+ improvement of, by James II., 175;
+ numbers in 1691, 187;
+ deterioration under William III., 192;
+ improvement under Anne, 209, 220, 224, 225, 229;
+ numbers and condition of, in 1727, 1734, and 1744, 259, 260;
+ inefficiency of officers, 1744, 265-269;
+ numbers of, 1756-1763, 291;
+ numbers of, in 1778, 337, 341;
+ professional skill of officers in American Revolution, 379 (and
+ note), 401, 412, 449, 456, 497;
+ administration of, 417, 452, 523, 527.
+
+ _Dutch_, prior to 1660, 68, 98, 99;
+ character of ships, 102;
+ professional qualities of officers, 109, 126, 127, 129, 157;
+ Duquesne's estimate of Dutch officers, 129;
+ decline of, after 1675, 160, 174;
+ decline of, during War of Spanish Succession, 221, 222;
+ practical disappearance of, after 1713, 222.
+
+ _French_, 53;
+ numbers in 1661, 70;
+ numbers in 1666, 72;
+ numbers, 1683-1690, 72, 178, 179, 180;
+ administration of, 1660-1695, 72;
+ condition of, at end of Louis XIV.'s reign, 74, 191;
+ character of vessels in 1660, 101,
+ professional qualities of officers in seventeenth and eighteenth
+ centuries, 129, 161, 170-172, 185;
+ decay in number and condition, 1713-1760, 74-76, 209, 216, 244,
+ 252, 259, 260, 279, 280, 288, 291, 311, 312;
+ revival of, 1760, 76-78, 331;
+ numbers of, in 1761 and 1770, 331;
+ discipline during war of 1778, 332, 333;
+ numbers in 1778, 45, 337;
+ superior to British in size and batteries of ships, 338, 493, 494;
+ professional skill of officers, 365, 412, 435, 436, 447, 457, 484,
+ 497, 527, 536 (note);
+ administration of, 402 (and note), 403, 452, 536, 537;
+ numbers of, in 1791, 338;
+ numbers of, in 1814, 81.
+
+ _Spanish_, condition of, anterior to 1660, 41, 50, 94, 95;
+ in 1675, 160, 165;
+ restoration by Alberoni, 234;
+ destruction of ships at Cape Passaro and of dock-yards, 237, 238;
+ numbers of, 1747, 259;
+ numbers of, 1756, 291;
+ numbers of, in 1761, 331;
+ numbers of, in 1779, 337;
+ superior to British in size and batteries of ships, 338;
+ administration of, 402 (and note), 403, 536;
+ character of the personnel, 527.
+
+_Nelson_, Horatio, afterward Lord, British Admiral,
+ tactics at the battle of the Nile, 10;
+ Trafalgar campaign, 11, 23 (note), 527, 532, 533;
+ tactics at Trafalgar, 12, 354, 459;
+ enforces Navigation Act, 60, 251;
+ orders at Trafalgar, 112, 434;
+ at battle of Cape St. Vincent, 157, 355, 368;
+ celebrated sayings of, 185, 362, 435, 525, 527, 532;
+ attachment of subordinates to, 267;
+ position assumed by him in battle, 353-358.
+
+_Nile_, Battle of the,
+ tactical principles, 10;
+ strategic effect, 11;
+ French rear at, 80;
+ Nelson at, 358.
+
+
+_Opdam_, Dutch Admiral,
+ commands at battle of Lowestoft and is killed, 108, 109.
+
+_Orleans_, Philippe d',
+ Regent of France during minority of Louis XV., 74, 232;
+ insecurity of position, 232;
+ concessions to England, 233;
+ policy of, 235;
+ alliance with England against Spain, 235-238;
+ death, 241.
+
+
+_Peace_:
+ _Aix-la-Chapelle_, 1748, 277.
+ _Breda_, 1667, 132.
+ _Nimeguen_, 1678, 168.
+ _Nystadt_, 1721, 240.
+ _Paris_, 1763, 321.
+ _Ryswick_, 1697, 197.
+ _Utrecht_, 1713, 219.
+ _Versailles_, 1783, 541.
+
+_Philip_, Duke of Anjou, afterward Philip V. of Spain,
+ Spanish throne bequeathed to, 202;
+ war declared against, by England, Holland, and Germany, 205;
+ loses Gibraltar, 210;
+ besieges Gibraltar, 212;
+ loses Barcelona and Catalonia, 213;
+ driven from Madrid, 214;
+ recovers all Spain, except Catalonia, 214;
+ acknowledged King of Spain by Treaty of Utrecht, 219;
+ deprived of Netherlands and Italian dependencies, 219;
+ enmity to the regent Orleans, 232;
+ seizes Sardinia, 235;
+ attacks Sicily, 236;
+ brought to terms by France and the Sea Powers, 239;
+ makes alliance with the Emperor Charles VI., 244;
+ attacks Gibraltar, 245.
+
+_Physical Conformation_,
+ its effect upon the sea power of countries, 35-42.
+
+_Pitt_, William,
+ dislike of George II. to, 270;
+ becomes prime minister, 293;
+ policy of, 295, 296;
+ prosperity of commerce under, 297;
+ offers to restore Gibraltar to Spain, 298;
+ respect for Portuguese neutrality, 299, 300;
+ declines mediation of Spain, 304;
+ waning of his influence, 305;
+ purposes war against Spain, 313;
+ resigns his office, 313;
+ his plans adopted by successors, 314, 317;
+ opposes the peace of Paris, 322;
+ effect of his policy on the history of England, 326.
+
+_Pocock_, British Admiral,
+ commands British fleet in India and fights three battles with French
+ fleet, 307-310;
+ commands fleet in combined expedition against Havana, 314, 315.
+
+_Port Mahon_ and Minorca,
+ lost to Spain frequently through maritime weakness, 42, 215, 541;
+ ceded to England in 1713, 62, 219;
+ strategic importance of, 62, 220, 393, 515;
+ French expedition against, 285;
+ Byng defeated in his attempt to relieve, 286-288;
+ surrender of, to France, 291;
+ Pitt's offer to exchange Gibraltar for, 298;
+ restored to England at peace of 1763, 322;
+ taken from England in 1782, 407, 409;
+ ceded to Spain in 1783, 540;
+ again taken by England, 541.
+
+_Portugal_,
+ decay in sea power and wealth, 52;
+ cedes Bombay and Tangiers to England, 104;
+ dependence on England, 105, 208, 315, 320, 321;
+ Methuen treaty, 206;
+ alliance with England and Holland, 1704, 208;
+ advantage of, to England, 208, 213-215, 220, 228;
+ French and Spaniards invade, 315, 316, 321;
+ England repels the invasion, 316;
+ benevolent neutrality of colonial ports to England, 520, 521.
+
+
+_Ramatuelle_,
+ work on Naval Tactics, 287, 290, 371-374.
+
+_Rhode Island_,
+ occupied by the English in the American Revolution, 346;
+ attack upon by French and Americans, 361-364;
+ English evacuate, 376, 530;
+ French occupy, 382, 394;
+ French position in, 394;
+ strategic value of, 519, 529, 530 (note).
+
+_Richelieu_, Cardinal,
+ policy of, 59, 70, 92, 93;
+ alliance with Spain, 94.
+
+_Rochambeau_, French General,
+ arrival in America, 382;
+ despatches to De Grasse, 384, 388;
+ consultation with Washington, 387, 399;
+ marches against Cornwallis, 389.
+
+_Rodney_, Sir George B., afterward Lord, British Admiral,
+ commands squadron in reduction of Martinique, 314;
+ commander-in-chief in West Indies, 377;
+ takes or disperses a Spanish squadron, 377, 404, 500 (and note);
+ personal and military character, 377, 378, 380, 397, 498-500;
+ actions with De Guichen, 378-381;
+ divides his fleet and goes to New York, 382;
+ seizes Dutch West India islands, 382;
+ sends Hood with fourteen ships to New York, and returns to England, 389;
+ returns to West Indies, 479;
+ sails in chase of De Grasse, 480;
+ action of April 9, 1782, 481-483;
+ battle of April 12, 1782, 485-490;
+ criticism upon his tactics, 490-493;
+ criticism upon his failure to pursue the beaten enemy, 496, 497;
+ his successes, 500;
+ rewards and death, 503;
+ opinion as to evacuation of Rhode Island, 530 (note).
+
+_Rooke_, Sir George, British Admiral,
+ relieves Londonderry, 180;
+ burns French ships at Cape La Hougue, 190;
+ unsuccessful expedition against Cadiz, 207;
+ destroys the galleons at Vigo Bay, 207;
+ takes Gibraltar, 210;
+ commands at the battle of Malaga, 211.
+
+_Rupert_, Prince,
+ at Four Days' Battle, 124, 125;
+ commands English fleet at battles of Schoneveldt and of the Texel,
+ 151, 152.
+
+_Russell_, British Admiral,
+ commands allied English and Dutch fleets in 1691, 187;
+ at battle of La Hougue, 189.
+
+_Ruyter_, Dutch Admiral,
+ greatest naval officer of seventeenth century, 117;
+ commands at battle of the Four Days, 117-126;
+ badly supported by his officers, 122, 126, 127;
+ tactics of, 130, 144-148, 152, 157, 161, 164;
+ destroys English shipping in the Thames, 132;
+ strategy of, 144, 151, 152;
+ commands at the battles of Solebay, 146,
+ Schoneveldt, 152,
+ Texel, 152-154;
+ military character, 157;
+ sent to Mediterranean with inadequate force, 160;
+ commands at battle of Stromboli, 160-162;
+ killed at battle of Agosta, 166.
+
+
+_Sea Power_,
+ a history of conflicts, 1;
+ elements of, 25.
+ Affected by geographical position of countries, 29-35;
+ by physical conformation, 35-42;
+ by extent of territory, 42-44;
+ by number of population, 44-50;
+ by national character, 50-58;
+ by policy of government, 58.
+ Policy of England as to, 58-67;
+ policy of Holland, 67-69;
+ of France, 69-81.
+ Influence of colonies on, 82 (see also Colonies);
+ weakness of the United States in, 83;
+ dependent upon commerce, 87, 225 (see also Commerce);
+ strategic bearing, 88 (see also Strategy);
+ policy of Richelieu, 93;
+ Spanish, in 1660, 94;
+ Dutch, in 1660, 95;
+ English, in 1860, 101;
+ mistakes of Louis XIV., 104;
+ Colbert's measures, 70, 105;
+ effects of commerce-destroying on, 132, 179, 193, 229, 317, 344, 400,
+ 408 (note), 539.
+ (See also Commerce-destroying.)
+ Influence of, upon Napoleon's expedition to Egypt, 10;
+ upon Second Punic War, 14;
+ upon Third Anglo-Dutch War, 148, 154;
+ upon English Revolution, 177, 178, 180, 181, 191, 197;
+ upon France, 198, 199;
+ upon War of Spanish Succession, 203, 206, 209, 213, 214, 223-229;
+ upon Alberoni's ambitions, 237, 239;
+ upon Peter the Great, 239;
+ in India, 243, 258, 273-278, 306, 309, 310, 316, 328, 349, 424, 428,
+ 445, 452, 459-464, 466, 513, 520, 521;
+ upon War of Austrian Succession, 263, 264, 279, 280;
+ upon Seven Years' War, 291, 293-295, 304, 311, 314-317;
+ upon Portugal, 320, 321;
+ at Peace of Paris, 321;
+ in remote and disordered countries, 324-326;
+ upon British policy since 1763, 326-328.
+ Washington's opinions as to, 397-400;
+ American Revolution, 347, 468;
+ influence of, upon conditions of peace, 1783, 498.
+
+_Spain_,
+ geographical position, 32;
+ results of maritime weakness of, 41, 42, 193, 313-317, 327, 345,
+ 346, 541;
+ dependence of finances upon treasure-ships, 41, 244, 313, 346, 539;
+ effect of national character upon sea power, 50-52, 54;
+ unity of aim with Austria, 91, 92;
+ policy of Richelieu toward, 93;
+ condition of, in 1660, 94, 95;
+ condition of navy, in 1660, 94;
+ aggressions of Louis XIV. on, 104, 139;
+ failure of the Austrian line of kings, 140, 201, 202;
+ alliance with Holland and Germany against France, 158;
+ revolt of Sicily against, 159;
+ territory lost at Peace of Nimeguen, 168;
+ joins League of Augsburg, 176;
+ dependence upon Dutch and English fleets, 193;
+ possessions in year 1700, 201;
+ throne of, bequeathed to Philip, Duke of Anjou, 202;
+ war of the succession, 201-231;
+ Bourbon line of kings established, 219;
+ losses of territory at peace of 1713, 219;
+ Alberoni's ministry in, 233-239;
+ grievances against England, 1720-1739, 240, 241, 244-251;
+ conquers the Two Sicilies in War of Polish Succession, 248;
+ Family Compact with France, 248, 311, 313;
+ war with England, 250;
+ possessions in 1739, 256;
+ Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 278;
+ lack of results from war with England, 278;
+ enters Seven Years' War as the ally of France against England, 313;
+ loss of colonies and treasures, 314-317;
+ loss of possessions by Peace of Paris, 1763, 321, 322;
+ political relations with France, 333;
+ dispute with England over Falkland Islands, 335;
+ objects in the war of 1779-1782, 347, 348, 509, 510, 513;
+ rupture with England and alliance with France, 401;
+ inefficiency of navy, 402 (and note), 407-409, 411, 412, 506, 527;
+ policy in war of 1779, 517 (note), 535-538;
+ territorial gains by peace of 1783.
+ (See also Colonies, Commerce, Naval Policy.)
+
+_Sta. Lucia_, West India Island,
+ taken by English, 314;
+ ceded to France at Peace of Paris, 321;
+ strong harbor and strategic position, 348, 366, 377, 393, 415, 513,
+ 516, 518, 523;
+ taken by Admiral Barrington, 348, 365, 366, 512, 531 (note);
+ Rodney watches De Grasse from, 479, 480;
+ an advanced strategic position, 518, 528;
+ restored to France at peace of 1783, 540.
+
+_Strategy_,
+ permanence of its principles, 7-9, 88, 89;
+ illustrations, 10-22;
+ definition of naval, 22;
+ Trafalgar campaign, 23 (note);
+ bearing of geographical position on, 29-33;
+ Mediterranean and Caribbean Seas, 33-35;
+ bearing of physical conformation of coast on, 35-42;
+ blockade of coast of Confederate States, 43, 44;
+ value of commerce-destroying (see Commerce-destroying);
+ word "defence" two distinct ideas, 87 (note);
+ naval, of the British, 6, 9, 22, 24, 30, 118, 125, 136, 143, 182,
+ 206, 208, 210, 212, 224, 229, 239, 260, 269, 284, 285, 296,
+ 314-317, 320, 326-328, 339, 342, 343, 363, 375, 376, 385, 390-397,
+ 412-417, 428-430, 468, 523-535;
+ naval, of the Dutch, 144, 145, 151, 154;
+ naval, of the French, 6, 12, 23 (note), 179-181, 191, 347, 371-374,
+ 383, 388, 392, 401, 433, 459, 460, 476, 483, 535-539;
+ features of War of Spanish Succession, 201-206;
+ silent action of sea power, 209;
+ general military situation, in 1740, 255;
+ England in Seven Years' War, 296;
+ mutual dependence of seaports and fleets, 31, 83, 132, 212, 329,
+ 430, 453, 529;
+ value of colonies, 27, 28, 65, 83, 135, 136, 510, 511;
+ importance of coal, 31, 329 (note), 540 (note);
+ military situation in America in 1777, 341-343;
+ general strategic situation in 1778, 347-349;
+ British difficulties in American Revolution, 392-397, 412-419, 522-533;
+ Suffren's naval, 424, 425, 433, 450, 465;
+ situation in India, 349, 428-430;
+ Hood's naval, 476;
+ Rodney's naval, 381, 392, 496-498, 523;
+ influence of trade-winds and monsoons, 315, 458, 517, 518;
+ elements essential to all naval wars, 514;
+ difficulty of procuring information at sea, 521;
+ general discussion of war of 1778, 505-540.
+ (See also Naval Policy and Sea Power.)
+
+_Suffren_, French Admiral,
+ criticism on D'Estaing's conduct at Sta. Lucia, 366, 426, 478;
+ commands leading French ship in D'Estaing's battle off Grenada, 371;
+ criticism on D'Estaing's conduct in the battle, 371;
+ sails from Brest in company with De Grasse's fleet, 383, 421;
+ parts company, off the Azores, for India, 383, 407, 421;
+ orders to secure Cape of Good Hope, 421;
+ action, with British squadron at the Cape Verde Islands, 422, 423;
+ military discussion of his conduct, 423-425;
+ arrival in India, 427;
+ lack of seaports on which to base operations, 349, 429;
+ first battle with squadron of Sir Edward Hughes, 430-432;
+ tactics in the action, 432-435;
+ estimate of the strategic situation in India, 424, 433, 444, 445,
+ 464, 466;
+ second battle with Hughes, 437-439;
+ tactics in it, 439-441;
+ strategic action, 443, 445, 446, 450-453, 458-460, 462-464, 466, 522;
+ military character, 445, 446, 450, 456, 465, 466;
+ third battle with Hughes, 446-448;
+ takes Trincomalee, 450;
+ activity of, 450, 451, 456, 462, 466;
+ fourth battle with Hughes, 453-456;
+ wreck of two of squadron, 457;
+ goes to Sumatra, 460;
+ returns to Trincomalee, 461;
+ relieves Cuddalore besieged by the English, 462;
+ fifth battle with Hughes, 463;
+ conclusion of peace, 464;
+ return to France, 465;
+ rewards, 465;
+ later career and death, 466.
+
+
+_Tourville_, French Admiral,
+ commands at the battle of Beachy Head, 181;
+ sluggish pursuit of the enemy, 184;
+ military character, 185;
+ celebrated cruise in 1691, 187;
+ commands at battle of La Hougue, 189;
+ tactics and brilliant defence at La Hougue, 190;
+ destruction of French ships, 190;
+ supports the army in Catalonia, 193;
+ destroys or disperses a great English convoy, 194;
+ death, 210.
+
+_Trafalgar_, Battle of,
+ final act of a strategic combination, 11, 23 (note);
+ tactics at, 12, 354, 459;
+ effects of, 47;
+ Nelson's position at, 353, 357;
+ Collingwood's action after Nelson's death, 358.
+
+_Trincomalee_,
+ in Ceylon, Dutch influence in, 97;
+ passes into the hands of the English, 349, 428;
+ effect upon the contest in India, 349, 427 (note), 429, 430 (note),
+ 433, 437, 442, 451, 453, 458, 462;
+ strategic value of, 428, 429, 436, 444, 451, 458, 518, 519, 520;
+ taken by Suffren, 450;
+ restored to Holland at peace of 1783, 540.
+
+_Two Sicilies_, the,
+ acquired by Austria, 239;
+ foundation of Bourbon Kingdom of, 248;
+ forced by British fleet to withdraw troops from Spanish army, 264, 304.
+
+
+_United Provinces._ See Holland.
+
+
+_Vernon_, British Admiral,
+ takes Porto Bello, is repulsed from Cartagena and Santiago de Cuba, 261.
+
+_Villeneuve_, French Admiral, Trafalgar,
+ campaign, 23, 24 (note), 525;
+ at the battle of the Nile, 80;
+ suicide, 403.
+
+
+_Walpole_, Sir Robert,
+ prime minister of England, 239, 241;
+ peace policy of, 241, 243, 244;
+ naval demonstrations, 244;
+ struggle with the war party in England, 247, 249, 250;
+ neutrality causes Austria to lose the two Sicilies, 248;
+ forced into war with Spain, 250;
+ accord with Fleuri, 241, 243, 244;
+ confidence betrayed by Fleuri, 248;
+ driven from office, 253, 262;
+ death, 253.
+
+_War_, Second Punic,
+ influence of sea power upon, 13-21.
+
+_Wars_,
+ American Revolution, 341--397;
+ Anglo-Dutch, second, 107-132;
+ Anglo-Dutch, third, England in alliance with France, 144-158;
+ Austrian Succession, 262-277;
+ France against Holland, Germany, and Spain, 1674-1678, 158-168;
+ Great Britain against Spain, 250-277;
+ League of Augsburg, 176-197;
+ Maritime war of 1778, 350-540;
+ Polish Succession, 247;
+ Russia and Sweden, 231;
+ Seven Years', 291-321;
+ Spanish Succession, 1702-1713, 205-218.
+
+_Washington_, George,
+ at Pittsburg and in Braddock's expedition, 284;
+ opinion as to the line of the Hudson, 342 (note);
+ comments on D'Estaing's cruise, 364 (note);
+ despatches to De Grasse, 384;
+ meeting with Rochambeau, 387;
+ result of their deliberations, 388;
+ marches from New York to Virginia, 389;
+ opinions as to the influence of sea power on the American Revolution,
+ 397-400.
+
+_William III._,
+ naval policy of, 68, 192;
+ becomes ruler of Holland, 150;
+ general policy, 68, 167, 168, 174, 176, 177, 191, 202-204, 207;
+ expedition to England, 178;
+ becomes King of England, 61, 178;
+ difficulties of his position, 179;
+ goes to Ireland, 181;
+ wins the battle of the Boyne, 188;
+ dies, 205.
+
+
+
+
+
+ +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+ | Typographical errors corrected in text: |
+ | |
+ | Page 180: 'There can be little doubt than an effective' |
+ | replaced with 'There can be little doubt that |
+ | an effective' |
+ | Page 261: perserverence replaced with perseverance |
+ | Page 326: Britian replaced with Britain |
+ | Page 551: Carribean replaced with Caribbean |
+ | Page 553: Orléans replaced with Orleans (twice) |
+ | Page 554: Hogue replaced with Hougue |
+ | Page 556: Carribean replaced with Caribbean |
+ | |
+ +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
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