THE WARFARE AGAINST COMMERCE DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND EMPIRE,
TO THE BERLIN DECREE. 1793-1806.
The Warfare against Commerce during the French Revolution, alike under
the Republic and under Napoleon, was marked by the same passionate
vehemence, the same extreme and far-reaching conceptions, the same
obstinate resolve utterly to overthrow and extirpate every opposing
force, that characterized the political and military enterprises of
the period. In the effort to bring under the yoke of their own policy
the commerce of the whole world, the two chief contestants, France and
Great Britain, swayed back and forth in deadly grapple over the vast
arena, trampling under foot the rights and interests of the weaker
parties; who, whether as neutrals, or as subjects of friendly or allied
powers, looked helplessly on, and found that in this great struggle
for self-preservation, neither outcries, nor threats, nor despairing
submission, availed to lessen the pressure that was gradually crushing
out both hope and life. The question between Napoleon and the British
people became simply one of endurance, as was tersely and powerfully
shown by the emperor himself. Both were expending their capital, and
drawing freely drafts upon the future, the one in money, the other in
men, to sustain their present strength. Like two infuriated dogs, they
had locked jaws over Commerce, as the decisive element in the contest.
Neither would let go his grip until failing vitality should loose it,
or until some bystander should deal one a wound through which the
powers of life should drain away. All now know that in the latter way
the end came. The commercial policy of the great monarch, who, from the
confines of Europe, had watched the tussle with all the eagerness of
self-interest, angered Napoleon. To enforce his will, he made new and
offensive annexations of territory. The czar replied by a commercial
edict, sharp and decisive, and war was determined. "It is all a scene
in the Opera," wrote Napoleon,[247] "and the English are the scene
shifters." Words failed the men of that day to represent the grandeur
and apparent solidity of the Empire in 1811, when Napoleon's heir was
born. In December, 1812, it was shattered from turret to foundation
stone; wrecked in the attempt "to conquer the sea by the land." The
scene was shifted indeed.
Great Britain remained victorious on the field, but she had touched
the verge of ruin. Confronted with the fixed resolution of her enemy
to break down her commerce by an absolute exclusion from the continent
of Europe, and as far as possible from the rest of the world, she met
the challenge by a measure equally extreme, forbidding all neutral
vessels to enter ports hostile to her, unless they had first touched
at one of her own. Shut out herself from the Continent, she announced
that while this exclusion lasted she would shut the Continent off from
all external intercourse. "No trade except _through_ England," was the
formula under which her leaders expressed their purpose. The entrance
of Russia into this strife, under the provocations of Napoleon,
prevented the problem, which of these two policies would overthrow the
other, from reaching a natural solution; and the final result of the
measures which it is one object of this and the following chapter to
narrate must remain for ever uncertain. It is, however, evident that
a commercial and manufacturing country like Great Britain must, in a
strife the essence of which was the restriction of trade, suffer more
than one depending, as France did, mainly upon her internal resources.
The question, as before stated, was whether she could endure the
greater drain by her greater wealth. Upon the whole, the indications
were, and to the end continued to be, that she could do so; that
Napoleon, in entering upon this particular struggle, miscalculated his
enemy's strength.
But besides this, here, as in every contest where the opponents are
closely matched, where power and discipline and leadership are nearly
equal, there was a further question: which of the two would make the
first and greatest mistakes, and how ready the other party was to
profit by his errors. In so even a balance, the wisest prophet cannot
foresee how the scale will turn. The result will depend not merely upon
the skill of the swordsman in handling his weapons, but also upon the
wariness of his fence and the quickness of his returns; much, too, upon
his temper. Here also Napoleon was worsted. Scarcely was the battle
over commerce joined, when the uprising of Spain was precipitated by
over-confidence; Great Britain hastened at once to place herself by the
side of the insurgents. Four years later, when the British people were
groaning in a protracted financial crisis,—when, if ever, there was
a hope that the expected convulsion and ruin were at hand,—Napoleon,
instead of waiting for his already rigorous blockade to finish the work
he attributed to it, strove to draw it yet closer, by demands which
were unnecessary and to which the czar could not yield. Again Great
Britain seized her opportunity, received her late enemy's fleet, and
filled his treasury. Admit the difficulties of Napoleon; allow as we
may for the intricacy of the problem before him; the fact remains that
he wholly misunderstood the temper of the Spanish people, the dangers
of the Spanish enterprise, the resolution of Alexander. On the other
hand, looking upon the principal charge against the policy of the
British government, that it alienated the United States, it is still
true that there was no miscalculation as to the long-suffering of the
latter under the guidance of Jefferson, with his passion for peace. The
submission of the United States lasted until Napoleon was committed to
his final blunder, thus justifying the risk taken by Great Britain and
awarding to her the strategic triumph.
The Continental System of Napoleon, here briefly alluded to, and to be
described more fully further on, was, however, only the continuation,
in its spirit and aims, of a policy outlined and initiated by the
Republic under the Directory; which in turn but carried into its
efforts against commerce the savage thoroughness which the Convention
had sought to impress upon the general war. The principal measures of
the emperor found antitypes in the decrees of the Directory; the only
important difference being, that the execution of the latter reflected
the feeble planning and intermittent energy of the government which
issued them; whereas Napoleon, as always, impressed upon his system
a vigor, and employed for its fulfilment means, proportioned to the
arduousness of the task and the greatness of the expected results.
The one series being therefore but the successor and fulfilment of
the other, it has been thought best to present them in the same close
connection in which they stand in the order of events, so as to
show more clearly the unity of design running throughout the whole
history,—a unity due to the inexorable logic of facts, to the existence
of an external compulsion, which could in no other way be removed or
resisted. Both in common owed their origin to the inability of France
seriously to embarrass, by the ordinary operations of war, the great
commerce of her rival, though she launched her national cruisers and
privateers by dozens on every sea. The Sea Power of England held its
way so steadily, preserved its trade in the main so successfully, and
was withal so evidently the principal enemy, the key of the hostile
effort against France, that it drove not only the weak Directors, but
the great soldier and statesman who followed them, into the course
which led straight to destruction.
The declarations of war were followed by the customary instructions to
commanders of ships-of-war and privateers to seize and bring into port
the merchant vessels of the enemy, as well as neutrals found violating
the generally acknowledged principles of international law. So far
there was nothing in the course of either belligerent that differed
from the usual and expected acts of States at war. At once the sea
swarmed with hastily equipped cruisers; and, as always happens on an
unexpected, or even sudden, outbreak of hostilities, many valuable
prizes were made by ships of either nation. The victims were taken
unawares, and the offence on each side was more active and efficient
than the defence. This first surprise, however, soon passed, and was
succeeded by the more regular course of maritime war. The great British
fleets gradually established a distinct preponderance over the masses
of the enemy, and the latter was quickly reduced to the ordinary
operations of commerce-destroying, in the sense usually given to that
word,—a policy, moreover, to which the national tradition and the
opinion of many eminent naval officers particularly inclined.
To these raids upon their shipping, by numerous scattered cruisers, the
British opposed a twofold system. By the one, their merchant vessels
bound to different quarters of the globe were gathered in specified
ports, and when assembled sailed together under the care of a body of
ships of war, charged to conduct them to their voyage's end. This was
the convoy system, the essence of which was to concentrate the exposed
wealth of the country, under the protection of a force adequate to meet
and drive away any probable enemy. Immense numbers of ships thus sailed
together; from two to three hundred was not an unusual gathering; and
five hundred, or even a thousand,[248] were at times seen together
in localities like the Chops of the Channel or the entrance to the
Baltic, where the especial danger necessitated a stronger guard and a
more careful acceptance of protection by the trader,—thus emphasizing
and enlarging the peculiar features of the practice. It is scarcely
necessary to remark that much time was lost in collecting such huge
bodies, and that the common rate of sailing was far below the powers
of many of their members; while the simultaneous arrival of great
quantities of the same goods tended to lower prices. Consequently, many
owners, relying upon the speed of their vessels and upon good luck,
sailed without convoy upon completing their cargoes,—willing, after the
manner of merchants, to take great risks for the sake of great returns,
by being first in the market. To protect these, and others, which, by
misfortune or bad management parted from their convoy, as well as to
maintain their general command of the sea, the British resorted to
another system, which may be called that of patrol. Fast frigates and
sloops-of-war, with a host of smaller vessels, were disseminated over
the ocean, upon the tracks which commerce follows and to which the
hostile cruisers were therefore constrained. To each was assigned his
cruising ground, the distribution being regulated by the comparative
dangers, and by the necessary accumulation of merchant shipping in
particular localities, as the North Sea, the approach to the English
Channel, and, generally, the centres to which the routes of commerce
converge. The forces thus especially assigned to patrol duty, the ships
"on a cruise," to use the technical expression, were casually increased
by the large number of vessels going backward and forward between
England and their respective stations, dispatch-boats, ships going in
for repairs or returning from them, so that the seas about Europe
were alive with British cruisers; each one of which was wide-awake for
prizes. To these again were added the many privateers, whose cruising
ground was not indeed assigned by the government, but which were
constrained in their choice by the same conditions that dictated at
once the course of the trader and the lair of the commerce-destroyer.
Through this cloud of friends and foes the unprotected merchantman had
to run the gantlet, trusting to his heels. If he were taken, all indeed
was not lost, for there remained the chance of recapture by a friendly
cruiser; but in that case the salvage made a large deduction from the
profits of the voyage. The dangers thus run were not, however, solely
at the risk of the owner; for, not to speak of the embarrassment caused
to others by the failure of one merchant, the crews of the ships,
the sailors, constituted a great potential element of the combatant
force of the nation. A good seaman, especially in those days of simple
weapons, was more than half ready to become at once a fighting man. In
this he differed from an untrained landsman, and the customs of war
therefore kept him, whenever taken afloat, a prisoner till exchanged.
Every merchant ship captured thus diminished the fighting power of
Great Britain, and the losses were so numerous that an act, known as
the Convoy Act, was passed in 1798, compelling the taking of convoy and
the payment of a certain sum for the protection. In the first year of
its imposition this tax brought in £1,292,000 to the Treasury, while
resulting in a yet greater saving of insurance to owners; and the
diminished number of prizes taken by the French was thought to be a
serious inconvenience to them, at a time when, by the admission of the
Directory, foreign commerce under their own flag was annihilated. This
remarkable confession, and the experience which dictated the Convoy
Act, may together be taken as an indication that, in the defence and
attack of commerce, as in other operations of war, concentration of
effort will as a rule be found a sounder policy than dissemination.
In 1795 the French formally abandoned the policy of keeping great
fleets together, as they had before done in their history, and took
to the _guerre de course_. Within three years, ending in December,
1798, "privateers alone put more than twenty thousand individuals in
the balance of exchanges favorable to England," and "not a single
merchant vessel sailed under the French flag."[249] "The fate of almost
all mere cruisers (_bâtimens armés en course_) is to fall, a little
sooner or later, into the hands of the enemy," and in consequence,
"out of a maritime conscription of eighty thousand seamen, to-day
but half remain" with which to man the fleet. British contemporary
authority gives 743 as the number of privateers taken from France
alone, between the outbreak of war in 1793 and the 31st of December,
1800,—not to speak of 273 ships of war of the cruiser classes.[250] The
absolute loss inflicted by the efforts of these vessels and their more
fortunate comrades cannot be given with precision; but as the result
of an inquiry, the details of which will be presented further on, the
author is convinced that it did not exceed two and a half per cent,
and probably fell below two per cent of the total volume of British
trade. This loss may be looked upon as a war tax, onerous indeed, but
by no means insupportable; and which it would be folly to think could,
by itself alone, exercise any decisive influence upon the policy of a
wealthy and resolute nation. Yet no country is so favorably situated as
France then was for operations against British commerce, whether in the
home waters or in the West Indies, at that time the source of at least
a fourth part of the trade of the Empire.
The indecisiveness of the results obtained by the French in their war
against British shipping was not due to want of effort on their part.
On the contrary, the activity displayed by their corsairs, though
somewhat intermittent, was at times phenomenal; and this fact, as well
as the extraordinarily favorable position of France, must be kept in
view in estimating the probable advantages to be obtained from this
mode of warfare. At the period in question London carried on more than
half the commerce of Great Britain; in addition to its foreign trade
it was the great distributing centre of a domestic traffic, carried
on principally by the coasters which clustered by hundreds in the
Thames. The annual trade of export and import to the metropolis was
over £60,000,000, and the entries and departures of vessels averaged
between thirteen and fourteen thousand. Of this great going and coming
of ships and wealth, nearly two thirds had to pass through the English
Channel, nowhere more than eighty miles wide and narrowing to twenty at
the Straits of Dover; while the remaining third, comprising the trade
from Holland, Germany, and the Baltic, as well as the coasting trade
to North Britain, was easily accessible from the ports of Boulogne,
Dunkirk, and Calais, and was still further exposed after the French,
in 1794 and 1795, obtained complete control of Belgium and Holland.
From St. Malo to the Texel, a distance of over three hundred miles, the
whole coast became a nest of privateers of all kinds and sizes,—from
row-boats armed only with musketry and manned by a dozen men, or even
less, up to vessels carrying from ten to twenty guns and having crews
of one hundred and fifty. In the principal Channel ports of France
alone, independent of Belgium and Holland, there were at one time in
the winter of 1800 eighty-seven privateers, mounting from fourteen to
twenty-eight guns, besides numerous row-boats. These were actually
employed in commerce-destroying, and the fishing-boats of the coast
were capable upon short notice of being fitted for that service, in
which they often engaged.
The nearness of the prey, the character of the seas, and the ease of
making shelter either on the French or English shore in case of bad
weather, modified very greatly the necessity for size and perfect
sea-worthiness in the vessels thus used; and also, from the shortness
of the run necessary to reach the cruising ground, each one placed on
this line of coast was easily equal to ten starting for the same object
from a more remote base of operations. Privateers sailing at sundown
with a fair wind from St. Malo, or Dieppe, or Dunkirk to cruise in the
Channel, would reach their cruising ground before morning of the long
winter nights of that latitude. The length of stay would be determined
by their good fortune in making prizes, if unmolested by a British
cruiser. They ventured over close to the English side; they were seen
at times from the shore seizing their prizes.[251] At Dover, in the
latter part of 1810, "signals were out almost every day, on account
of enemy's privateers appearing in sight."[252] Innocent-looking
fishing-boats, showing only their half-dozen men busy at their work,
lay at anchor upon, or within, the lines joining headland to headland
of the enemy's coast, watching the character and appearance of passing
vessels. When night or other favorable opportunity offered, they pulled
quickly alongside the unsuspecting merchantman, which, under-manned
and unwatchful, from the scarcity of seamen, was often first awakened
to the danger by a volley of musketry, followed by the clambering of
the enemy to the decks. The crews, few in number, poor in quality,
and not paid for fighting, offered usually but slight resistance to
the overpowering assault. Boarding was the corsair's game, because he
carried many men.
It seems extraordinary that even the comparative impunity enjoyed by
the privateers—for that it was only comparative is shown by the fact
that an average of fifty were yearly captured—should have been attained
in the face of the immense navy of Great Britain, and the large number
of cruisers assigned to the protection of the coasts and the Channel.
There were, however, many reasons for it. The privateering spirit is
essentially that of the gambler and the lottery, and at no time was
that spirit more widely diffused in France than in the period before
us. The odds are not only great, but they are not easy to calculate.
The element of chance enters very unduly, and when, as in the present
case, the gain may be very great, while the immediate risk to the
owner, who does not accompany his ship, is comparatively small, the
disposition to push venture after venture becomes irresistible. The
seaman, who risks his liberty, is readily tempted by high wages and
the same hope of sudden profits that moves the owner; and this was
more especially true at a time when the laying up of the fleets,
and the disappearance of the merchant shipping, threw seafaring men
wholly upon the coasting trade or privateering. The number of ships
and men so engaged is thus accounted for; but among them and among
the owners there was a certain proportion who pursued the occupation
with a thoughtfulness and method which would distinguish a more
regular business, and which, while diminishing the risk of this, very
much increased the returns. Vessels were selected, or built, with
special reference to speed and handiness; captains were chosen in whom
seamanlike qualities were joined to particular knowledge of the British
coast and the routes of British trade; the conditions of wind and
weather were studied; the long winter nights were preferred because
of the cover they afforded; they knew and reckoned upon the habits of
the enemy's ships-of-war; account was kept of the times of sailing and
arrival of the large convoys.[253] On the British side, a considerable
deduction must be made from the efficiency indicated by the mere number
of the coast cruisers. Many of them were poor sailers, quite unable
to overtake the better and more dangerous class of privateers. The
inducements to exertion were not great; for the privateer meant little
money at best, and the abuses that gathered round the proceedings of
the Admiralty Courts often swallowed up that little in costs. The
command of the small vessels thus employed fell largely into the hands
of men who had dropped hopelessly out of the race of life, while their
more fortunate competitors were scattered on distant seas, and in
better ships. To such, the slight chance of a bootless prize was but a
poor inducement to exposure and activity, on the blustering nights and
in the dangerous spots where the nimble privateer, looking for rich
plunder, was wont to be found. It was worth more money to recapture a
British merchantman than to take a French cruiser.
Privateering from the Atlantic, or Biscay, coast of France was
necessarily carried on in vessels of a very different class from those
which frequented the Channel. There was no inducement for the merchant
ships of Great Britain to pass within the line from Ushant to Cape
Finisterre; while, on the other hand, her ships-of-war abounded there,
for the double purpose of watching the French fleets in the ports,
and intercepting both the enemy's cruisers and their prizes, as they
attempted to enter. For these reasons, privateers leaving Bordeaux,
Bayonne, or Nantes, needed to be large and seaworthy, provisioned and
equipped for distant voyages and for a long stay at sea. Their greatest
danger was met near their home ports, either going or returning;
and their hopes were set, not upon the small and often unprofitable
coaster, but upon the richly laden trader from the East or West Indies
or the Mediterranean. Out, therefore, beyond the line of the enemy's
blockade, upon the deep sea and on one of the great commercial highways
converging toward the Channel, was their post; there to remain as long
as possible, and not lightly to encounter again the perils of the Bay
of Biscay. Moreover, being larger and more valuable, the owner had
to think upon their defence; they could not, like the cheap Channel
gropers, be thrown away in case of any hostile meeting. While they
could not cope with the big frigates of the enemy, there were still
his smaller cruisers, and the hosts of his privateers, that might be
met; and many a stout battle was fought by those French corsairs. One
of these, the "Bordelais," taken in 1799, was said then to be the
largest of her kind sailing out of France. She had the keel of a 38-gun
frigate, carried twenty-four 12-pounder guns, and a crew of two hundred
and twenty men. In four years this ship had captured one hundred and
sixty prizes, and was said to have cleared to her owners in Bordeaux a
million sterling.[254]
A third most important and lucrative field for the enterprise of French
privateers was found in the West Indies. The islands of Guadaloupe and
Martinique served as excellent bases of operations. The latter indeed
was for many years in British possession, but the former remained,
practically without interruption, in the hands of France until its
capture in 1810. During the many years of close alliance, from 1796 to
1808, between France and Spain, the West Indian ports of the latter
served not only to maintain her own privateers, but to give a wide
extension to the efforts of her more active partner. The geographical
and climatic conditions of this region tended also to modify the
character both of the cruisers and of their methods. Along with a
very large European trade, carried on by ships of an average burden
of two hundred and fifty tons, there was also a considerable traffic
from island to island by much smaller vessels. This local trade was
not only between the possessions of the same nation or of friendly
States, but existed also, by means of neutrals or contraband, between
those of powers at war; and through these and her system of free ports,
together with liberal modifications of her commercial code wherever an
advantage could thereby be gained, Great Britain succeeded in drawing
into her own currents, in war as well as in peace, the course of much
of the export and import of the whole Caribbean Sea and Spanish Main.
From these two kinds of trade—combined with the general good weather
prevailing, with the contiguity of the islands to each other, and with
the numerous ports and inlets scattered throughout their extent—there
arose two kinds of privateering enterprise. The one, carried on mainly
by large and fast-sailing schooners or brigs, was found generally
suitable for undertakings directed against ships bound to or from
Europe; while for the other the various islands abounded with small
row-boats or other petty craft, each with its group of plunderers,
which lay in wait and usually in profound concealment to issue out
upon the passing trader.[255] The uncertain character of the wind in
some parts of the day particularly favored an attack, by two or three
heavily manned rowing boats, upon a vessel large enough to take them
all on board bodily, but fettered by calm and with a small crew. On one
occasion a United States sloop-of-war, lying thus motionless with her
ports closed, was taken for a merchantman and assailed by several of
these marauders, who then paid dearly for the mistake into which they
had been led by her seemingly unarmed and helpless condition.
The remoteness of this region from Europe covered very great
irregularities, both by the privateers and in the courts. This evil
became greater in the French and Spanish islands, when, by the
progress of the war, the Sea Power of Great Britain more and more
broke off correspondence between them and the mother countries; and
when Napoleon's aggression drove the Spaniards into revolution and
anarchy, the control of Spain, always inert, became merely nominal.
These circumstances, coinciding with the presence of a very large
neutral shipping, mainly belonging to the United States, whose
geographical nearness made her one of the chief sources of supplies to
these colonies, caused the privateering of the Latin and mixed races
to degenerate rapidly into piracy, towards which that mode of warfare
naturally tends. As early as 1805, an American insurance company
complained to the Secretary of State that "property plundered by real
or pretended French privateers was uniformly taken into the ports of
Cuba, and there, with the connivance of the Spanish government, was
sold and distributed, _without any form of trial_, or pretence for
legal condemnation."[1] And the United States consul at Santiago de
Cuba reported officially that more than a thousand American seamen had
been landed in that port, most of them without clothes or any means of
support; and that "the scene of robbery, destruction, evasion, perjury,
cruelty, and insult, to which the Americans captured by French pirates,
and brought into this and adjacent ports, have been subjected, has
perhaps not been equalled in a century past."[256] This lawlessness
ended, as is generally known, in an actual prevalence of piracy on an
extensive scale, about the south side of Cuba and other unfrequented
parts of the archipelago, for some years after the war. From the
character of the ground and the slow communications of the day, these
desperadoes were finally put down only by the systematic and long
continued efforts of the various governments concerned.
The Eastern trade of Great Britain was in the hands of the East India
Company; and its ships, which carried on the intercourse between India
and Europe, were of a size altogether exceptional in those days. At a
time when a small ship-of-the-line measured from fourteen to sixteen
hundred tons, and the traders between America and Europe averaged
under three hundred, a large proportion of the East Indiamen were of
twelve hundred tons burden, exceeding considerably the dimensions
of a first-class frigate.[257] Being pierced for numerous guns and
carrying many men, both crew and passengers, among whom often figured
considerable detachments of troops, they presented a very formidable
appearance, and were more than once mistaken for ships of war by French
cruisers; so much so that in the year 1804 a body of them in the China
seas, by their firm bearing and compact order, imposed upon a hostile
squadron of respectable size, commanded by an admiral of cautious
temper though of proved courage, making him for a brief period the
laughing stock of both hemispheres, and bringing down on his head a
scathing letter from the emperor. Their armament, however, was actually
feeble, especially in the earlier part of the French Revolution. About
the year 1801, it was determined to increase it so that the larger
ships should carry thirty-eight 18-pounders;[258] but the change seems
to have been but imperfectly effected, and upon the occasion in
question the ships which thus "bluffed" Admiral Linois were none of
them a match for a medium frigate. It is, indeed, manifestly impossible
to combine within the same space the stowage of a rich and bulky cargo
and the fighting efficiency of a ship of war of the same tonnage.
Still, the batteries, though proportionately weak, were too powerful
for ordinary privateers to encounter, unless by a fortunate surprise;
and, as the French entertained great, if not exaggerated, ideas of the
dependence of Great Britain upon her Indian possessions, considerable
efforts were made to carry on commerce-destroying in the Eastern
seas by squadrons of heavy frigates, re-enforced occasionally by
ships-of-the-line. These were the backbone of the _guerre de course_,
but their efforts were supplemented by those of numerous privateers of
less size, that preyed upon the coasting trade and the smaller ships,
which, from China to the Red Sea, and throughout the Indian Ocean,
whether under British or neutral flags, were carrying goods of British
origin.
At the outbreak of the war Great Britain was taken unawares in India,
as everywhere; and, as the operations in Europe and in the West Indies
called for the first care of the government, the Indian seas were
practically abandoned to the enemy for over a year. After the fall
of Pondicherry, in September, 1793, Admiral Cornwallis returned to
Europe with all his small squadron, leaving but a single sloop-of-war
to protect the vast expanse of ocean covered by the commerce of the
East India Company.[259] Not till the month of October, 1794, did his
successor reach the station. Under these circumstances the losses were
inevitably severe, and would have been yet more heavy had not the
company itself fitted out several ships to cruise for the protection
of trade.[260] An animated warfare, directed solely toward the
destruction and protection of commerce, now ensued for several years,
and was marked by some exceedingly desperate and well-contested frigate
actions; as well as by many brilliant exploits of French privateersmen,
among whom the name of Robert Surcouf has attained a lasting celebrity.
Depending at first upon the islands of France and Bourbon as their
base of operations, the distance of these from the peninsula of
Hindoostan, combined with the size of the East India ships, compelled
the employment of relatively large vessels, able to keep the sea for
long periods and to carry crews which would admit of many detachments
to man prizes without unduly weakening the fighting capacity. When,
in 1795, the conquest of Holland and flight of the Orange government
turned the Dutch from enemies into allies of France, their colonies and
ports became accessories of great importance to the cruisers, owing to
their nearness to the scene of action and especially to the great trade
route between China and Europe. On the other hand the British, long
debarred from rewards for their efforts, other than recaptures of their
own merchant ships, now found the whole of the Dutch trade thrown open
to them, and the returns bear witness both to its numbers and to their
activity.
Notwithstanding, however, the unprotected state of British commerce
in the early years of the war, and the distinguished activity of
the French cruisers, the insurance premiums at no time rose to the
sums demanded in 1782, when a concentrated effort to control the
sea by a fleet, under Admiral Suffren, was made by France.[261] At
that time the premiums were fifteen per cent; between 1798 and 1805
they fluctuated between eight and twelve per cent. In 1805 the chief
command in the Indian seas was given to Rear-Admiral Sir Edward Pellew,
afterwards Lord Exmouth, and by his skilful arrangements such security
was afforded to the trade from Bombay to China, one of the most exposed
parts of the Eastern commercial routes, that the premium fell to eight
per cent, with a return of three per cent, if sailing with convoy.
Under this systematic care the losses by capture amounted to but one
per cent on the property insured, being less than those by the dangers
of the sea.[262] But during the very period that these happy results
were obtained by wisely applying the principle of concentration of
effort to the protection of commerce, disaster was overtaking the trade
of Calcutta; which lost nineteen vessels in two months through the
neglect of its merchants to accept the convoys of the admiral.[263] In
fact, as the small proportionate loss inflicted by scattered cruisers
appears to indicate the inconclusiveness of that mode of warfare, so
the result of the convoy system, in this and other instances, warrants
the inference that, when properly systematized and applied, it will
have more success as a defensive measure than hunting for individual
marauders,—a process which, even when most thoroughly planned, still
resembles looking for a needle in a haystack.
Soon after this time the British government reverted most properly
to the policy of Pitt, by directing expeditions against the enemies'
colonies, the foreign bases of their Sea Power, and, in the absence of
great fleets, the only possible support upon which commerce-destroying
can depend; with whose fall it must also fall. The islands of Bourbon
and of France capitulated in 1810, the same year that saw the surrender
of Guadaloupe, the last survivor of the French West India Islands.
This was followed in 1811 by the reduction of the Dutch colony of
Java. Thus "an end was put to the predatory warfare which had been
successfully carried on against the British trade in India for a number
of years."[264]
While the scattered cruisers of France were thus worrying, by a petty
and inconclusive warfare, the commerce of Great Britain and its neutral
carriers, the great British fleets, being left in quiet possession of
the seas by the avowed purpose of the Directory to limit its efforts
to the _guerre de course_, swept from the ocean every merchant ship
wearing a hostile flag, and imposed upon the neutral trade with France
the extreme limitations of maritime international law, as held by the
British courts. Toward the end of the war, indeed, those principles
were given an extension, which the government itself admitted was
beyond anything before claimed as reconcilable with recognized law.
The precise amount of the injury done, the exact number of the vessels
detained, sent in, and finally condemned, in all parts of the world
will perhaps never be known; it is certainly not within the power
of the present writer to determine them. The frequent, though not
complete, returns of British admirals give some idea of the prevailing
activity, which will also appear from the occasional details that must
be cited in the latter part of this chapter. Into the single port of
Plymouth, in the eight years and a half ending September 29, 1801,
there were sent 948 vessels of all nations;[265] of which 447 were
enemy's property, 156 recaptured British, and the remainder neutrals,
belonging mostly to America, Denmark, and Sweden, the three chief
neutral maritime states. From Jamaica, the British commander-in-chief
reports that, between March 1 and August 3, 1800,—that is, in five
months,—203 vessels have been captured, detained, or destroyed.[1]
This was in but one part of the West Indian Seas. The admiral at the
Leeward Islands reports that in two months of the same year 62 vessels
had been sent in.[1] In five months, ending September 3, 1800, Lord
Keith reports from the Mediterranean 180 captures.[266] How far these
instances may be accepted as a fair example of the usual results of
British cruising, it is impossible to say; but it may be remarked that
they all occur at a period when the war had been raging for seven
years, and that captures are more numerous at the beginning than at
the latter end of long hostilities. In war, as in all states of life,
people learn to accommodate themselves to their conditions, to minimize
risks; and even prize lists become subject to the uniformity of results
observed in other statistics.
Whatever the particulars of French losses, however, they are all summed
up in the unprecedented admission of the Directory, in 1799, that "not
a single merchant ship is on the sea carrying the French flag." This
was by no means a figure of speech, to express forcibly an extreme
depression. It was the statement of a literal fact. "The former sources
of our prosperity," wrote M. Arnould, Chef du Bureau du Commerce,
as early as 1797, "are either lost or dried up. Our agricultural,
manufacturing, and industrial power is almost extinct." And again
he says, "The total number of registers issued to French ships from
September, 1793, to September, 1796, amounts only to 6028." Of these,
3351 were undecked and of less than thirty tons burden. "The maritime
war paralyzes our distant navigation and even diminishes considerably
that on our coasts; so that a great number of French ships remain
inactive, and perhaps decaying, in our ports. This remark applies
principally to ships of over two hundred tons, the number of which,
according to the subjoined table,[267] amounts only to 248. Before
the revolution the navigation of the seas of Europe and to the French
colonies employed more than 2,000 ships."
In the year ending September 20, 1800, according to a report submitted
to the consuls,[268] France received directly from Asia, Africa, and
America, all together, less than $300,000 worth of goods; while her
exports to those three quarters of the world amounted to only $56,000.
Whether these small amounts were carried in French or neutral bottoms
is immaterial; the annihilation of French shipping is proved by them.
The same report shows that the average size of the vessels, which, by
hugging closely the coast, avoided British cruisers and maintained the
water traffic between France and her neighbors, Holland, Spain, and
Italy, was but thirty-six tons. Intercourse by water is always easier
and, for a great bulk, quicker than by land; but in those days of
wagon carriage and often poor roads it was especially so. In certain
districts of France great distress for food was frequently felt in
those wars, although grain abounded in other parts; because the surplus
could not be distributed rapidly by land, nor freely by water. For the
latter conveyance it was necessary to depend upon very small vessels,
unfit for distant voyages, but which could take refuge from pursuers in
the smallest port, or be readily beached; and which, if captured, would
not singly be a serious loss.
Towards the end of 1795, a contemporary British authority states
that over three thousand British ships had been captured, and about
eight hundred French.[269] This was, however, confessedly only an
estimate, and probably, so far as concerns the British losses, a
large exaggeration. Ten years later a member of the House of Commons,
speaking with a view rather to disparage the earlier administration,
gave the British losses for the same years as 1,395.[270] Lloyd's lists
give the whole number of British captured, for the years 1793-1800,
both inclusive, as 4,344, of which 705 were recaptured; leaving a total
loss of 3,639.[271] Assuming, what is only for this purpose admissible,
that the average loss each year was nearly the same, these figures
would give for the three years, 1793-1795, 1,365 as the number of
captures made by hostile cruisers. In the tables appended to Norman's
"Corsairs of France" the losses for the same period are given as
1,636.[272]
Finally, the number of prizes brought into French ports up to September
16, 1798, was stated by M. Arnould, in the Conseil des Anciens, as
being 2,658. The table from which his figures were taken he called "an
authentic list, just printed, drawn up in the office of the French
Ministry of Marine, of all prizes made since the outbreak of the
war."[273] It included vessels of all nationalities, during a period
when France had not only been at war with several states, but had made
large seizures of neutral vessels upon various pretexts. Of the entire
number M. Arnould considered that not more than 2,000 were British. If
we accept his estimate, only 900 British ships would have been taken in
three years. It is to be observed, however, as tending to reconcile the
discrepancy between this and the English accounts, that the tables used
by him probably did not give, or at most gave very imperfectly, the
French captures made in the East and West Indies; and, furthermore, the
aggregate British losses, as given by Lloyd's lists, and by Norman's
tables, include captures made by the Dutch and Spaniards as well as by
the French.[274]
The British reports of their own losses are thus seen largely to exceed
those made by the French. According equal confidence to the statements
of Sir William Curtis, of Norman, and of Lloyd's list, we should reach
an annual loss by capture of 488 British ships; which would give a
total, in the twenty-one years of war, from 1793-1814,[275] of 10,248.
Norman's grand total of 10,871 considerably exceeds this amount; but
it will be safer, in considering a subject of so great importance as
the absolute injury done, and effect produced, by war upon commerce,
to accept the larger figure, or to say, in round numbers, that
eleven thousand British vessels were captured by the enemy during
the protracted and desperate wars caused by the French Revolution. It
is the great and conspicuous instance of commerce-destroying, carried
on over a long series of years, with a vigor and thoroughness never
surpassed, and supported, moreover, by an unparalleled closure of the
continental markets of Great Britain. The Directory first, and Napoleon
afterwards, abandoned all attempts to contest the control of the sea,
and threw themselves, as Louis XIV. had done before them, wholly upon
a cruising war against commerce. It will be well in this day, when the
same tendency so extensively prevails, to examine somewhat carefully
what this accepted loss really meant, how it was felt by the British
people at the time, and what expectation can reasonably be deduced
from it that, by abandoning military control of the sea, and depending
exclusively upon scattered cruisers, a country dependent as Great
Britain is upon external commerce can be brought to terms.
Evidently, a mere statement of numbers, such as the above, without
any particulars as to size, or the value of cargoes, affords but a
poor indication of the absolute or relative loss sustained by British
commerce. It may, however, be used as a basis, both for comparison
with the actual number of vessels entering and clearing annually from
British ports, and also for an estimate as to the probable tonnage
captured. The annual average of capture, deduced from 11,000 ships in
twenty-one years is 524. In the three years 1793-1795, the average
annual number of British vessels entering and clearing from ports of
Great Britain was 21,560.[276] Dividing by 524, it is found that one
fortieth, or two and a half per cent of British shipping, reckoning
by numbers, was taken by the enemy. In the three years 1798-1800,
1801 being the year of broken hostilities, the average annual entries
and departures were 21,369,[1] which again gives two and a half as
the percentage of the captures. It must be noted, also, that only the
commerce of England and Scotland with foreign countries, with the
colonies, with Ireland and the Channel Islands, and with British India
enters into these lists of arrivals and departures. The returns of that
day did not take account of British coasters, nor of the local trade
of the colonies, nor again of the direct intercourse between Ireland
and ports other than those of Great Britain. Yet all these contributed
victims to swell the list of prizes,[277] and so to increase very
materially the apparent proportion of the latter to a commerce of which
the returns cited present only a fraction. Unfortunately, the amount of
the coasting trade cannot now be ascertained,[278] and the consequent
deduction from the calculated two and a half per cent of loss can only
be conjectured.
To obtain the tonnage loss there appears to the writer no fairer means
than to determine the average tonnage of the vessels entering and
departing as above, at different periods of the war. In the three years
1793-1795, the average size of each ship entering or sailing from the
ports of Great Britain, including the Irish trade, was 121 tons. In
the year 1800 the average is 126 tons. In 1809 it has fallen again to
121, and in 1812 to 115 tons. We cannot then go far wrong in allowing
125 tons as the average size of British vessels employed in carrying on
the foreign and the coasting trade of Great Britain itself during the
war.[279] On this allowance the aggregate tonnage lost in the 11,000
British prizes, would be 1,375,000 in twenty-one years. In these years
the aggregate British tonnage entering and leaving the ports of Great
Britain, exclusive of the great neutral tonnage employed in carrying
for the same trade, amounted to over 55,000,000;[280] so that the loss
is again somewhat less than one fortieth, or 2½ per cent.
Another slight indication of the amount of loss, curious from its
coincidence with the above deductions, is derived from the report of
prize goods received into France in the year ending September, 1800,
which amounted to 29,201,676 francs. At the then current value of the
franc this was equivalent to £1,216,000. The real value of British
exports for 1800 was £56,000,000, the prize goods again being rather
less than one fortieth of the amount. The imports, however, being
also nearly £56,000,000, the loss on the entire amount falls to one
eightieth. It is true that many of these prize goods were probably
taken in neutrals, but on the other hand the report does not take into
account French capture in the colonies and East Indies; nor those made
by Holland and Spain, the allies of France.
If the total number of vessels _belonging_ to Great Britain and all
her dependencies be taken, as the standard by which to judge her loss
by captures, it will be found that in 1795 they amounted to 16,728;[1]
in 1800, 17,885;[281] in 1805, 22,051;[2] in 1810, 23,703.[282] Using
again 524 as the annual number of captures, the annual proportion of
loss is seen gradually to fall from a very little over 3 per cent, in
the first year, to somewhat less than 2½ per cent, in the last.
Finally, it may be added that the Lloyd's list before quoted gives
the total number of losses by sea risks, 1793-1800, as 2,967; which,
being contrasted with the losses by capture, 3,639, shows that the
danger from enemy's cruisers very little exceeded those of the ocean.
To offset, though only partially, her own losses, Great Britain
received prize goods, during the same years, to the amount of over
£5,000,000.[283] There were also engaged in carrying on her commerce,
in 1801, under the British flag, 2,779 vessels, measuring 369,563 tons,
that had been brought into her ports as prizes; which numbers had
increased in 1811 to 4,023 ships and 536,240 tons.[284]
Taking everything together, it seems reasonable to conclude that the
direct loss to the nation, by the operation of hostile cruisers, did
not exceed 2½ per cent of the commerce of the Empire; and that this
loss was partially made good by the prize ships and merchandise taken
by its own naval vessels and privateers. A partial, if not a complete,
compensation for her remaining loss is also to be found in the great
expansion of her mercantile operations carried on under neutral flags;
for, although this too was undoubtedly harassed by the enemy, yet to
it almost entirely was due the increasing volume of trade that poured
through Great Britain to and from the continent of Europe, every ton of
which left a part of its value to swell the bulk of British wealth. The
writings of the period show that the injuries due to captured shipping
passed unremarked amid the common incidents and misfortunes of life;
neither their size nor their effects were great enough to attract
public notice, amid the steady increase of national wealth and the
activities concerned in amassing it. "During all the operations of war
and finance," says one writer, "the gains of our enterprising people
were beyond all calculation, however the unproductive classes may
have suffered from the depreciation of money and the inequalities of
taxation. Our commerce has become more than double its greatest extent
during the happiest years of peace."[285] There were, indeed, darker
shades to the picture, for war means suffering as well as effort; but
with regard to the subject-matter of this chapter, Commerce, and its
fate in this war, there was for many years but one voice, for but one
was possible. The minister, essentially a master of trade and finance,
delighted year by year to enlarge upon the swelling volume of business
and the growing returns of the revenue. Not only did the new taxes
bring in liberally, but the older ones were increasingly productive.
These signs of prosperity were not seen all at once. The first plunge
into the war was followed, as it always is, by a shrinking of the
system and a contraction of the muscles; but as the enemy more and more
surrendered the control of the sea, as the naval victories of the years
1797 and 1798 emphasized more and more the absolute dominion of Great
Britain over it, and as the new channels of enterprise became familiar,
the energies of the people expanded to meet the new opportunities.
The share borne by neutral shipping in the extension and maintenance
of this extraordinary fabric of prosperity, thus existing in the
midst of all the sorrow, suffering, and waste of war, must next be
considered; for it was the cause of the remarkable measures taken by
both belligerents against neutral trade, which imparted so singular
and desolating a character to the closing years of the struggle and
affected deeply the commerce of the whole world. At the very beginning
of the war Great Britain proceeded to avail herself of the services
of neutrals, by a remission of that part of the Navigation Act which
required three fourths of the crews of British merchantmen to be
British subjects. On the 30th of April, 1793, this was so modified
as to permit three fourths to be foreigners, to replace the large
body taken for the fleets. This was followed, from time to time, as
the number of enemies multiplied through the extending conquests
and alliances of France, by a series of orders and proclamations,
infringing more and more upon the spirit of the Act, with the direct
and obvious purpose of employing neutral vessels to carry on operations
hitherto limited to the British flag. The demands of the navy for
seamen, the risks of capture, the delays of convoy, entirely arrested,
and even slightly set back, the development of the British carrying
trade; while at the same time the important position of Great Britain
as the great manufacturing nation, coinciding with a diminution in the
productions of the Continent, consequent upon the war, and a steadily
growing demand for manufactured goods on the part of the United
States, called imperiously for more carriers. The material of British
traffic was increasing with quickened steps, at the very time that
her own shipping was becoming less able to bear it. Thus in 1797,
when the British navy was forced to leave the Mediterranean, all the
Levant trade, previously confined to British ships, was thrown open
to every neutral. In 1798, being then at war with Spain, the great
raw material, Spanish wool, essential to the cloth manufactures, was
allowed to enter in vessels of any neutral country. The produce even
of hostile colonies could be imported by British subjects in neutral
bottoms, though not for consumption in England, but for re-exportation;
a process by which it paid a toll to Great Britain, without directly
affecting the reserved market of the British colonist. The effect
of these various conditions and measures can best be shown by a few
figures, which indicate at once the expansion of British commerce, the
arrest of British carrying trade, and the consequent growth of the
neutral shipping. In 1792, the last year of peace, the total British
exports and imports amounted to £44,565,000; in 1796 to £53,706,000;
in 1800, the last unbroken year of war, to £73,723,000.[286] For the
same years the carrying of this trade was done, in 1792, by 3,151,389
tons of British, and 479,630 tons of foreign shipping; in 1796, by
2,629,575 British, and 998,427 foreign; in 1800, by 2,825,078 British
and 1,448,287 foreign. Thus, while there was so great an increase in
the commerce of the kingdom, and it employed nearly 650,000 more tons
of shipping in 1800 than in 1792, the amount carried in British ships
had fallen off; and the proportion of neutral bottoms had risen from
thirteen to nearly thirty-four per cent.
The significance of these facts could not escape the French government,
nor yet the jealousies of certain classes connected with the carrying
trade in Great Britain herself; but in the first war the latter were
not joined by the other powerful and suffering interests, which
gradually impelled the ministry into a series of acts deeply injurious
to all neutrals, but chiefly to the United States. In France, the early
effusiveness of the revolutionists toward England, based upon the hope
that she too would be swept into the torrent of their movement, had
been quickly chilled and turned to bitterness, greater even than that
which had so long divided the two nations. Victorious everywhere upon
the Continent, the government saw before it only one unconquerable
enemy, the Power of the Sea; it knew that she, by her subsidies and
her exhortations, maintained the continental states in their recurring
hostilities, and it saw her alone, amid the general confusion and
impoverishment, preserve quiet and increase a wealth which was not only
brilliant, but solid. The Directory therefore reached the conclusion,
which Napoleon made the basis of his policy and which he never wearied
of proclaiming, that Great Britain maintained the war and promoted
the discord of nations for the simple purpose of founding her own
prosperity upon the ruin of all other commerce, her power upon the
ruin of all other navies.[287] At the same time the French government
held tenaciously to that profound delusion, the bequest to it from
past generations of naval officers and statesmen, that a war directed
against the commerce of Great Britain was a sure means of destroying
her. It knew that hosts of privateers were employed, and that very
many British prizes were brought in; yet, withal, the great Sea Power
moved steadily on, evidently greater and stronger as the years went
by. It knew also that her manufactures were increasing, that their
products filled the Continent; that the produce of the East and of the
West, of the Baltic and of the Mediterranean, centred in Great Britain;
and that through her, not the Continent only, but France herself,
drew most of her tropical articles of consumption. There was but one
solution for this persistent escape from apparently sure destruction;
and that was to be found in the support of the neutral carrier and the
pockets of the neutral consumer. From this premise the fatal logic of
the French Revolution was irresistibly drawn to the conclusion that,
as every neutral ship engaged in the British carrying trade was a
help to England, it was consequently an enemy to France and liable to
capture.[288] Napoleon but amplified this precedent when he declared
that there were no more neutrals, and placed before Sweden, longing
only for quiet, the option "war with France or cannon-balls for English
vessels approaching your ports."
The exceptionally intense spirit which animated the parties to this
war trenched with unusual severity upon the interests of neutral
powers, always more or less in conflict with the aims of belligerents.
These questions also received new importance, because now appeared
for the first time a neutral maritime state, of great extent and
rapidly growing, whose interests and ambitions at that time pointed to
shipping and carrying trade as forms of enterprise for which it had
received from nature peculiar facilities. In all previous wars the
Americans had acted as the colonists of Great Britain, either loyal or
in revolt. In 1793 they had for four years been a nation in the real
sense of the word, and Washington's first term closed. In the very
first Congress measures were taken for developing American shipping,
by differential duties upon native and foreign ships.[289] From the
impulse thus given, combined with the opening offered by the increase
of British trade and the diminished employment of British shipping,
the ship-builders and merchants extended their operations rapidly. By
the report of a committee of the House, January 10, 1803, it appears
that the merchant tonnage of the United States was then inferior to
that of no other country, except Great Britain.[290] In 1790 there had
entered her ports from abroad, 355,000 tons of her own shipping and
251,000 foreign, of which 217,000 were British.[291] In the year 1801
there entered 799,304 tons of native shipping,[292] and of foreign but
138,000.[293] The amount of British among the latter is not stated;
but in the year 1800 there cleared from Great Britain under her own
flag, for the United States, but 14,381 tons.[294] Figures like these
give but a comparative and partial view of the activity of American
shipping, leaving out of account all the carrying done by it outside
the ken of the home authorities; but it is safe to say that the United
States contributed annually at least six hundred thousand tons to
maintain the traffic of the world, which, during those eventful years,
centred in Great Britain and ministered to her power. Among the forms
of gain thus opened to American traders there was one to which allusion
only will here be made, because at a later period it became the source
of very great trouble, leading step by step to the war of 1812. This
was the carriage of the productions of French and other colonies,
enemies of Great Britain, to the United States, and thence re-exporting
them to Europe.
Besides the new state in the Western Hemisphere, there were three
others whose isolated position had hitherto given them the character
of neutrals in the maritime wars of the eighteenth century. These were
the Baltic countries, Russia, Denmark, and Sweden, which had combined
in 1780 to defend their neutral rights, if need were, by force of arms.
The power of this confederacy to assume the same attitude in 1793
was broken by the policy of Russia. By whatever motives swayed, the
Empress Catharine took decided ground against the French Revolution.
On the 25th of March, 1793, a convention between her and the British
government was signed, by which both parties agreed, not only to close
their own ports against France and not to permit the exportation
of food to that country, but also "to unite all their efforts _to
prevent other powers_, not implicated in the war, from giving, on this
occasion of common concern to every civilized state, any protection
whatever, directly or indirectly in consequence of their neutrality,
to the commerce or property of the French on the sea."[295] How the
empress understood this engagement was shown by her notification,
during the same summer, to the courts of Sweden and Denmark, that
she would station a fleet in the North Sea to prevent neutrals bound
to France from proceeding.[296] Great Britain had already—June 8,
1793—directed the commanders of cruisers to detain all vessels loaded
with flour or grain, bound to French ports, and to send them to
England, where the cargo would be purchased and freight paid by the
British government.[297] These instructions were duly communicated to
the government of the neutral states, which protested with more or
less vigor and tenacity, but found themselves helpless to resist force
with force. Singularly enough, the French government had preceded the
British on this occasion, having issued orders to the same effect on
the 9th of the previous May; but the fact appears to have escaped the
ministry, for, in justifying their action to the United States, they do
not allude to it. Their course is defended on the broad ground that,
from the character of the war and the situation of France, there was
a fair prospect of starving her into submission,[298] and that under
such circumstances provisions, always a questionable article, became
contraband of war. The answer was not satisfactory to the neutral,
deprived of part of his expected gains, but the argument was one of
those that admit of no appeal except to arms. A further justification
of the order was found by the British ministry in the undoubted fact
that "the French government itself was the sole legal importer of
grain in France" at that time; and therefore "the trade was no longer
to be regarded as a mercantile speculation of individuals, but as an
immediate operation of the very persons who have declared war, and are
now carrying it on, against Great Britain." The American minister to
France, Monroe, confirms this, in his letter of October 16, 1794: "The
whole commerce of France, to the absolute exclusion of individuals, is
carried on by the government itself."[299]