The naval side of the wars arising out of the French Revolution was
marked by unity, and even by simplicity. France had but one serious
enemy, Great Britain, and Great Britain had but one purpose, to beat
down France. Other states were drawn into the strife, but it was as the
allies, the enemies and at times the victims, of the two dominating
powers. The field of battle was the whole expanse of the ocean and the
landlocked seas. The weapons, the methods and the results were the same.
When a general survey of the whole struggle is taken, its unity is
manifest. The Revolution produced a profound alteration in the
government of France, but none in the final purposes of its policy. To
secure for France its so-called "natural limits"--the Rhine, the Alps,
the Pyrenees and the ocean; to protect both flanks by reducing Holland
on the north and Spain on the south to submission; to confirm the mighty
power thus constituted, by the subjugation of Great Britain, were the
objects of the Republic and of Napoleon, as they had been of Louis XIV.
The naval war, like the war on land, is here considered in the first of
its two phases--the Revolutionary (1792-99). (For the Napoleonic phase
(1800-15), see NAPOLEONIC CAMPAIGNS.)
The Revolutionary war began in April 1792. In the September of that year
Admiral Truguet sailed from Toulon to co-operate with the French troops
operating against the Austrians and their allies in northern Italy. In
December Latouche Treville was sent with another squadron to cow the
Bourbon rulers of Naples. The extreme feebleness of their opponents
alone saved the French from disaster. Mutinies, which began within ten
days of the storming of the Bastille (14th of July 1789), had
disorganized their navy, and the effects of these disorders continued to
be felt so long as the war lasted. In February 1793 war broke out with
Great Britain and Holland. In March Spain was added to the list of the
powers against which France declared war. Her resources at sea were
wholly inadequate to meet the coalition she had provoked. The Convention
did indeed order that fifty-two ships of the line should be commissioned
in the Channel, but it was not able in fact to do more than send out a
few diminutive and ill-appointed squadrons, manned by mutinous crews,
which kept close to the coast. The British navy was in excellent order,
but the many calls made on it for the protection of world-wide commerce
and colonial possessions caused the operations in the Channel to be
somewhat languid. Lord Howe cruised in search of the enemy without being
able to bring them to action. The severe blockade which in the later
stages of the war kept the British fleet permanently outside of Brest
was not enforced in the earlier stages. Lord Howe preferred to save his
fleet from the wear and tear of perpetual cruising by maintaining his
headquarters at St Helens, and keeping watch on the French ports by
frigates. The French thus secured a freedom of movement which in the
course of 1794 enabled them to cover the arrival of a great convoy laden
with food from America (see FIRST OF JUNE, BATTLE OF). This great effort
was followed by a long period of languor. Its internal defects compelled
the French fleet in the Channel to play a very poor part till the last
days of 1796. Squadrons were indeed sent a short way to sea, but their
inefficiency was conspicuously displayed when, on the 17th of June 1795,
a much superior number of their line of battle ships failed to do any
harm to the small force of Cornwallis, and when on the 22nd of the same
month they fled in disorder before Lord Bridport at the Isle de Groix.
Operations of a more decisive character had in the meantime taken place
both in the Mediterranean and in the West Indies. In April 1793 the
first detachment of a British fleet, which was finally raised to a
strength of 21 sail of the line, under the command of Lord Hood, sailed
for the Mediterranean. By August the admiral was off Toulon, acting in
combination with a Spanish naval force. France was torn by the
contentions of Jacobins and Girondins, and its dissensions led to the
surrender of the great arsenal to the British admiral and his Spanish
colleague Don Juan de Langara, on the 27th of August. The allies were
joined later by a contingent from Naples. But the military forces were
insufficient to hold the land defences against the army collected to
expel them. High ground commanding the anchorage was occupied by the
besieging force, and on the 18th of December 1793 the allies retired.
They carried away or destroyed thirty-three French vessels, of which
thirteen were of the line. But partly through the inefficiency and
partly through the ill-will of the Spaniards, who were indisposed to
cripple the French, whom they considered as their only possible allies
against Great Britain, the destruction was not so complete as had been
intended. Twenty-five ships, of which eighteen were of the line, were
left to serve as the nucleus of an active fleet in later years. Fourteen
thousand of the inhabitants fled with the allies to escape the vengeance
of the victorious Jacobins. Their sufferings, and the ferocious massacre
perpetrated on those who remained behind by the conquerors, form one of
the blackest pages of the French Revolution. The Spanish fleet took no
further part in the war. Lord Hood now turned to the occupation of
Corsica, where the intervention of the British fleet was invited by the
patriotic party headed by Pascual Paoli. The French ships left at Toulon
were refitted and came to sea in the spring of 1794, but Admiral Martin
who commanded them did not feel justified in giving battle, and his
sorties were mere demonstrations. From the 25th of January 1794 till
November 1796 the British fleet in the Mediterranean was mainly occupied
in and about Corsica, securing the island, watching Toulon and
co-operating with the allied Austrians and Piedmontese in northern
Italy. It did much to hamper the coastwise communications of the French.
But neither Lord Hood, who went home at the end of 1794, nor his
indolent successor Hotham, was able to deliver an effective blow at the
Toulon squadron. The second of these officers fought two confused
actions with Admiral Martin in the Gulf of Lyons on the 16th of March
and the 12th of July 1795, but though three French ships were cut off
and captured, the baffling winds and the placid disposition of Hotham
united to prevent decisive results. A new spirit was introduced into the
command of the British fleet when Sir John Jervis, afterwards Earl Saint
Vincent, succeeded Hotham in November 1795.
Jervis came to the Mediterranean with a high reputation, which had been
much enhanced by his recent command in the West Indies. In every war
with France it was the natural policy of the British government to
seize on its enemy's colonial possessions, not only because of their
intrinsic value, but because they were the headquarters of active
privateers. The occupation of the little fishing stations of St Pierre
and Miquelon (14th May 1793) and of Pondicherry in the East Indies (23rd
Aug. 1793) were almost formal measures taken at the beginning of every
war. But the French West Indian islands possessed intrinsic strength
which rendered their occupation a service of difficulty and hazard. In
1793 they were torn by dissensions, the result of the revolution in the
mother country. Tobago was occupied in April, and the French part of the
great island of San Domingo was partially thrown into British hands by
the Creoles, who were threatened by their insurgent slaves. During 1794
a lively series of operations, in which there were some marked
alternations of fortune, took place in and about Martinique and
Guadaloupe. The British squadron, and the contingent of troops it
carried, after a first repulse, occupied them both in March and April,
together with Santa Lucia. A vigorous counter-attack was carried out by
the Terrorist Victor Hugues with ability and ferocity. Guadaloupe and
Santa Lucia were recovered in August. Yet on the whole the British
government was successful in its policy of destroying the French naval
power in distant seas. The seaborne commerce of the Republic was
destroyed.
The naval supremacy of Great Britain was limited, and was for a time
menaced, in consequence of the advance of the French armies on land. The
invasion of Holland in 1794 led to the downfall of the house of Orange,
and the establishment of the Batavian Republic. War with Great Britain
under French dictation followed in January 1795. In that year a British
expedition under the command of Admiral Keith Elphinstone (afterwards
Lord Keith) occupied the Dutch colony at the Cape (August-September) and
their trading station in Malacca. The British colonial empire was again
extended, and the command of the sea by its fleet confirmed. But the
necessity to maintain a blockading force in the German Ocean imposed a
fresh strain on its naval resources, and the hostility of Holland closed
a most important route to British commerce in Europe. In 1795 Spain made
peace with France at Basel, and in September 1796 re-entered the war as
her ally. The Spanish navy was most inefficient, but it required to be
watched and therefore increased the heavy strain on the British fleet.
At the same time the rapid advance of the French arms in Italy began to
close the ports of the peninsula to Great Britain. Its ships were for a
time withdrawn from the Mediterranean. Poor as it was in quality, the
Spanish fleet was numerous. It was able to facilitate the movements of
French squadrons sent to harass British commerce in the Atlantic, and a
concentration of forces became necessary.
It was the more important because the cherished French scheme for an
attack on the heart of the British empire began to take shape. While
Spain occupied one part of the British fleet to the south, and Holland
another in the north, a French expedition, which was to have been aided
by a Dutch expedition from the Texel, was prepared at Brest. The Dutch
were confined to harbour by the vigilant blockade of Admiral Duncan,
afterwards Lord Camperdown. But in December 1796 a French fleet
commanded by Admiral Morard de Galle, carrying 13,000 troops under
General Hoche, was allowed to sail from Brest for Ireland, by the slack
management of the blockade under Admiral Colpoys. Being ill-fitted,
ill-manned and exposed to constant bad weather the French ships were
scattered. Some reached their destination, Bantry Bay, only to be driven
out again by north-easterly gales. The expedition finally returned after
much suffering, and in fragments, to Brest. Yet the year 1797 was one of
extreme trial to Great Britain. The victory of Sir John Jervis over the
Spaniards near Cape Saint Vincent on the 14th of February (see SAINT
VINCENT, BATTLE OF) disposed of the Spanish fleet. In the autumn of the
year the Dutch, having put to sea, were defeated at Camperdown by
Admiral Duncan on the 11th of October. Admiral Duncan had the more
numerous force, sixteen ships to fifteen, and they were on the average
heavier. Attacking from windward he broke through the enemy's line and
concentrated on his rear and centre. Eight line of battleships and two
frigates were taken, but the good gunnery and steady resistance of the
Dutch made the victory costly. Between these two battles the British
fleet was for a time menaced in its very existence by a succession of
mutinies, the result of much neglect of the undoubted grievances of the
sailors. The victory of Camperdown, completing what the victory of Cape
Saint Vincent had begun, seemed to put Great Britain beyond fear of
invasion. But the government of the Republic was intent on renewing the
attempt. The successes of Napoleon at the head of the army of Italy had
reduced Austria to sign the peace of Campo Formio, on the 17th of
October 1797, and he was appointed commander of the new army of
invasion. It was still thought necessary to maintain the bulk of the
British fleet in European waters, within call in the ocean. The
Mediterranean was left free to the French, whose squadrons cruised in
the Levant, where the Republic had become possessed of the Ionian
Islands by the plunder of Venice. The absence of a British force in the
Mediterranean offered to the government of the French Republic an
alternative to an invasion of Great Britain or Ireland, which promised
to be less hazardous and equally effective. It was induced largely by
the persuasion of Napoleon himself, and the wish of the politicians who
were very willing to see him employed at a distance. The expedition to
Egypt under his command sailed on the 19th of May 1798, having for its
immediate purpose the occupation of the Nile valley, and for its
ultimate aim an attack on Great Britain "from behind" in India (see
NILE, BATTLE OF THE). The British fleet re-entered the Mediterranean to
pursue and baffle Napoleon. The destruction of the French squadron at
the anchorage of Aboukir on the 1st of August gave it the complete
command of the sea. A second invasion of Ireland on a smaller scale was
attempted and to some extent carried out, while the great attack by
Egypt was in progress. One French squadron of four frigates carrying
1150 soldiers under General Humbert succeeded in sailing from Rochefort
on the 6th of August. On the 22nd Humbert was landed at Killala Bay, but
after making a vigorous raid he was compelled to surrender at
Ballinamuck on the 8th of September. Eight days after his surrender,
another French squadron of one sail of the line and eight frigates
carrying 3000 troops, sailed from Brest under Commodore Bompart to
support Humbert. It was watched and pursued by frigates, and on the 12th
of October was overtaken and destroyed by a superior British force
commanded by Sir John Borlase Warren, near Tory Island.
From the close of 1798 till the _coup d'etat_ of the 18th Brumaire (9th
November) 1799, which established Napoleon as First Consul and master of
France, the French navy had only one object--to reinforce and relieve
the army cut off in Egypt by the battle of the Nile. The relief of the
French garrison in Malta was a subordinate part of the main purpose. But
the supremacy of the British navy was by this time so firmly founded
that neither Egypt nor Malta could be reached except by small ships
which ran the blockade. On the 25th of April, Admiral Bruix did indeed
leave Brest, after baffling the blockading fleet of Lord Bridport, which
was sent on a wild-goose chase to the south of Ireland by means of a
despatch sent out to be captured and to deceive. Admiral Bruix succeeded
in reaching Toulon, and his presence in the Mediterranean caused some
disturbance. But, though his twenty-five sail of the line formed the
best-manned fleet which the French had sent to sea during the war, and
though he escaped being brought to battle, he did not venture to steer
for the eastern Mediterranean. On the 13th of August he was back at
Brest, bringing with him a Spanish squadron carried off as a hostage for
the fidelity of the government at Madrid to its disastrous alliance with
France. On the day on which Bruix re-entered Brest, the 13th of August
1799, a combined Russian and British expedition sailed from the Downs to
attack the French army of occupation in the Batavian Republic. The
military operations were unsuccessful, and terminated in the withdrawal
of the allies. But the naval part was well executed. Vice-admiral
Mitchell forced the entrance to the Texel, and on the 30th of August
received the surrender of the remainder of the Dutch fleet--thirteen
vessels in the Nieuwe Diep--the sailors having refused to fight for the
republic. In spite of the failure on land, the expedition did much to
confirm the naval supremacy of Great Britain by the entire suppression
of the most seamanlike of the forces opposed to it.
Authorities.--Chevalier, _Histoire de la marine francaise sous la
premiere Republique_ (Paris, 1886); James's _Naval History_ (London,
1837); Captain Mahan, _Influence of Sea Power upon the French
Revolution and the Empire_ (London, 1892). The French schemes of
invasion are exhaustively dealt with in Captain E. Desbriere's
_Projets et tentatives de debarquements aux Iles Britanniques_ (Paris,
1900, &c.). (D. H.)