THE FIRST STAGE OF THE WAR
The authorities for the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars are
numerous. An English writer will naturally give the first place
in the list to _The Naval History of Great Britain_, by William
James, a trustworthy, laborious, and indispensable, but dry and
too often unintelligent chronicle, which covers the whole story
from 1793 to 1815. The _Naval Chronology_ of Isaac Schomberg
ends at the Peace of 1801. Captain Mahan’s _Influence of Sea
Power upon the French Revolution and Empire_ is a survey of
the principles rather than the mere events of the whole war.
On the French side we have Troude, _Batailles navales de la
France_, the chronology quoted for earlier chapters; Chevalier,
_Histoire de la Marine française sous la première République_,
a history up to 1799; Rouvier, _Marins français sous la
République_; Moulin, _Les Marins de la République_; Lecène,
_Marins de la République et de l’Empire_. The _Naval Chronicle_
(1799-1818) did not begin with the war, but it looks back on
events antecedent to its own beginning. Brenton’s _Naval History
of Great Britain from 1783 to 1836_, first published in 1823
and recast in 1837, professes to be a general history, but is
chiefly valuable for the writer’s personal reminiscences and
the traditions of the service which he repeats. An excellent
study of one of the most important episodes of the early years
of the war is Cottin, _Toulon et les Anglais en 1793_. For the
battle of the 1st of June the main authority now is Rear-Admiral
Sturges Jackson’s _Logs of the Great Sea Fights 1794-1805_,
edited for the Navy Record Society. Sir N. H. Nicholas’ _Letters
and Despatches of Lord Nelson_ is a mine of information from the
operations at Toulon till 1805. Biographies of officers first
become abundant at this period. Those which are of most value
for the opening stage of the war are:—Burrows’ _Howe_, Ross’s
_Saumarez_, Osler’s _Exmouth_, Tucker’s _St. Vincent_, Lady
Bourchier’s _Codrington_; and for the operations in the West
Indies, Collier Willyams’ special work on the subject, which is
the basis of the account given by Bryan Edwards in his _History
of the West Indies_.
When England was dragged into the war already raging between France
and the German powers, against the wish of her rulers, and by the
deliberate action of the revolutionary authorities in Paris on the
1st February 1793, she came in as the ally of all Central and Western
Europe. By the spring of 1795 she was left to fight single-handed on
the sea. The French armies had overrun Holland in January of that
year. Prussia, hampered by an empty treasury and distracted by her
anxiety to secure a share in the third partition of Poland, made peace
at Bâle on the 5th April. Spain, weak, exhausted, and ill governed, was
eager for peace. France, which had no cause to fear her and was anxious
to withdraw the troops serving on the Pyrenean frontier, to reinforce
the armies in Italy, on the Rhine, and in the Low Countries, gave her
favourable terms. A treaty of peace, which was the preliminary to a
treaty of alliance, was signed, also at Bâle, on the 22nd July. From
the 1st February 1793 to the Franco-Spanish treaty of Bâle, 22nd July
1795, makes the first period of a war which was destined to last, with
two brief intervals, for another twenty years. It was on both sides a
struggle for existence. Revolutionary France fought to secure her new
social order. To protect the gains of the Revolution, she strove to
secure her “natural limits”—the Pyrenees, the Alps, the line of the
Rhine. To guard herself against the hostility which this increase of
power was sure to arouse in her neighbours, she had to gain possession
of advanced guards and outlying fortresses to cover her new frontier,
to subjugate Holland, and keep Spain in a dependence which must also
include Portugal. But with the coast of Europe and its resources,
from the Texel to the Maritime Alps, in the possession of France, the
position of England would have been one of extreme danger. Therefore,
in order that she herself might be safe, she had to endeavour to force
France back into her old limits, and since France was resolved to
secure her “natural limits” for her own security, she was committed to
an endeavour to subjugate England. The fight could not end till one
side was fairly beaten, and France was not vanquished, and shut once
more within her frontier of 1790, till the Peace of Paris of the 20th
November 1815 was signed. All Europe had to combine to bind her; for
the causes which drove her to dominate Holland and Spain, as a defence
against England, operated to compel her to seek other outworks and
subdue other possible assailants beyond the Rhine and the Maritime
Alps. In this mighty struggle of forces and principles it was the
part of England to dominate the sea. Her strength on the sea made her
the one power whom the French armies could not strike to the heart.
Therefore she was the permanent enemy of France, the constant ally
of her foes, and in the end the controlling member of the European
Coalition which dictated the Treaty of Paris.
The part which England played was to herself glorious and profitable,
and to Europe advantageous. It was also arduous. But the student of
the history of the time, if he approaches the subject with a just
determination to see it in a dry light and to judge by the evidence,
must soon be convinced that if the nation was called upon to make great
efforts and endure much, the burden was not imposed on it by the naval
forces of its enemy. If we are to realise the real character of the
task and estimate the true merit of the performance, we must first come
to a sound understanding of the condition of the French fleet, which
was our one serious opponent. The other navies thrown or dragged into
the conflict served to do little more—if we put aside the gallant fight
of the Dutch at Camperdown—than to multiply the number of posts which
required to be watched, and so to add further severity to the already
cruel strain of blockade.
When our squadrons began to get to sea in the summer of 1793, they
found in front of them an enemy disorganised by four years of
administrative destruction and attempted reconstruction, and morally
ruined by four years of progressive anarchy.[1] The _ordonnance_ of
Louis XIV. had never been honestly carried out. The _classes_ had been
cruelly worked. The compensations promised to the seafaring population
had never been given. Bad food, no pay, and nakedness were the lot
of the sailors in the king’s ships. Therefore they hated the king’s
service, and fled from it when they could. The State punished them by
billeting soldiers on their families, and the outrages perpetrated by
these men on the women and girls were notorious. It has been already
said that the French officers of the regular, or grand, corps were
nobles. Being nobles, they insisted on equality among themselves to
the injury of discipline, and were perfectly insolent to all men who
were not of their own class. None of the many ignorant things said
of the French Revolution is more ignorant than the assertion that it
gave Frenchmen their love of equality. What it did was to declare
that all Frenchmen should be equal, and that there should be an end
of the division of the people into nobles above, who were equal among
themselves, and the _roture_, or non-noble, below, who also were equal
among themselves. As the grand corps had never been sufficiently
numerous to officer the fleet on a war footing, it had been found
necessary to employ supplementary officers drawn from the merchant
service. These men, who were known as the “blue officers,” because
their uniform had not the red facings and knee-breeches of the grand
corps, were not allowed to reach the higher ranks. They had to endure
much impertinence.
It follows that no part of the French nation was better prepared to
join the revolt against class privilege and in the demand for universal
social equality than the sailors. A memory of long suffering and of
bitter wrong rankled among the crews. Ulcerated pride, and the vanity
which is peculiarly sensitive in the Frenchman and is easily driven to
ferocity by wounds, exasperated the non-noble officers, and made them
the natural leaders of revolt. In front of these elements of rebellion
were the officers of the grand corps, very good sort of gentlemen
individually in most cases, but even at their best quite unable to help
showing their inbred hereditary conviction that they were of a finer
clay than their comrades who were not of their class. It is a belief
which can be shown with the most irritating insolence by an assumption
of exact politeness.
In 1786 the Government had acknowledged the necessity for a change.
The Marquis de Castries, then Minister of Marine, simplified the old
ranks, and abolished the _Gardes de la marine_. He proposed to recruit
the corps of officers in future by _élèves de la marine_, who might be
of non-noble birth. But while breaking down the old exclusive rule,
he still made a distinction. _Élèves_ who came from the schools of
Vannes and Alais, which were confined to the nobles, could become
lieutenants at once. All other _élèves_ had to pass through a rank
of sub-lieutenant, and were therefore put at a disadvantage from the
beginning. It was an excellent example of the kind of concession which
provokes, and does not satisfy. When, in 1789, the king summoned the
States General, he made a tacit confession that the absolute monarchy
had brought France to financial ruin and administrative collapse, and
could itself find no remedy. In fact, the monarchy abdicated, and the
spontaneous anarchy of the Revolution broke out. It raged with extreme
violence in the dockyards and the fleet. As early as March 1789 an
outbreak, immediately provoked by the sufferings of the workmen and
the sailors from the scarcity of that severe winter and bad harvest
of 1788, took place at Toulon. Count d’Albert de Rions, _commandant
de la marine_, was attacked, and nearly murdered. After the fall of
the Bastille on the 14th July 1789, disorders broke out at Brest,
and spread to Rochefort and L’Orient. The details need not be given
here. The essential in all of them was that the workmen and sailors
understood liberty and equality to mean that they were not to be
ordered about by their old masters; that the stronger had the right to
command, and that the nation was now the stronger; that the privileged
corps were the natural enemies of the nation. The French Navy was well
represented in the States General, or National Assembly, and many
debates on it took place. In April 1790 a scheme of reorganisation
was drawn up. It was in the main a sound one, and did in fact lay
the foundation of the modern French Navy. But its details may be
omitted, since years were to pass before it could even begin to be
applied. The essential of the case here is that the General Assembly
had to begin by reorganising the existing corps of officers; that it
was in fear of a reaction and counter-revolution; that it distrusted
the _civisme_, or loyalty to the Revolution, of the noble officers;
that it dared not check the zeal of the workmen of the dockyards and
the sailors; and when that zeal took, as it did from the first, the
form of mutinous attacks on the Grand Corps, the Assembly did not
venture to punish offenders who were its eager partisans. After each
explosion of violence, it ordered an inquiry, and then decided that
everybody concerned had acted from a good motive, including the unhappy
officers who had been threatened with “the lantern,”—that is to say,
the halter,—mobbed, kicked, and thrown into prison. The position of
these officers became intolerable. The majority fled abroad, where
they formed a regiment, in the emigrant army of Condé. It has been
calculated that three-fourths of the old corps were lost to France.
Those who remained included a few who were convinced partisans of
the Revolution; others remained because their poverty gave them no
means of escape. Admiral Trogoff de Kerlessi, the Breton noble who
surrendered the ships at Toulon to Lord Hood in 1793, was one of these.
But loyal or not loyal to the Revolution, they were alike oppressed and
distrusted. The place of the emigrants was taken by men whose chief
merit came to be their _civisme_, which was manifested by blatant
pot-house oratory, self-assertion, and intrigue. The evil which the
anarchy of 1789-93 did to the French fleet was not made good till the
fall of the Empire. The inward and spiritual forces of discipline
were killed. Even under the emperor, orders on such vital things as
the gunnery drill of the crews were constantly met with outward and
visible signs of neglect and disobedience. Perhaps because the best
of the French nation does not naturally tend to the sea, it is also
an undeniable fact that the French Navy produced no equivalent for
the multitude of capable men from the ranks, and the non-commissioned
officers, who replaced the emigrant aristocratic officers in the army.
They had as good an opportunity on the water as on the land, but they
did not come.
The old monarchy had left the Revolution the materials of a noble
fleet. The calculation of James in his _Naval History_ is allowed to be
sound. He puts the relative strength of the French and English navies
in line-of-battle ships at
+---------+---------+---------+-------------+
| | Number | Number | Aggregate |
| |of Ships | of Guns.| Broadsides. |
+---------+---------+---------+-------------+
| English | 115 | 8718 | 88,957 |
| French | 75 | 6002 | 23,057 |
+---------+---------+---------+-------------+
The proportion in frigates was nearly two to one in our favour.
The Royal Navy was suffering from internal evils which broke out in
1797, but none of them were fatal, or beyond comparatively easy
cure. In the interval between the Peace of 1783 and February 1793
three powerful fleets had been commissioned—in 1786, in consequence
of the disturbed state of Holland; in 1790, on the prospect of a war
with Spain—the Spanish armament; and in 1791, when intervention in
the East appeared to be likely to become necessary. No fighting had
ensued, but the efficiency of the dockyards had been tested. There was
nothing to delay the vigorous use of the fleet in February 1793 except
the old-standing difficulty always found in passing suddenly from a
reduced peace establishment to a war footing, when the crews had to be
collected by the press. It was, however, so serious that though Lord
Howe, who was appointed to command the Channel fleet, “kissed hands” at
court on his appointment on the 6th February, he did not leave London
till the 27th May, and did not sail from St. Helens till the 14th July.
An interval of six months, therefore, passed between the declaration of
war and the appearance in home waters of the fleet which was to protect
our shores. Lord Howe’s command was indeed not the first to be ready
for service. France was to be attacked at three points—in the Channel,
in the Mediterranean, and in the West Indies. The squadron appointed
for the West Indies, and commanded by Sir John Jervis, was not able
to sail till the very close of the year; but the Mediterranean fleet,
under Lord Hood, sailed in detachments during April and May.
That it was safe to send Hood with his twenty sail of the line to the
Mediterranean before the home fleet was ready is a signal proof that
the Government felt it could rely on the disorganisation of the enemy
to serve as our defence for a time. France had been at war since the
previous year, and the contending portions of Girondins and Jacobins
in Paris had alike been deliberately provoking a war with England.
If they had been wise, they would have had a part at least of their
fleet in a condition to act at once. But if wisdom can be attributed
to the dominant elements in the National Assembly, the praise can be
given only on the ground that a universal war was needed to confirm
the triumph of the revolutionary parties. The ruin of their finances
and the whirlwind of the social Revolution precluded all possibility
of immediate effective action at sea. If we look only to the number
of ships in commission and their distribution, France was in fairly
good position to strike at once. There were three sail of the line and
seven frigates at San Domingo, five frigates at Martinique, and two
sloops at Cayenne. The Mediterranean fleet, recently reinforced from
the Channel, consisted of eighteen sail of the line, sixteen frigates,
and a number of small craft. In the Channel and on the Atlantic coast
there were seven ships of the line at Brest, one at Cherbourg, three
at the isle of Aix, together with seven frigates and other small
vessels. The Vendéens were in arms for the king, and the authorities
at Paris were well aware of the necessity for cutting them off from
foreign support. On the 8th March, Admiral Morard de Galle, an officer
of the old grand corps, was ordered to sea to cruise on the coast
with three sail of the line. Bad weather drove him back to port, or
served as an excuse for his return with his ill-appointed and mutinous
ships. With feverish energy, and perhaps in the sincere though frantic
belief that revolutionary energy would atone for the want of other
elements of strength, the National Assembly commissioned fresh vessels,
drove them to sea, and collected a squadron in Quiberon Bay under
Villaret-Joyeuse. Morard de Galle took command of the whole on the 22nd
May, seven days before Howe left London. By the 1st August he had with
him nineteen sail of the line—four less than left St. Helens with Howe
on the 14th July.
The operations in the Channel till the close of 1793 are without
interest. Howe sighted the French hull down off Belleisle on the 31st
July. Calms, squalls, and thick weather, the shyness of the enemy and
the rawness of his own force, hastily manned and commanded by officers
grown somewhat rusty in peace, combined to prevent an engagement.
Till the close of the year the English admiral was either cruising
in search of the enemy, and to protect trade, or was coming back to
Torbay with sprung masts and split topsails to refit, and for stores.
In November the French squadron of Vanstabel escaped his pursuit by
sheer superiority of sailing due to the finer lines of their hulls and
the more scientific cut of their sails. Morard de Galle did not dare
to force an engagement. That he was outnumbered was a sound reason
for avoiding battle. And he had still better cause in the state of his
crews. Unpaid, unclothed, fed on insufficient rations of salted meat
only, and infested by scurvy, they had good cause for discontent. A
worse cause of weakness than even these paralysed him. The crews were
in the full fever of revolutionary disorder, and had acquired a settled
habit of mutiny. They were distrustful of the _civisme_ of their
admiral, and maddened by the fear of treason. After many clamours,
they forced their admiral to return to Brest on the 28th of September.
The delegate of the National Assembly, Tréhouart, who accompanied
the fleet, recognised the necessity for the return; but as usual the
blame was laid on the want of _civisme_ of the chiefs. Morard de Galle
was dismissed and imprisoned. Several captains were sent before the
revolutionary tribunal, and most of them were put to death.
While the French were dismissing and beheading their officers, public
opinion in England as represented by the Press, was condemning Howe. He
was violently abused in the blackguard newspaper style of the time, and
was ridiculed in highly coloured caricatures. One by Isaac Cruikshank
shows “How a great admiral, with a great fleet, went a great way, was
lost a great while, saw a great sight, and then came home for a little
water.” The admiral chants piteously—
“Oh Lord when I get to Torbay,
How folks will gape and stare;
Are non come back the Lord knows how
And been the Lord knows where.”
Another, drawn with the genius of Gillray, and inspired by all his
brutality of rancour, shows Howe blinded by a shower of gold coins, and
standing on a gold shell. He is saying, “Zounds! the damned hailstones
hinder one from doing one’s duty. I cannot see out of my eyes for them.
Oh it was just such another cursed peppering as this, that I fell in
with on the coast of America in the last war, and a deuce of a thing
it is, that whenever I am just going to play the devil I am either
hindered by these confounded French storms, or else loose (_sic_) my
way in a fog.”
Here we have the English counterpart of the French popular fury which
doubted the _civisme_ of Morard de Galle and suspected him of treason.
But the Government of England was strong, and upheld its admiral.
The contemporary operations in the Mediterranean began by a success
which seemed to promise a speedy end of the war. By the middle of
July Hood was on the coast of Provence with twenty-one sail of the
line. He met the Spanish fleet at sea near to Iviça on the 6th, and
found it in a miserably inefficient state. But the French fleet at
Toulon was in a still worse condition than the Brest fleet. It had
not dared to tackle even the feeble Spaniards. When orders were given
to go to sea, the crews refused, saying that they were to be sold by
treason, and would not sail in order to reach a foreign prison. The
Admiral Trogoff de Kerlessi was a Royalist, whom his poverty alone
had prevented from following other officers of his opinions into the
emigration. The Royalists were strong in the south of France, though
divided among themselves into those who wished the king to govern with
the constitution of 1791, and those who aimed at the restoration of the
absolute monarchy. The country was in open opposition to the Jacobin
Government at Paris, and was bubbling with intrigue. Hood established a
communication with the Toulonese Royalists through a Lieutenant Cooke,
who was sent in on the pretext that he came to arrange an exchange
of prisoners. Cooke, who has been erroneously described as a son of
the discoverer, was afterwards killed as captain of the =Sybille= in
her action with the _Forte_. On the 28th August the Toulonese were
terrified by hearing that the Jacobin army which had just destroyed
Lyons had occupied Marseilles, and was about to march on their own
town. In the panic which the news caused, the Royalists combined to
surrender the town, with dockyard and ships, to the English admiral,
who was in co-operation with the Spanish fleet of Don Juan de Lángara,
the officer who had been defeated and taken prisoner by Rodney in the
relief of Gibraltar in 1780. In the course of the 28th and 29th they
took possession. The sailors from Brest who were Jacobin in sympathy
and the Jacobins in the town were over-awed.
The occupation of Toulon seemed to promise a speedy counter revolution
in at any rate the south of France, or failing that, then the entire
ruin of the French naval power in the Mediterranean by the permanent
retention of the port. Both hopes were disappointed. Political causes
which must be passed over here weakened the allies and their French
friends. Toulon is a difficult town to defend on the land side. No
sufficient force for the purpose could be collected by the allies.
The Austrians would send no soldiers. The Spaniards who were sent
proved untrustworthy. The Neapolitans, who came in some numbers, were
worthless. The only solid elements in the garrison, the Piedmontese
and the English soldiers, were too few. When, therefore, the Jacobin
army was put under the command of Dugommier, an excellent officer,
and its artillery was directed by Napoleon Bonaparte, who here first
came conspicuously forward, it soon gained command of high ground from
which it could bombard the harbour and render the anchorage untenable.
On the 19th December Toulon was evacuated. The evacuation, which was
complicated by the necessity for bringing away thousands of French
refugees, was a scene of horror, and the preliminary to other scenes of
horror when the Jacobins gained possession and took vengeance on their
countrymen. Hood brought away as many of the French ships and as much
of the naval stores as he could, and endeavoured to destroy the rest by
fire. The task of destruction was entrusted to Captain Sidney Smith,
who had joined the fleet as a volunteer in a small vessel purchased and
armed by himself in the Levant. Smith, a very vapouring, but also a
very stirring and quick-witted man, did his best, and made the most of
what he did in his reports. The ill-will of the Spaniards, who perhaps
wished to preserve a French naval force as a counterbalance to the
English, and the rapid advance of the French, prevented the destruction
from being thorough. Yet the allies carried off four sail of the line
and burnt nine. They burnt fifteen frigates and carried off five. The
English troops who might have prevented the retaking of Toulon were
in Flanders under the Duke of York, or were about to sail to the West
Indies in the expedition convoyed by Jervis, and commanded by Sir
Charles Grey.
The war in the West Indies is one of the most instructive and
interesting parts of the great revolutionary struggle. It was
only begun by the capture of Martinique in 1794, and will be most
conveniently dealt with as a whole, and together with the ancillary
services of the navy. For the present I think it most convenient
only to note that in April Santa Lucia and Guadaloupe, together with
some smaller posts, were occupied. In June the arrival of French
reinforcements at Guadaloupe gave an entirely new character to the war
in this region. Only a few days before this expedition intervened,
there had been fought in European waters the great battle which was
to decide whether England was or was not to be free to continue her
conquests in distant seas.
The fact that this expedition had sailed from Rochefort on the 25th
April, unseen by British look-out ships, and had reached the West
Indies before warning was given to Sir John Jervis, would seem to
indicate some want of vigilance in the English blockading squadrons
and look-out ships. The question whether the watch maintained on the
French ports in the early stages of the war was well conducted has
been much debated. Every reader of naval controversy has heard of the
respective merits of the kind of blockade preferred by Howe, and the
course followed by Jervis when he had become Earl St. Vincent and was
in command in the Channel. Under St. Vincent the blockading fleet was
expected to remain outside the enemy’s port in all seasons, save when
the westerly gales drove the heavy ships to take refuge at Torquay,
from whence they could return rapidly to their station when the wind
shifted. During the absence of the heavy ships an inshore squadron of
picked vessels remained at anchor on the French coast just outside of
the range of French guns. Howe preferred to keep his ships at anchor in
English ports, leaving frigates to watch the enemy, and report if they
came to sea. The method of St. Vincent, which had been adopted before
him by Hawke, imposed a very severe strain on both men and ships.
Howe’s course was the milder, the more endurable to officers and crews.
But it was open to the criticism that it allowed the enemy too good a
chance of getting to sea unobserved, when it naturally followed that
there was a difficulty in discovering what course he had taken, and in
bringing him to action. On that ground alone St. Vincent’s blockade
must be judged to be superior, and it had the further advantage that
it tended to keep the fleet in better training though at a cruel cost
to humanity. Yet we need not forget that even when St. Vincent’s
rules were most strictly enforced, individual French ships and small
squadrons did get to sea, while the torpor of their main fleet was
deliberately enforced by the Government which had renounced the policy
of meeting the English fleets in battle, and fitted out its own with
no more aspiring ambition than the wish to impose a burden on England
by forcing her to keep up trying blockades. It would be rash to assert
that such a French expedition as that of 1794 would not have sailed
successfully at any stage of the war.
The course of events in European waters during that year can hardly be
quoted as a case in point against Howe’s method. It is true that he
wintered in home ports, and did not sail from St. Helens till the 2nd
May; but he was off Brest before the main French fleet was at sea, and
if he did not remain outside that port the reason must be sought in the
nature of the task set him. The French harvest of 1793 had been very
bad, and this failure of the home supply of food was aggravated by the
disorder of the country, which hampered industry. France was in serious
danger of famine, and the Government had directed its diplomatic agent
in the United States, M. Genêt, to purchase foodstuffs, hire American
vessels, and send them to Europe in a convoy. On the 24th December
1793, Rear-Admiral Vanstabel sailed from Brest to act as escort to
the trading-ships, with two sail of the line and four frigates. The
French Government had given its cruisers an order to impound all food
on its way to England in neutral vessels, and the British Government
had retaliated by declaring all food designed for the use of Frenchmen
to be contraband of war. When, therefore, Lord Howe sailed from St.
Helens, his orders were to intercept the convoy. The French, who were
aware that the British fleet would if possible stop the grain-ships,
had sent Rear-Admiral Nielly to meet them with five sail of the line,
300 miles to the west of Belleisle. Nielly left Brest on the 10th
April, the day before Vanstabel left the Chesapeake with his hundred
and twenty grain-ships.
It is self-evidently true that if Howe had been outside Brest by the
beginning of April, Nielly could not have sailed. But the British
Government was in some anxiety for its own trade, and Howe was ordered
to take with him nearly a hundred merchant-ships, which could not be
collected sooner, and to see them clear of the Channel. The whole swarm
of vessels which left the Isle of Wight with him amounted to 148 sail,
of which 49 were men-of-war, and 34 were ships of the line. Howe took
the convoy to the Lizard, and then sent the merchant-ships on under the
protection of eight ships of the line. Six of these, under the command
of Rear-Admiral Montagu, were ordered to accompany the convoy to Cape
Finisterre, and then cruise between Cape Ortegal and Belleisle till the
20th, when they were to join the flag off Ushant. Two were to accompany
the merchant-ships to their destination. Howe with twenty-six sail of
the line and seven frigates steered for Brest to discover whether the
main French fleet had put to sea. It was discovered at anchor.
This fleet, now commanded by Villaret-Joyeuse, a member of the old
Royal Navy, and a comparatively young man, was within one of the same
strength as the English—twenty-five sail of the line. Great exertions
had been made by the French Government to fit it out thoroughly.
Sailors had been brought from Toulon, and the crews were filled up by
levies of landsmen. Every effort had been made to rouse the patriotism
of the crews and confirm their confidence by eloquent appeals to
their emotions. As a security that the officers would be kept up to
the mark, and also as a precaution against the recurrence of the
mutinous disorders which had disturbed the fleet of Morard de Galle,
the Government had sent down two delegates with large powers of reward
and punishment—Jean Bon Saint André, and Prieur de la Marne. The name
of Jean Bon was freely used by wits in England as a Turk’s Head, or
chopping-block for satire. They expatiated at large in prose and
verse on his absurdities and cowardice. But Jean Bon was by no means
an absurd man. He had been a sailor in his youth, before he became a
Protestant preacher in his native town, Montauban. In the Convention
he had been distinguished by Jacobin zeal and a great command of the
windy rhetoric of the time. But he was neither fool nor coward. At a
later period he did good service for Napoleon as Prefect at Mayence,
and left the reputation of an honest and able official. His influence
in the fleet was exercised on the side of energy, and his absurdities
were superficial. If he dictated to the admiral, he had begun by making
the crews understand that mutiny would no longer be tolerated. That
Villaret-Joyeuse was better obeyed than Morard de Galle had been was
mainly due to the presence of a representative of the dreaded Committee
of Public Safety and to the decision of Jean Bon. The Republican fleet
which lay at Brest in 1794 was in truth a better force than France was
able to send to sea later in the war, when the spirit of the crews
had been damped by defeat, when they had ceased to believe in the
possibility of victory, and when long periods of stagnation in port
had rendered them awkward and timid. It was indeed far from being
efficient. Most of its captains and officers were merchant seamen
who had no experience of naval military work. Its crews were largely
landsmen. The Government was well aware of its want of training, for
they instructed Villaret-Joyeuse to take the opportunity, afforded by
his cruise for the protection of the convoy, to drill his men. They
were to be taught the rudiments of their business at the very moment
when they were about to meet an enemy. On the other hand, it must not
be forgotten that the English officers had not yet reached the level
of skill they attained later. Howe had to complain of the awkwardness
of some of his captains. The proportion of men who were at sea for
the first time in their lives was large in his fleet also. The “prime
seamen,” impressed for the fleet in 1793, had been largely sent to the
Mediterranean or West Indies. There were vessels under his command
which counted but a low proportion of men bred to the sea in their
complements. No doubt the level of skill was higher in the English than
in the French ships. But the superiority of Howe’s force was not what
the superiority of the crews of coming years was to be. It was based
less on training than on a better spirit of discipline, and the quality
of its cadastre of officers—commissioned, warrant, and petty. Defoe’s
maxim that “good officers presently make a good army,” holds true of
fleets, though, no doubt, more time is required to make a man useful
in a ship than to drill a soldier.
When Howe saw the French at anchor on the 5th May he might have judged
it wiser to remain off Brest, so as to prevent them from getting out
to cover the arrival of the convoy. But he could have no security that
the convoy would make for Brest, and if it had reached the French
ports to the south while he was blockading Villaret-Joyeuse, the main
purpose of his cruise would have been lost. He therefore stood to sea
to seek for Vanstabel and his charge on and near the 47th degree of
latitude—the course which would naturally be followed by merchant ships
on their way to Europe. He remained sweeping the trade route without
seeing a sail, till he came off Brest again on the 19th, to which he
returned since he had ordered Admiral Montagu to meet him off Ushant
on the 20th. The weather had been foggy, so foggy that on the 17th the
French fleet, on its way out, had passed Howe’s ships close enough to
let the Frenchmen hear the fog signals struck in the English fleet.
The watch bell was tolled on the starboard, and a drum beaten on the
port, tack. The English fleet did not detect the neighbourhood of the
enemy, and on the 18th the fleets were out of sight of one another.
Villaret-Joyeuse had left Brest on the 16th, and after so narrowly
avoiding a collision, he steered for the west to meet Nielly at his
rendezvous, three hundred miles west of Belleisle. Howe, on the 18th,
was returning to the east, and on the 19th his frigates reconnoitred
the anchorage and discovered that Villaret-Joyeuse was at sea. On
the same day the =Venus= frigate joined him with important news from
Montagu. On the 15th the rear-admiral had fallen in with and captured
the French corvette, _Maire Guiton_, and several merchant vessels. They
belonged to an English Newfoundland convoy protected by Captain Thomas
Troubridge in the =Castor= frigate. The =Castor= and the vessels she
was convoying had all fallen into the hands of Nielly, who had sent
them off as prizes. Montagu learnt from the Englishmen in the crews
of the recaptured ships, that Nielly was waiting to join Vanstabel.
As their united force would have outnumbered his, he informed the
admiral, and asked for reinforcements. Howe, who also knew that
Villaret-Joyeuse was at sea, realised the danger that his detached
squadron might be overwhelmed, and at once steered to the south-west
to afford it protection. On the 21st he fell in with a number of
Dutch merchant vessels, just captured by Villaret-Joyeuse, and retook
them. From the men on board and the logs of the ships he learnt that
the French admiral was steering to the west to meet Nielly, and in a
direction which would carry him away from Montagu, who was therefore
in no danger. The main English fleet went in search of the Frenchman.
Montagu, for his part, came to the rendezvous off Ushant on the 20th,
and, not finding Howe there, returned in a few days to the Channel, an
act of weakness which he and his apologists endeavoured to justify,
but which had no valid excuse. It was an oversight on the part of Lord
Howe that he did not take measures to call Montagu’s six line-of-battle
ships to his flag. If they had been with him in the coming battles the
result could not well have failed to be more decisive.
From the 21st to the 28th of May, Howe was diligently seeking the
French between the 47th and 48th parallels of latitude. On the
morning of the 28th they were seen directly to the south of him,
and to windward in the brisk south-westerly wind then blowing.
Villaret-Joyeuse, who had been joined by the _Patriote_, 74, from the
squadron of Nielly, had now exactly the same number of ships as Howe.
When the English topsails were first seen by the French they were
supposed to be perhaps the convoy or the ships of Nielly’s squadron. He
therefore bore down till he was near enough to recognise the English
fleet, which he did when it was separated from him by a space of ten
miles. The first duty of the French admiral was to manœuvre to secure
the safety of the convoy. The more effectual course would have been
to force on a close battle and drive Howe away. Villaret-Joyeuse was
far too painfully conscious of the defects of his command to take the
bold line which would have commended itself to his old chief, Suffren,
with whom he had served in the East Indies, but was contrary to the
general tradition of the French Navy. Therefore, like the plover, which
endeavours to draw the intruder away from the place where its nest
is, the French admiral manœuvred to tempt his opponent away from the
route of the grain-ships. There was in truth little risk that he would
not be followed, to say nothing of the fact that it was impossible to
know exactly where Vanstabel would be at a given moment. The wholesome
tradition of our navy was to destroy the fighting force of the enemy.
When his opponent was in front Howe fixed upon him. The operations of
the following five days were performed in the space of the Atlantic
stretching around the point 47° 34′ N. and 13° 39′ W., and to 47° 48′
N. and 18° 30′ W. A line drawn west from Belleisle, and another drawn
south from Lion’s Bank in the North Atlantic, meet on the field of the
operation of the 28th and 29th of May and the 1st of June.
When he knew that Howe was to leeward of him the French admiral
ordered his fleet to come to the wind on the port tack, and stood to
the westward, in the south-westerly wind. But the inexperience of his
captains and crews prevented the quick formation of a good line. Some
of his vessels fell behind and to leeward. A little after one o’clock
he tacked his ships in succession—one after the other, each tacking
where her leader tacked—came back to pick up and cover the isolated
vessels, and then stood to south-east. When the French were seen
the English fleet pressed to windward, and at a quarter to ten the
signal was made to prepare for action. As it had to work to windward
its approach was naturally slow, and the whole day might have passed
without an encounter but for the bad handling of some of the French
ships. As it was, the first shot was not fired till about half-past
two. To tack a fleet of the size of the French, in succession, was an
operation requiring some two hours for its due performance. The last
of the line had not reached the turning point when the first of the
English came within striking distance. At that moment the French were
to the south-east and the windward of the English, and all, except the
ships which had not returned, were heading to the east-south-east.
Howe had told off a squadron of his best sailing ships to harass
the enemy’s rear, seize hold of his skirt, as it were, and stop his
attempt to get away. This squadron consisted of Rear-Admiral Pasley’s
flagship, the =Bellerophon=, 74, Captain William Hope; the =Russell=,
74, Captain John Willet Payne; the =Marlborough=, 74, Captain the Hon.
G. Cranfield Berkeley; and the =Thunderer=, 74, Captain Albemarle
Bertie. Though the average speed of a French fleet was commonly better
than our own, the quickest English ships sailed better than the slowest
of the French. As Villaret-Joyeuse was compelled to keep his ships
together he had to regulate his speed by that of the worst sailer among
them. Admiral Pasley’s squadron would probably have overtaken him even
if his evolution had been completed by half-past two. At the moment of
the first intact the English fleet was heading to the westward towards
the French rear. At about three o’clock, as the enemy completed his
evolution, it also began to tack in succession, and to follow, still
heading for the rear of Villaret-Joyeuse’s line, and still to leeward,
in pursuit of the opponent who was slipping away to the eastward. The
=Russell=, =Marlborough=, and =Thunderer=, with the frigates, held on
longer than the others to get into the wake of the French, and then
turned. Both fleets now stood eastward, the French ahead, while the
leading English ships kept up a bickering fire with the end of their
line. At about five o’clock the _Revolutionnaire_, 110, fell back
from her place in the line and took post at the rear. Her great bulk
and solidity fitted her to stand battering. Her captain, Vandongen,
fought her stoutly and was killed in the action. As the darkness came
on the _Revolutionnaire_ fell behind and put before the wind. She was
engaged by the =Bellerophon=, the =Russell=, the =Thunderer=, the
=Marlborough=, the =Leviathan=, 94, Captain Lord Hugh Seymour, and
the =Audacious=, 94, Captain William Parker. She suffered severely,
and it was believed in the English fleet that she had surrendered.
It is probable that she would have been taken if Howe, who did not
trust all his captains sufficiently to welcome a night action, had
not recalled the ships engaged at about eight o’clock. She continued
to be engaged on the =Audacious= till nearly ten. Captain Vandongen
fell at nine-thirty. His first and second lieutenants had been killed
or disabled. The third lieutenant, Renaudeau, was wounded immediately
after taking over the command. The _Revolutionnaire_ staggered out of
action a wreck, under her fourth lieutenant, Dorré. But she had put
her mark on most of the ships which engaged her, having damaged the
=Bellerophon= severely, and shattered the rigging of the =Audacious=
so thoroughly that the English 74 was compelled to put before the wind
and return to Plymouth. The _Revolutionnaire_ reached Brest (where her
officers and crew were sent to prison on a charge of treason) under the
escort of the _Audacieux_, 74, from Nielly’s squadron, which joined
Villaret-Joyeuse on the 29th but was detached to help her.
During the night the two fleets continued standing to the eastward on
the starboard tack. Next morning the French were seen to windward,
about six miles off, on the starboard bow of the English. The
_Audacieux_ was standing across our route some distance ahead to join
her admiral, who, as has just been stated, sent her off to help the
_Revolutionnaire_. At seven o’clock Howe ordered his ships to tack in
succession, and menace the rear of the enemy as on the day before. By
this movement he also manœuvred to set to windward. At about eight
o’clock the =Cæsar=, 74, and the =Queen=, 74, the leading ships of
Howe’s line, now heading westward, began to cannonade the rear ships
of the French who were still standing to the east. Villaret-Joyeuse,
seeing his rear ships menaced, and being anxious lest some of them
should be cut off as on the day before, wore his fleet in succession,
turning them, that is to say, before the wind, and bringing them nearer
the English. The result of this movement was to bring the French on to
the same tack as the English, but nearer them though still to windward,
and the two fleets stood on to the west, cannonading one another at
some distance, for the French hung back from a close engagement. At
half-past eleven Howe signalled to his fleet to tack in succession
and pass through the enemy, but deciding, on consideration, that the
order was premature he annulled it, and then repeated it at half-past
twelve. The smoke made it difficult to see the order, and when it
was seen it was ill obeyed. The leading ship of the English line,
the =Cæsar=, was commanded by Captain Molloy, who had commanded the
=Intrepid=, 64, in Graves’ action with Grasse, off the Chesapeake, in
the previous war, and had then fought with signal gallantry. But in
the actions of 1794 he suffered, according to his own account, from
a persistent course of misfortunes, and, according to others, from
a want of zeal, which brought on him great discredit in the fleet,
and condemnation by a court martial. The =Cæsar= was too far from the
enemy, and when she was ordered to tack, she wore, and so went further
than before, running to leeward of her own friends. The =Queen=, 98,
Captain John Hutt, the flagship of Rear-Admiral Alan Gardner, the ship
next to the =Cæsar=, did tack and so did those immediately behind
her, but partly because they were damaged in the rigging, and partly
because the French line was well closed, they failed to break it at any
point. They ran along it on the leeside between it and the centre and
rear of the English fleet. The result of Howe’s manœuvre so far had
been to throw his own fleet into confusion. Seeing that if he waited
to tack till his turn came, he might be too late to reach the enemy,
he tacked his flagship, the =Queen Charlotte=, 100, and broke through
the French line ahead of the fifth ship from the rear. Then he tacked
again and stood in the same direction as the French, who were now to
leeward of him. He was followed by his fleet, but in a confused swarm.
In the prevailing disorder and the smoke, the English could hardly
tell whether their broadside would go into a friend or an enemy. Yet
Howe gained the essential advantage he had aimed at. He forced to
windward of the French fleet, and gained the weather gage. The two
ships in the rear of the French line, the _Indomptable_, 80, Captain
Lamesle, and the _Tyrannicide_, 74, Captain Dordelin, were cut off and
surrounded. Seeing their peril Villaret-Joyeuse wore out of his line
to support them. He was followed by the centre and rear of his fleet,
and he rescued the two ships. He even threatened the =Queen=, which had
been much mauled and had fallen behind. His van had followed him. The
=Queen= was promptly supported. Both fleets were in much confusion, and
at five o’clock the fire ceased.
The action of the 29th May had ended to the notable advantage of Howe.
Though several of his ships were damaged, none were too disabled to
serve. On the other hand Villaret-Joyeuse had lost the _Indomptable_,
which was so much damaged that he felt constrained to send her home
under escort of the _Mont Blanc_, 74. The _Montagnard_, 74, left
the fleet without orders. The fleet which had sailed from Brest was
therefore diminished by loss of four of its ships. Moreover, it had
lost the weather gage, and with it the power to delay a decisive
action. When the action of the 29th ended the French admiral wore
again, but his fleet on the port tack rejoined his van and stood to
the west followed by the English fleet. The _Montagnard_, which had
separated from the fleet, fell in with Admiral Vanstabel and the
convoy. On the day following the action, the 30th May, Vanstabel, with
his grain-ships, sailed across the water where it had been fought, and
while Howe, who had come out to intercept him, and the Brest fleet,
which was there for his protection, were sailing to the west, continued
on his way to France.
The wind was still south-westerly, but it had diminished in strength.
The weather became foggy, and the hostile fleets not only lost sight
of one another, but it was often not possible for the ships in each
to see their friends. On the 30th May Villaret-Joyeuse had a piece of
extraordinary good fortune. He was joined by the _Trente-et-un Mai_,
74, Captain Honoré Ganteaume, from Concale, and by Rear-Admiral Nielly,
with the _Sans Pareil_, 80, Captain Courand; the _Trajan_, 74, Captain
Dumourier; and the _Téméraire_, 94, Captain Henry Morel. His fleet was
therefore again brought up to twenty-six sail. During the 30th and 31st
May the two fleets continued sailing to the west, sighting one another
in glimpses through the fog. By the evening of the 31st the air had
cleared. The French were then to leeward of the English at a distance
of four or five miles. It was somewhat of a surprise to Howe’s officers
to find their opponent undiminished in numbers and so little damaged.
Howe, who was no more inclined than before to fight a night battle,
and who knew that the French could not now get away, was content to
continue on the same tack with them during the night. At dark they were
on his lee quarter. When full daylight had come on the 1st June they
had so far gained on him that they were on his lee bow.
The battle now about to be fought is among the most important in the
history of naval war. Its significance is to some extent obscured by
the fact that we see it in the perspective of time—that is to say,
across subsequent events of an apparently greater order, with which
we naturally, though unfairly, make our comparisons. But the just
comparison is with what went before. I have endeavoured to show how
the British admirals of the eighteenth century had been compelled, and
were for the most part content, to fight on the poor model provided by
the Duke of York’s Fighting Instructions. They bore down on the enemy
from windward, engaged van to van, centre to centre, rear to rear. And
they complied with Instruction XVI.: “In all cases of fight with the
enemy the commanders of his majesty’s ships are to keep the fleet _in
one line_, and (as much as may be), to preserve that order of battle,
which they have been directed to keep, before the time of fight.” The
result had been to produce such formal and inconclusive actions as
were fought by Pocock and D’Aché in the East Indies, by Keppel and
D’Orvilliers off Ushant, and in many other places. About the time of
the American War of 1778-1783 a general impatience had begun to be
felt with this established system. A witty French minister declared
that what a naval battle meant was the meeting of two fleets, a great
expenditure of powder and shot, and a separation—after which the sea
was never a whit the less salt.
Arbuthnot’s action with Destouches off the Capes of Virginia, Parker’s
fight with Zoutman on the Dogger Bank had exasperated the navy. Then
came Rodney’s victory off Dominica, when he broke his own line in
defiance of Instruction XVI. and with brilliant results. We cannot say
with certainty how far the speculations of Clerk influenced the minds
of naval officers. They have commonly denied him any influence at all.
His ingenious plans for forcing on decisive actions are open to the
criticism of Captain White, who, in his notes on Rodney’s battle, said
that Mr. Clerk would not have found it so easy to manœuvre real ships
on real water, as to move his models on the dining-room table. The
late Rear-Admiral May, when Captain of the College at Greenwich, once
observed to me, while looking at Clerk’s scheme for an attack on the
enemy’s rear from windward, that it was very pretty if the enemy was
fool enough to let you carry it out. There are no _bottes secrètes_ in
war—no lunges which cannot be parried. Any attack is effective only
when the better fighter tries it on the less good. And here we come to
the root of the matter—to that dominating idea of Clerk’s book which
remains sound whatever may be the value of his applications.
It is essential to know what that idea really was. I do not think
that it is to be found in his ingenious plans for concentrating a
superior number of ships on an inferior number of the enemy’s. Every
such attempt to concentrate can be countered and baffled by an alert
opponent. The real value of Clerk’s speculations lies in the truth of
the hypothesis on which he reasoned, and the general recommendation,
or exhortation, he founded thereupon. They are to be read in the
introduction to his book on Tactics. He said to naval officers that
they and their crews were superior in quality to their enemies, and had
proved that superiority in single ship actions, yet their great battles
had commonly led to no decisive result, and why? Because they allowed
themselves to be tied by pedantic rules. These rules were useful to
the side which wished to avoid a decisive action. To the stronger, who
had every reason to wish for a chance to develop his strength, they
were bonds and obstructions. Therefore, he urged, use your formation
as a means of bringing your ships into action. Then it has served its
purpose, and you can let it go, break into your enemy’s formation, and
allow free play to your individual superiority. With or without his
help, or spontaneously, and with stimulus from him, these opinions
had been spreading in the navy. On the 1st June 1794 the time and the
opportunity for their application had come. Howe’s claim to rank among
the great captains is based on the fact that he did apply them.
He would hold his place, even if it could be shown that he did not do
the best he could have done. The prevailing authorities are agreed that
he did not, and the more friendly plead his sixty-eight years, and
the strain which had been laid on him, as excuses. It had been severe
since the 2nd May, and heavy indeed since the morning of the 28th. The
obligatory remark that Nelson would have done far otherwise is rarely
omitted. I shall not undertake to prove a negative. Being the younger
man, Nelson might have had the strength to do more than Howe if he had
ever met an opponent who had capacity and opportunity to manœuvre. Let
us leave easy and barren assumptions aside, and see what were the facts
with which Howe had to deal.
In the first place he knew, by his experience on the 29th, that the
fleet on his lee-bow could and would manœuvre. Villaret-Joyeuse had
shown, by wearing out of his line to extricate the _Indomptable_ and
the _Tyrannicide_, that he was not the man to lie idle while part of
his fleet was assailed by superior numbers. The French admiral was
quite capable of countering any attempt at concentration. On the other
hand, Howe could not rely on the intelligent execution of his orders
by all his captains. The simpler the task he set them the better would
it be executed. Then he knew that while the manœuvring power of the
French was not contemptible, their gunnery was bad. The loss of life in
his fleet had been small, and none of his ships had been so disabled
on the 29th as to be unable to take her place in the line on the 1st
June. Therefore it followed that so long as the ships of the two fleets
were fairly matched in size, a superior power would be developed by
each English ship by virtue of her better gunnery. What was required
was that the action should be close, and that the enemy should not
be allowed to practise the favourite French manœuvre of firing to
dismast, and then slipping away to leeward. The end could be obtained
by bearing down on the enemy, van to van, centre to centre, rear to
rear, not for the purpose of hauling up to windward and then keeping in
the same order, while the enemy went off on his open line of retreat,
but to break in on him, to pass through his line, to cut his retreat,
and so to force him to fight it out. The process of breaking through
would give opportunities to rake the enemy’s ships, a _mêlée_ would be
produced, and the individual superiority of the English ships would
have free play. When Howe decided on this departure from tradition, he,
with his sixty-eight years and his training in the strictest sect of
the Pharisees, showed a greater daring, a greater originality, than was
to be displayed by the men who followed him, who handled more practised
fleets, who benefited by the confidence he had inspired, who fought
enemies whose nerve he had broken. The battle of the 1st June was the
foundation of the later superiority of the English fleet, and by far
the most essential part of any building is its foundation.
Lord Howe signalled that he meant to attack the centre of the enemy’s
line, and then that he would break through and engage to leeward. His
line bore up at about a quarter-past eight, after a pause had been made
to allow the men to have breakfast. The approach was slow, for the
opportunity was taken to rectify the order of the ships so that they
should be fairly matched. The course steered was to the north-west, the
ships advancing on oblique lines to assail the enemy who was on their
bow, and who lay in very good order awaiting the attack, in a line
ahead from west to east. The wind, though less strong than on previous
days, was still from the south-west, and the sea was calmer than it had
been for the last few days.
It was nearly half-past nine when Howe’s fleet came within range of
the French guns and the enemy opened fire. For a few moments none of
his ships answered. They were waiting till they were in a position to
answer with effect. If the admiral’s orders had been exactly obeyed
each of his captains would have steered for the space astern of the
Frenchman corresponding to himself in the hostile line, and would
have passed through it, and would have engaged to leeward. But the
order was not exactly obeyed, sometimes because the French closed
their line and no open space was left; sometimes because the rapidly
gathering cloud of smoke deprived zealous officers of the power to see;
sometimes because an effective effort to obey was not made. The signal
to pass through the enemy’s line was accompanied by a superfluous
and mischievous note to the effect that the captain who could not
find a place to pass was at liberty to engage without passing. It was
superfluous, because there was surely no necessity to tell any man that
he was not expected to do the physically impossible, and mischievous,
because this official recognition of the alternative gave the weaker
sort an excuse for not doing their utmost. There were those who did
not. The =Cæsar= hauled up too far to windward, exposed herself to
the concentrated fire of the leading French ships, was damaged, made
distracted vacillating movements, was of no use, and yet suffered
more loss of life than some vessels which really contributed to the
victory. Following the line from west to east, the =Bellerophon=
engaged the _Gasparin_ to windward, but close and hotly, till the
Frenchman, together with his next ahead, the _Convention_, flinched,
bore up and ran to leeward, heading to the east. The rigging of the
=Bellerophon= was cut to pieces, and she could not follow. Yet she
lost fewer men than the =Cæsar=. But Admiral Pasley, who lost his
leg, was among the wounded. The =Leviathan= engaged the _America_ to
windward to good purpose, pushing her hard, driving her out, following
her, and swinging round to leeward of her as she strove to follow her
leaders to the eastward. Old habit had fixed the French captains in
the faith that a naval battle was to be fought by firing to dismast
and then slipping away to form a new line to leeward. The =Russell=
engaged the _Téméraire_ till this French ship also slipped away. Then
she pressed on, and falling in with the _America_ helped to take her.
The =Royal Sovereign= fought the _Terrible_, drove her out of the line,
and then joined in overwhelming the _America_. The =Marlborough= broke
through the French line astern of the _Impétueux_, the next behind the
_Terrible_, became entangled with the former and the _Mucius_, her next
astern, so that the three fell aboard one another, and the English ship
was severely mauled. The =Defence= cut the line between the _Mucius_
and the _Eole_, suffering much. The =Impregnable=, =Tremendous=, and
=Barfleur= engaged the _Tourville_, _Trajan_, and _Tyrannicide_ to
windward—not as closely as Howe would have wished. The =Barfleur= was
the flagship of Admiral Bowyer, who also was wounded, and her captain
was Cuthbert Collingwood, the most calmly intrepid of men. No want of
goodwill can have restrained him. In the smoke her crew could see only
a short distance. They believed, and for a time Collingwood himself
believed, that a French ship beside them had sunk. “Up jumped the
Johnnies on the guns and cheered,” so Collingwood records, but they
were mistaken. The =Culloden= and =Gibraltar= fired from windward, not
closely, nor to the purpose. The =Queen Charlotte=, Howe’s flagship,
was steered to break the line astern of the French flagship, the
_Montagne_. As she came down she took the fire of the _Jacobin_ and the
_Achille_, the next French vessels, without reply. The captain of the
_Montagne_—or the Admiral Villaret-Joyeuse—understood her aim, backed
their sails, and endeavoured to bar her road. Gassin, the captain of
the _Jacobin_, saw it too, and, letting all draw, shot ahead to close
the line. He took the officer-like course, but he took it too eagerly.
The _Jacobin_ nearly ran into the stern of the _Montagne_, and to avoid
a collision had to port her helm, and was carried on till she ranged
up on the leeside of the flagship. The =Queen Charlotte= swept through
the space left by her advance. The flag of the _Montagne_ flapped
against the shrouds of the English flagship, so closely did she pass.
Her broadside was delivered with shattering force, and then she ranged
up between the _Montagne_ and the _Jacobin_. If either had been laid on
her bow she must have suffered, if not disaster, still great injury.
But the _Jacobin_ soon stood on, and then so did the _Montagne_, which
had made little or no reply to the English fire. The =Brunswick= headed
to pass through the gap left by the _Achille_ which had followed
the _Jacobin_, but Captain Renaudin, of the _Vengeur_, stood on and
barred the way. Then Captain John Harvey, of the =Brunswick=, obeyed
the admiral’s signal in the spirit since in the letter he could not.
He ran into the French ship, his three starboard anchors hooking the
Frenchman’s port fore-shrouds and fore-channels. When his master, Mr.
Stewart, asked if the anchors should be cut away he answered, “No,
we have got her, and we will keep her.” The two ships turned before
the wind, and drifted to leeward, grappled one to the other. The
=Valiant=, the =Orion=, the =Queen=, the =Ramillies=, the =Alfred=,
the =Montague=, all engaged to windward more or less closely—some of
them notably rather less than more. The =Royal George= broke through
between the _Républicain_ and the _Sans-Pareil_. The =Majestic= engaged
to windward. The =Glory= broke in among the ships of the French rear,
and the =Thunderer= passed behind the last of them, and so entered the
mêlée.
These movements which must needs be told consecutively, were
contemporaneous, or nearly so. As the French ships pushed on to close
spaces ahead of them, a westerly movement was given to the line, and
the English vessels furthest to the east had the greater distance to
go and so came later into action. Though Howe’s orders were not fully
obeyed the French formation was broken, and the English were mingled
with the enemy’s vessels in confusion. Out of that confusion order
was again evolved. The general movement to leeward carried most of the
French clear, and among them the _Montagne_, which shook off the =Queen
Charlotte=, crippled by the loss of her main topmast. When the two
fleets were disentangled, Villaret-Joyeuse was able to form a line to
leeward, but ten of his ships were surrounded by the English. He came
gallantly back to their assistance and rescued four, the _Républicain_,
the _Mucius_, the _Scipion_, and the _Jemmapes_. Two of the English
ships were put in peril by his return—the =Queen=, which had eagerly
pushed through the broken French rear, and the =Brunswick=, which had
drifted away locked to the _Vengeur_. Their strife was furious, and
carried to a decisive conclusion. Captain Harvey was mortally wounded,
but the _Vengeur_, shattered by the fire of the =Brunswick= and other
English vessels, sank, carrying part of her crew down with her, but not
before she had surrendered.
The return of Villaret-Joyeuse alarmed the captain of the fleet, Sir
Roger Curtis, and he urged the admiral to call his ships about him lest
the Frenchman should take his revenge. Howe, so exhausted by four days
of strain that he nearly fell from fatigue, yielded to his importunity.
The English ships were recalled, and before two o’clock the action
ceased. We remained in possession of six prizes, the _Sans-Pareil_,
_Juste_, _America_, _Impétueux_, _Northumberland_, and _Achille_. The
total loss of life from the 28th May to the 10th June was but 290
killed. The wounded were 858. The casualty list of the six French ships
taken was greater—1266 in all, and the total loss must have been very
much heavier.
The operations of the campaign did not end when the fleets drew apart
on the afternoon of the 1st June. Admiral Montagu was not allowed to
remain in Plymouth Sound. When the =Audacious= brought news on the 3rd
June that the fleets were in contact, he was ordered out again, and he
sailed on the 4th with nine sail of the line. On the 8th June he was
off Brest where he found himself in the midst of enemies. A reserve
squadron had been fitted out in the port, and two at sea. It was weaker
than Montagu’s, and retired before him to Bertheaume Bay. But on the
9th the fleet of Villaret-Joyeuse, diminished, but still formidable
to Montagu’s squadron of nine, hove in sight. He slipped between the
two, and retreated to Plymouth where he anchored on the 12th. In the
meantime, Vanstabel, who, after crossing the scene of the action of the
29th May, had anchored at Penmarch, came into Brest under cover of the
French fleet, and the great food convoy was safely housed. The main
English fleet made for home when it lost sight of the French on the 1st
of June. Part of the ships were left at Plymouth, but the majority and
the prizes anchored at Spithead on the 13th of June.