England is not only the first naval power in the world, but she
must _continue_ the first; because a fleet is _necessary_ to her
existence, which _it is not_ to that of any other European throne.
This is the dictate of nature, and is therefore a _law_. Other powers
may possess a fleet as an appendage to their national strength, as
suitable to their rank, or as adding to their means of hostilities.
Still, to them, a fleet is not a _necessity_. Russia, France, and
Spain have no more _necessity_ for a fleet, than Prussia, Austria,
and Switzerland! But England, without a fleet, would be exposed to
invasion on every point of a coast extending two thousand miles. Her
wealth is all loose upon the ocean; her chief territories are all
beyond the ocean: thus, _without_ a fleet, she would be almost wholly
without the means of external defence, of retaliation for injuries,
and of the commerce which is the most essential basis of her revenue.
The result is, that, while the Continental kingdoms might be powerful
states, yet not possess a ship on the seas, England, stript of her
naval superiority, would instantly sink from her high position,
would lose the larger portion of her power, would be separated from
her most important colonies, would see her revenues decay,--and,
if assailed by a foreign enemy, would see her resources suddenly
stopped, and must prepare for the last extremities of struggle, hand
to hand.
In this view, we do not confine the question to the national fondness
for the sea--to that mixture of boldness and skill which predominates
in the character of our sailors, and forms the especial qualification
of a sea-faring people,--nor to national superiority of any kind;
but to the simple fact, that the possession of predominant power on
the ocean _cannot_ be dispensed with by England, while it _can_ be
dispensed with by every other power of the globe.
There is also another reason for this supremacy; arising from the
fact, that England may throw her whole national force into a navy;
while other powers, however ambitious of naval eminence, _must_ at
least divide their force between the land and sea services. France,
with its immense frontier, must keep up an immense army during war.
Russia, with a frontier from the Niemen to the North Pole, must keep
up an immense army at all times. The maintenance of those armies
is essential to the national existence, while the maintenance of a
fleet is only gratifying to the national ambition. The consequence
is as clear as a matter of arithmetic. France and Russia, attacking
England separately, _must_ be ultimately beaten. America, even if she
were a more formidable opponent than either, will also be beaten, and
for the same reason. A fleet is not _essential_ to her; the undivided
force of the States will never be applied to her navy. The national
strength will be expanded over inland conquest; the sea-coast towns
will be rapidly reduced to insignificance by the superiority of the
great inland settlements; and the time will come, when the cities of
New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, will have no more weight with
the inland powers of Louisiana and the prairies, than Brighton or
Broadstairs have with the power of London. They will be watering
places, or, at best, warehousing places, and will be no more able to
keep up a navy, than the Isle of Thanet would be able to keep up the
Channel fleet. All this, however, tends only to show, that a fleet is
the supreme instrument of British dominion; and that its strength,
its skill, and its discipline, should employ the utmost activity,
liberality, and vigilance of every Cabinet which desires to do its
duty to the empire.
We now proceed to give some account of the interesting and
intelligent work of which Captain Plunket has supplied the
translation, accompanied with valuable explanatory notes of his own.
Some time since, there appeared in the well-known Parisian _Revue des
deux Mondes_, articles on the English and French naval systems, by a
French officer, Captain de la Gravière. The object of those papers
was less to give a history of the naval war, than to ascertain the
causes of that almost unbroken series of triumphs which made the
fame of the British fleet; and, on the other hand, which ultimately
extinguished the fleet of a nation so brave, ambitious, and
enterprising as the French.
M. de la Gravière, to his credit, had not followed the usual
"perfide Albion" style of the French journalists, nor exhibited
that jesuitical evasion of fact, and the perpetual peevishness
against England, which marks and disgraces French history. He never
sinks English success into failure, or inflates French failure
into victory. He writes with the calmness of a man in search of
the truth; judges with every visible _intention_ of impartiality;
examines the private documents of the transactions; and pronounces a
judgment which, though obviously and essentially _French_, is perhaps
as honest an effort in pursuit of the reality of things, as is
compatible with the nature of our clever and lively libellers on the
other side of the Channel.
Those volumes begin by some striking remarks of Napoleon at St
Helena. This extraordinary man never spoke of his defeat at Acre in
1799 but with bitter regret. He declared that it was his intention,
had he taken that fortress, to have marched to Constantinople at the
head of the tribes of Mount Lebanon, or to have followed the steps
of Alexander to the Indus. His repulse from Acre, he always said,
"marred his destiny."
All this verbiage of the great Captain, however, has been
sufficiently exposed by the actual event. He could no more have
marched to Constantinople than he could have marched to the Indus,
nor have marched to the Indus more than he could have marched to
the Pole star. With but 40,000 men, (the whole number which landed
in Egypt,) it would have been utterly impossible for him to have
carried a force through Syria and Asia Minor equal to the attack on
Constantinople--even if the Russians were not _at hand_. The march to
the Indus would have lain through the deserts of Arabia and Persia,
and have stripped him down to a corporal's guard before he had got
half-way. A French foot would never have been dipt in that far-famed
river, which is now a British Canal. The tribes of Lebanon would no
more have recruited his ranks, than they would have given him their
sequins. His destiny lay in another direction. No man knew this
better; and doubtless he rejoiced, when he found himself on board the
frigate carrying him westward, and relieving him of the "glory" of
being slaughtered by the Arabs, and embalmed by the sands.
But the inveterate hostility of Napoleon seemed to rage against
England, with the ravening of a mad dog, who dies biting the club
which has laid him on the ground. All his anti-English policy was a
succession of gross and ruinous blunders. To assail England without
a fleet was naturally impossible. To form a fleet for the purpose of
assailing her was, therefore, always a new temptation. If, after the
First of June, which destroyed the Channel fleet of France, and the
burning of the arsenals of Toulon, which destroyed her Mediterranean
fleet, France had never built another vessel beyond the tonnage of a
coaster, she would have shown her good sense. But Napoleon, when in
the plenitude of power, went on building huge vessels, only to see
them sent into English ports.
The waste of time, waste of thought, and waste of money, on those
projects of English invasion, were among the most capital faults of
his extravagant career. He might have made France the great corn
country, or the great garden of Europe, with half the sums which he
threw away only to be beaten. His fifty ships of the line which were
to sweep the Channel, in the absence of our fleet--his one hundred
and twenty thousand men on the shore of Boulogne--all only enhanced
the naval glory of the great commander; who, after pursuing the
French flying squadron of eighteen great ships, with ten, to the West
Indies, finished in one day the naval war, extinguished the existence
of the French and Spanish navies, and crowned his own gallant career.
The impolicy of these attempts was equally exhibited in another
form--they stimulated at once the power and the spirit of England.
The monotony of a war of defence would have disgusted the gallantry
of the nation, but the victories of the British navy continually
cheered the people under the burdens of the war. What minister could
have dared to propose a "compromising" peace, on the day after the
battle of the Nile? What minister would have dared to propose any
peace on the day after Trafalgar? The war, too, broke down more than
the French fleet--it buried the Opposition.
The French author divides his history into three periods--the first,
that of the battles of Howe and Hood, of Hotham and Bridport; the
second, that of Jervis; the third, (from 1798 to 1805) belonging
to Nelson, without an equal, without even a competitor--the most
glorious series of successes ever won on the ocean.
The true definition of these volumes is, in fact, a "Life of
Nelson"--a hurried, but clear and animated memoir, on a subject
which can never be too often repeated to the ear or the heart of
Englishmen; but a subject which is here coloured with the inevitable,
and yet not unamusing, prejudices of a Frenchman and an enemy.
He admits Nelson to have been a naval hero, while he labours to
show that his chief successes arose from a lofty disregard of
circumstances, a native contempt of rule, a transcendental rashness,
which, continually exposing him to the chance of utter ruin,
strangely always issued in victory. But those views are wholly
imaginary. It is the foreign habit, to be perpetually in pursuit of
_astonishment_; to think nothing meritorious which is not _magical_;
and to carry into the greatest and gravest operations of public life
the passion for the harlequinades of the theatre. The supremacy
of Nelson arose from the more substantial grounds, of a thorough
knowledge of his profession, of a strict deference for discipline,
and a sort of instinctive and unhesitating determination to do the
work set before him, with all the powers of his mind and frame.
He, of course, possessed personal intrepidity in the most complete
degree; but this amounted simply to the exposure of his life on all
occasions where duty was to be done. Nelson was no fire-eater--no
man of quarrel. We are not aware that he ever fought a duel. But he
knew what was due to himself as much as any man--a fact shown by his
answer to the Governor of Jamaica, who, having, on some remonstrances
to him, rather haughtily observed, "that old generals were not
accustomed to take advice from young captains." Nelson retorted
by letter--"That he was of the same age as the prime minister of
England, (Pitt), and that he thought himself as capable of commanding
one of his Majesty's ships, as the premier was of governing the
state."
But Nelson could not have gained his glories alone: he made his
captains like himself; and every sailor in his fleet was ready to
die along with him. His art in this was the simple one of justice.
He acknowledged every man's merit. The officer who distinguished
himself, was sure of receiving due honour from Nelson; promotion
was regulated by service, and every brave man was confident in the
recommendation of the admiral. He was also a kind man by nature: he
hated punishment on board; he spoke good-naturedly to the sailors;
he even gave way to any peculiarity which was not injurious to
discipline. Some of his crew had become Methodists, and, offended
with the general coarse conversation of the ship, desired to have
their mess separate. Nelson immediately gave the required permission.
The hearts of men naturally follow such a leader.
He had also the powerful sagacity which insures confidence; and no
man doubted that, when Nelson commanded, he was leading to victory.
He was, besides, a master of his profession--all his battles were the
finest lessons of the tactician. He was never outmanoeuvred; he
was never surprised; he was never even thrown into any difficulty,
for which he had not a ready resource. The "Nelson touch" became
proverbial; and the variety, completeness, and brilliancy of his
plans for action sometimes excited the most extraordinary emotion,
even to tears, among his officers. Something of this kind is said to
have occurred on the final summoning of his captains into the cabin
of the Victory, and laying before them his plan for the battle of
Trafalgar.
Nelson had also the power, perhaps the most characteristic of
genius, of throwing his thought into those shapes of vividness which
penetrate at once to the understanding. When, on steering down for
the French line at Aboukir, some one observed to him that the enemy
were anchored too near the shore, for the British to pass within
them;--"Where a French ship can swing, a British ship can anchor,"
was his decisive reply; and he instantly rushed in, and placed
the French line between two fires. Another of those noble maxims
was--"The captain cannot be wrong, who lays his ship alongside the
enemy." It contains the whole theory of British battle. His "I can
see no signal," when he was told that Admiral Parker had made the
signal for retiring at Copenhagen, would have been immortalised,
with the act which accompanied it, among the most brilliant
"sayings and doings" of ancient Greece. But his last and well-known
signal at Trafalgar surpassed all the rest, as much as the triumph
surpassed these triumphs. The addresses of Napoleon to his armies
were unquestionably fine performances. They spoke to the Frenchman
by his feelings, his recollections, his personal pride, and his
national renown. But, with the animation of the trumpet, they had
its sternness and harshness. They were invocations to the French
idol, that was to be worshipped only with perpetual blood. But the
signal at Trafalgar recalled the Englishman only to the feelings of
home. The voice of war never spoke a language more capable of being
combined with all the purposes of peace. "England expects every man
to do his duty" was fitted to bring before the Englishman the memory
of his country, his home, his wife and children, all who might feel
concerned in his conduct and character in the proud transactions of
that great day. We think it the noblest appeal to national feeling
ever made by a warrior to warriors.
Yet, what was the especial secret of that supreme rank which Nelson
held over all the naval leaders of his time? Others may have been as
intelligent, and indefatigable, and, it is to be hoped, all were as
brave. The secret was--that Nelson was never satisfied with what he
had done, and that he never _half did_ anything. There was no "drawn
battle," among _his_ recollections. This is the more remarkable,
as, for fifty years before, nearly all our naval battles had been
drawn battles. Rodney's defeat of de Grasse was the great exception.
British admirals, who were afraid of nothing else, were afraid of
losing their masts! and were content with knocking down those of the
enemy. Great fleets met each other, passed in parallel lines, fired
their broadsides as they passed, one to the north and the other to
the south. They might as well have been firing salutes. The wind soon
carried them out of sight of each other; the admirals sat down in
their cabins to write their respective histories of "the battle,"
which would have been only too much honoured by being called a
_brush_; and the fleets went by mutual consent into harbour. In this
sort of _War_! the French were as clever as we; and the Suffreins, di
Guichens, d'Estaings, and Villeneuves, made their fame on this system
of cannonading a mile off, and getting out of the way as quickly as
possible.
Rodney first spoiled the etiquette of those affairs, by driving
straight forward through the enemy's line, changing the easy parallel
for the fighting perpendicular, and compelling at least one-half
of the Frenchmen to come to close quarters. This was the method of
Jervis, when his captain told him, that the fleet on which he was
bearing down in the morning twilight were at least twenty. "If they
were fifty," said the brave sailor, "I'll _drive through them_." He
drove through them accordingly, and beat the Spaniards, with half
their numbers.
Wellington observed, in the Peninsula, that the generals commanding
under him were afraid of nothing but responsibility. This fear
arose from the ignorant insolence, with which the loungers of the
legislature were in the habit of fighting campaigns over their
coffee-cups. It is to be hoped that the fashion has since changed.
But Wellington demurred to the authority, and Nelson seemed not to
have thought of its existence. They both supplied the sufficient
answer to the _home_ campaigners, by beating the enemy wherever they
met him.
We find a striking evidence of the hatred of "doing well enough" in
one of Nelson's letters to his wife, on Hotham's battle with the
French, under Martin, off Genoa, in 1795. Hotham was one of the old
school, and though, in two awkward engagements, he had taken two of
the French line, while a third had been burned, Nelson was indignant
that the whole French fleet had not been captured. He had urged the
admiral to leave the disabled ships in charge of the frigates, and
chase the French.
"But," says the letter, "he, much cooler than myself, said, 'we must
be contented--_we had done very well_.'" Nelson's evidently disgusted
remark on this species of contentment is--"Had we taken ten sail, and
suffered the eleventh to escape, when we could have got at her, I
could _never_ have called it _well done_." In another part he says,
"I wish to be an admiral, and in command of the British fleet. I
should very soon do much, or be ruined. My disposition cannot bear
tame and slow measures. _Sure I am_, that, had I commanded our fleet
on the 14th, the whole French fleet would have graced our triumph,
or I should have been in a confounded scrape." This was the language
which, like the impulse of a powerful instinct, predicted the days of
Aboukir, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar.
But the drag-chain on the progress of British intrepidity was at
length to be taken of. Hotham was succeeded by Jervis. This eminent
officer instantly reformed the whole condition of the Mediterranean
fleet. He had evidently adopted the same conception of naval merit,
which Nelson had so long kept before his eye. In selecting him for
the command of the squadron sent to the Nile, Jervis wrote to the
admiralty: "Nelson is an officer, who, whatever you bid him do, is
sure _to do more_." And, in this spirit, Nelson was not content with
running to Alexandria, and returning to say, that he found no one
there; his resolve was, to find the French wherever they were, and
fight them wherever they were found.
One word still for gallant old Jervis, the man who first confirmed
the discipline of the navy. His firmness was the secret. When the
Irish conspirators on board the Channel fleet had spread the spirit
of mutiny in 1797, Jervis was warned from the admiralty that his
fleet was in danger. It was suggested to him by some of his officers,
to stop the letters from home: "No," said he, "the precaution is
useless: I will answer for it that the commander-in-chief of _this_
fleet will know how to maintain his authority, if it is threatened."
But he left nothing to chance: he prohibited communication between
the ships--he sent for the captains of marines, and ordered that
their men should mess and sleep separately from the sailors; that
the sailors should not be suffered to converse in Irish, and that the
officers should be on the alert. He hanged the detected mutineers
without delay. Forgiveness was out of the question. To Captain
Pellew, who had interceded in favour of a mutineer, whose conduct
had previously been irreproachable, he replied, "We have, we think,
punished only the worthless. It is time, that our men should learn,
that no past conduct can redeem an act of treason."
Nothing could be more rational, or even more necessary, than this
determination; for treason is the most comprehensive of all crimes.
The mere robber, or murderer, commits his single act of guilt--but
the guilt of the traitor may cost the lives of thousands. The traitor
is never to be regarded as a solitary criminal, and this maxim was
never more necessary than at this moment. If laws are to be turned
into sentimentality, and conspiracy is to be dealt with like the
tricks of children, there must be an end of all security to _honest
men_. If the villains who have been lately inflaming the Irish mind
into madness, had been hanged by the sentence of the drum-head,
within half an hour after their seizure, there would have been no
necessity, at this moment, for keeping up a garrison of 45,000 men
in Ireland. Martial law is the _only_ law fit for the ruffians of
the torch and pike, and the gibbet is the only moral which they will
ever comprehend. To suppose that the Irish conspirators had even
entertained the expectation of forming an established government, or
of being suffered by England to raise a republic--or that any man out
of Bedlam could have dreamt of the possibility of waging a successful
war against England, while her fleets might starve Ireland in a week,
and nothing but English alms even now enables her to live--would be
absolute folly. The true object of Irish conspiracy was, and is,
and will always be, robbery and revenge; a short burst of rapine
and blood, followed by again running away, again begging pardon,
again living on alms, and again laughing at the weak indulgence and
insulted clemency of England.
Jervis, instead of listening to the cant of men of blood whining
about their wives and children, hanged them; and, by thus ridding his
fleet of a nest of villains, saved it from destruction, and perhaps,
with it, saved not merely the lives of thousands of brave men, whom
their impunity might have debauched into conspiracy, but saved the
honour of our naval name, and restored the enfeebled hopes of his
country.
We here quote with pleasure from the Frenchman:--"Jervis, in the
face of those symptoms, which threatened the British navy with
disaffection, sternly devoted himself to the establishment of
_implicit obedience_. The efficient organisation of the fleet was
the labour of his life, and occupied his latest thoughts. Never rash
himself, he nevertheless opened the way for the most daring deeds.
Nelson rushed into the arena, and, with the rapidity of lightning,
showed the latent results of the change. The governing principle
witnessed, rather than decreed the change. Its source, in fact,
was _not_ in the Admiralty, but in those floating camps, wherein
the triumphs which astonish us are gradually elaborated. Official
power is but the inert _crucible_ which transmutes the subsidies
of Parliament into ships. But a quickening principle is wanting to
those immense fleets, and the admirals supply it. Jervis and Nelson
rapidly transmitted the creative spark, and bequeathed a certain sort
of sovereignty under the distrustful eye of the English Admiralty--a
kind of dynasty arose--'the mayors of the palace took the sceptre
from the do-nothing kings.'"
All this is comparatively just. But the Frenchman peeps out under
the panegyrist, after all. Can it be conceived that any other
human being, at the end of nearly half a century, would quote,
with the slightest degree of approval, the report of Decrès, the
French minister of the marine to Napoleon, in 1805, after all
Nelson's victories, and just preceding the most illustrious of them
all--Trafalgar?
"The boasting of Nelson," writes Decrès, "equals his silliness,
(_ineptie_)--I use the proper word. But he has one eminent
quality--namely, that of aiming among his captains _only_ at a
character for bravery and good fortune. This makes him _accessible
to counsel_, and consequently, in difficult circumstances, if he
commands nominally, _others direct really_."