development of a nation's sea power exerted by its government and
institutions, it will be necessary to avoid a tendency to
over-philosophizing, to confine attention to obvious and immediate
causes and their plain results, without prying too far beneath the
surface for remote and ultimate influences.
Nevertheless, it must be noted that particular forms of government
with their accompanying institutions, and the character of rulers at
one time or another, have exercised a very marked influence upon the
development of sea power. The various traits of a country and its
people which have so far been considered constitute the natural
characteristics with which a nation, like a man, begins its career;
the conduct of the government in turn corresponds to the exercise of
the intelligent will-power, which, according as it is wise, energetic
and persevering, or the reverse, causes success or failure in a man's
life or a nation's history.
It would seem probable that a government in full accord with the
natural bias of its people would most successfully advance its growth
in every respect; and, in the matter of sea power, the most brilliant
successes have followed where there has been intelligent direction by
a government fully imbued with the spirit of the people and conscious
of its true general bent. Such a government is most certainly secured
when the will of the people, or of their best natural exponents, has
some large share in making it; but such free governments have
sometimes fallen short, while on the other hand despotic power,
wielded with judgment and consistency, has created at times a great
sea commerce and a brilliant navy with greater directness than can be
reached by the slower processes of a free people. The difficulty in
the latter case is to insure perseverance after the death of a
particular despot.
England having undoubtedly reached the greatest height of sea power of
any modern nation, the action of her government first claims
attention. In general direction this action has been consistent,
though often far from praiseworthy. It has aimed steadily at the
control of the sea. One of its most arrogant expressions dates back as
far as the reign of James I., when she had scarce any possessions
outside her own islands; before Virginia or Massachusetts was settled.
Here is Richelieu's account of it:--
"The Duke of Sully, minister of Henry IV. [one of the most
chivalrous princes that ever lived], having embarked at Calais
in a French ship wearing the French flag at the main, was no
sooner in the Channel than, meeting an English despatch-boat
which was there to receive him, the commander of the latter
ordered the French ship to lower her flag. The Duke, considering
that his quality freed him from such an affront, boldly refused;
but this refusal was followed by three cannon-shot, which,
piercing his ship, pierced the heart likewise of all good
Frenchmen. Might forced him to yield what right forbade, and for
all the complaints he made he could get no better reply from the
English captain than this: 'That just as his duty obliged him to
honor the ambassador's rank, it also obliged him to exact the
honor due to the flag of his master as sovereign of the sea.' If
the words of King James himself were more polite, they
nevertheless had no other effect than to compel the Duke to take
counsel of his prudence, feigning to be satisfied, while his
wound was all the time smarting and incurable. Henry the Great
had to practise moderation on this occasion; but with the
resolve another time to sustain the rights of his crown by the
force that, with the aid of time, he should be able to put upon
the sea."
This act of unpardonable insolence, according to modern ideas, was not
so much out of accord with the spirit of nations in that day. It is
chiefly noteworthy as the most striking, as well as one of the
earliest indications of the purpose of England to assert herself at
all risks upon the sea; and the insult was offered under one of her
most timid kings to an ambassador immediately representing the
bravest and ablest of French sovereigns. This empty honor of the flag,
a claim insignificant except as the outward manifestation of the
purpose of a government, was as rigidly exacted under Cromwell as
under the kings. It was one of the conditions of peace yielded by the
Dutch after their disastrous war of 1654. Cromwell, a despot in
everything but name, was keenly alive to all that concerned England's
honor and strength, and did not stop at barren salutes to promote
them. Hardly yet possessed of power, the English navy sprang rapidly
into a new life and vigor under his stern rule. England's rights, or
reparation for her wrongs, were demanded by her fleets throughout the
world,--in the Baltic, in the Mediterranean, against the Barbary
States, in the West Indies; and under him the conquest of Jamaica
began that extension of her empire, by force of arms, which has gone
on to our own days. Nor were equally strong peaceful measures for the
growth of English trade and shipping forgotten. Cromwell's celebrated
Navigation Act declared that all imports into England or her colonies
must be conveyed exclusively in vessels belonging to England herself,
or to the country in which the products carried were grown or
manufactured. This decree, aimed specially at the Dutch, the common
carriers of Europe, was resented throughout the commercial world; but
the benefit to England, in those days of national strife and
animosity, was so apparent that it lasted long under the monarchy. A
century and a quarter later we find Nelson, before his famous career
had begun, showing his zeal for the welfare of England's shipping by
enforcing this same act in the West Indies against American
merchant-ships. When Cromwell was dead, and Charles II. sat on the
throne of his father, this king, false to the English people, was yet
true to England's greatness and to the traditional policy of her
government on the sea. In his treacherous intrigues with Louis XIV.,
by which he aimed to make himself independent of Parliament and
people, he wrote to Louis: "There are two impediments to a perfect
union. The first is the great care France is now taking to create a
commerce and to be an imposing maritime power. This is so great a
cause of suspicion with us, who can possess importance only by our
commerce and our naval force, that every step which France takes in
this direction will perpetuate the jealousy between the two nations."
In the midst of the negotiations which preceded the detestable attack
of the two kings upon the Dutch republic, a warm dispute arose as to
who should command the united fleets of France and England. Charles
was inflexible on this point. "It is the custom of the English," said
he, "to command at sea;" and he told the French ambassador plainly
that, were he to yield, his subjects would not obey him. In the
projected partition of the United Provinces he reserved for England
the maritime plunder in positions that controlled the mouths of the
rivers Scheldt and Meuse. The navy under Charles preserved for some
time the spirit and discipline impressed on it by Cromwell's iron
rule; though later it shared in the general decay of _morale_ which
marked this evil reign. Monk, having by a great strategic blunder sent
off a fourth of his fleet, found himself in 1666 in presence of a
greatly superior Dutch force. Disregarding the odds, he attacked
without hesitation, and for three days maintained the fight with
honor, though with loss. Such conduct is not war; but in the single
eye that looked to England's naval prestige and dictated his action,
common as it was to England's people as well as to her government, has
lain the secret of final success following many blunders through the
centuries. Charles's successor, James II., was himself a seaman, and
had commanded in two great sea-fights. When William III. came to the
throne, the governments of England and Holland were under one hand,
and continued united in one purpose against Louis XIV. until the Peace
of Utrecht in 1713; that is, for a quarter of a century. The English
government more and more steadily, and with conscious purpose, pushed
on the extension of her sea dominion and fostered the growth of her
sea power. While as an open enemy she struck at France upon the sea,
so as an artful friend, many at least believed, she sapped the power
of Holland afloat. The treaty between the two countries provided that
of the sea forces Holland should furnish three eighths, England five
eighths, or nearly double. Such a provision, coupled with a further
one which made Holland keep up an army of 102,000 against England's
40,000, virtually threw the land war on one and the sea war on the
other. The tendency, whether designed or not, is evident; and at the
peace, while Holland received compensation by land, England obtained,
besides commercial privileges in France, Spain, and the Spanish West
Indies, the important maritime concessions of Gibraltar and Port Mahon
in the Mediterranean; of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Hudson's Bay
in North America. The naval power of France and Spain had disappeared;
that of Holland thenceforth steadily declined. Posted thus in America,
the West Indies, and the Mediterranean, the English government
thenceforth moved firmly forward on the path which made of the English
kingdom the British Empire. For the twenty-five years following the
Peace of Utrecht, peace was the chief aim of the ministers who
directed the policy of the two great seaboard nations, France and
England; but amid all the fluctuations of continental politics in a
most unsettled period, abounding in petty wars and shifty treaties,
the eye of England was steadily fixed on the maintenance of her sea
power. In the Baltic, her fleets checked the attempts of Peter the
Great upon Sweden, and so maintained a balance of power in that sea,
from which she drew not only a great trade but the chief part of her
naval stores, and which the Czar aimed to make a Russian lake. Denmark
endeavored to establish an East India company aided by foreign
capital; England and Holland not only forbade their subjects to join
it, but threatened Denmark, and thus stopped an enterprise they
thought adverse to their sea interests. In the Netherlands, which by
the Utrecht Treaty had passed to Austria, a similar East India
company, having Ostend for its port, was formed, with the emperor's
sanction. This step, meant to restore to the Low Countries the trade
lost to them through their natural outlet of the Scheldt, was opposed
by the sea powers England and Holland; and their greediness for the
monopoly of trade, helped in this instance by France, stifled this
company also after a few years of struggling life. In the
Mediterranean, the Utrecht settlement was disturbed by the emperor of
Austria, England's natural ally in the then existing state of European
politics. Backed by England, he, having already Naples, claimed also
Sicily in exchange for Sardinia. Spain resisted; and her navy, just
beginning to revive under a vigorous minister, Alberoni, was crushed
and annihilated by the English fleet off Cape Passaro in 1718; while
the following year a French army, at the bidding of England, crossed
the Pyrenees and completed the work by destroying the Spanish
dock-yards. Thus England, in addition to Gibraltar and Mahon in her
own hands, saw Naples and Sicily in those of a friend, while an enemy
was struck down. In Spanish America, the limited privileges to English
trade, wrung from the necessities of Spain, were abused by an
extensive and scarcely disguised smuggling system; and when the
exasperated Spanish government gave way to excesses in the mode of
suppression, both the minister who counselled peace and the opposition
which urged war defended their opinions by alleging the effects of
either upon England's sea power and honor. While England's policy thus
steadily aimed at widening and strengthening the bases of her sway
upon the ocean, the other governments of Europe seemed blind to the
dangers to be feared from her sea growth. The miseries resulting from
the overweening power of Spain in days long gone by seemed to be
forgotten; forgotten also the more recent lesson of the bloody and
costly wars provoked by the ambition and exaggerated power of Louis
XIV. Under the eyes of the statesmen of Europe there was steadily and
visibly being built up a third overwhelming power, destined to be used
as selfishly, as aggressively, though not as cruelly, and much more
successfully than any that had preceded it. This was the power of the
sea, whose workings, because more silent than the clash of arms, are
less often noted, though lying clearly enough on the surface. It can
scarcely be denied that England's uncontrolled dominion of the seas,
during almost the whole period chosen for our subject, was by long
odds the chief among the military factors that determined the final
issue.[8] So far, however, was this influence from being foreseen
after Utrecht, that France for twelve years, moved by personal
exigencies of her rulers, sided with England against Spain; and when
Fleuri came into power in 1726, though this policy was reversed, the
navy of France received no attention, and the only blow at England was
the establishment of a Bourbon prince, a natural enemy to her, upon
the throne of the two Sicilies in 1736. When war broke out with Spain
in 1739, the navy of England was in numbers more than equal to the
combined navies of Spain and France; and during the quarter of a
century of nearly uninterrupted war that followed, this numerical
disproportion increased. In these wars England, at first
instinctively, afterward with conscious purpose under a government
that recognized her opportunity and the possibilities of her great sea
power, rapidly built up that mighty colonial empire whose foundations
were already securely laid in the characteristics of her colonists and
the strength of her fleets. In strictly European affairs her wealth,
the outcome of her sea power, made her play a conspicuous part during
the same period. The system of subsidies, which began half a century
before in the wars of Marlborough and received its most extensive
development half a century later in the Napoleonic wars, maintained
the efforts of her allies, which would have been crippled, if not
paralyzed, without them. Who can deny that the government which with
one hand strengthened its fainting allies on the continent with the
life-blood of money, and with the other drove its own enemies off the
sea and out of their chief possessions, Canada, Martinique,
Guadeloupe, Havana, Manila, gave to its country the foremost rôle in
European politics; and who can fail to see that the power which dwelt
in that government, with a land narrow in extent and poor in
resources, sprang directly from the sea? The policy in which the
English government carried on the war is shown by a speech of Pitt,
the master-spirit during its course, though he lost office before
bringing it to an end. Condemning the Peace of 1763, made by his
political opponent, he said: "France is chiefly, if not exclusively,
formidable to us as a maritime and commercial power. What we gain in
this respect is valuable to us, above all, through the injury to her
which results from it. You have left to France the possibility of
reviving her navy." Yet England's gains were enormous; her rule in
India was assured, and all North America east of the Mississippi in
her hands. By this time the onward path of her government was clearly
marked out, had assumed the force of a tradition, and was consistently
followed. The war of the American Revolution was, it is true, a great
mistake, looked at from the point of view of sea power; but the
government was led into it insensibly by a series of natural blunders.
Putting aside political and constitutional considerations, and looking
at the question as purely military or naval, the case was this: The
American colonies were large and growing communities at a great
distance from England. So long as they remained attached to the
mother-country, as they then were enthusiastically, they formed a
solid base for her sea power in that part of the world; but their
extent and population were too great, when coupled with the distance
from England, to afford any hope of holding them by force, _if_ any
powerful nations were willing to help them. This "if," however,
involved a notorious probability; the humiliation of France and Spain
was so bitter and so recent that they were sure to seek revenge, and
it was well known that France in particular had been carefully and
rapidly building up her navy. Had the colonies been thirteen islands,
the sea power of England would quickly have settled the question; but
instead of such a physical barrier they were separated only by local
jealousies which a common danger sufficiently overcame. To enter
deliberately on such a contest, to try to hold by force so extensive a
territory, with a large hostile population, so far from home, was to
renew the Seven Years' War with France and Spain, and with the
Americans, against, instead of for, England. The Seven Years' War had
been so heavy a burden that a wise government would have known that
the added weight could not be borne, and have seen it was necessary to
conciliate the colonists. The government of the day was not wise, and
a large element of England's sea power was sacrificed; but by mistake,
not wilfully; through arrogance, not through weakness.
This steady keeping to a general line of policy was doubtless made
specially easy for successive English governments by the clear
indications of the country's conditions. Singleness of purpose was to
some extent imposed. The firm maintenance of her sea power, the
haughty determination to make it felt, the wise state of preparation
in which its military element was kept, were yet more due to that
feature of her political institutions which practically gave the
government, during the period in question, into the hands of a
class,--a landed aristocracy. Such a class, whatever its defects
otherwise, readily takes up and carries on a sound political
tradition, is naturally proud of its country's glory, and
comparatively insensible to the sufferings of the community by which
that glory is maintained. It readily lays on the pecuniary burden
necessary for preparation and for endurance of war. Being as a body
rich, it feels those burdens less. Not being commercial, the sources
of its own wealth are not so immediately endangered, and it does not
share that political timidity which characterizes those whose property
is exposed and business threatened,--the proverbial timidity of
capital. Yet in England this class was not insensible to anything that
touched her trade for good or ill. Both houses of Parliament vied in
careful watchfulness over its extension and protection, and to the
frequency of their inquiries a naval historian attributes the
increased efficiency of the executive power in its management of the
navy. Such a class also naturally imbibes and keeps up a spirit of
military honor, which is of the first importance in ages when military
institutions have not yet provided the sufficient substitute in what
is called _esprit-de-corps_. But although full of class feeling and
class prejudice, which made themselves felt in the navy as well as
elsewhere, their practical sense left open the way of promotion to its
highest honors to the more humbly born; and every age saw admirals who
had sprung from the lowest of the people. In this the temper of the
English upper class differed markedly from that of the French. As late
as 1789, at the outbreak of the Revolution, the French Navy List still
bore the name of an official whose duty was to verify the proofs of
noble birth on the part of those intending to enter the naval school.
Since 1815, and especially in our own day, the government of England
has passed very much more into the hands of the people at large.
Whether her sea power will suffer therefrom remains to be seen. Its
broad basis still remains in a great trade, large mechanical
industries, and an extensive colonial system. Whether a democratic
government will have the foresight, the keen sensitiveness to national
position and credit, the willingness to insure its prosperity by
adequate outpouring of money in times of peace, all which are
necessary for military preparation, is yet an open question. Popular
governments are not generally favorable to military expenditure,
however necessary, and there are signs that England tends to drop
behind.
It has already been seen that the Dutch Republic, even more than the
English nation, drew its prosperity and its very life from the sea.
The character and policy of its government were far less favorable to
a consistent support of sea power. Composed of seven provinces, with
the political name of the United Provinces, the actual distribution of
power may be roughly described to Americans as an exaggerated example
of States Rights. Each of the maritime provinces had its own fleet and
its own admiralty, with consequent jealousies. This disorganizing
tendency was partly counteracted by the great preponderance of the
Province of Holland, which alone contributed five sixths of the fleet
and fifty-eight per cent of the taxes, and consequently had a
proportionate share in directing the national policy. Although
intensely patriotic, and capable of making the last sacrifices for
freedom, the commercial spirit of the people penetrated the
government, which indeed might be called a commercial aristocracy, and
made it averse to war, and to the expenditures which are necessary in
preparing for war. As has before been said, it was not until danger
stared them in the face that the burgomasters were willing to pay for
their defences. While the republican government lasted, however, this
economy was practised least of all upon the fleet; and until the death
of John De Witt, in 1672, and the peace with England in 1674, the
Dutch navy was in point of numbers and equipment able to make a fair
show against the combined navies of England and France. Its efficiency
at this time undoubtedly saved the country from the destruction
planned by the two kings. With De Witt's death the republic passed
away, and was followed by the practically monarchical government of
William of Orange. The life-long policy of this prince, then only
eighteen, was resistance to Louis XIV. and to the extension of French
power. This resistance took shape upon the land rather than the
sea,--a tendency promoted by England's withdrawal from the war. As
early as 1676, Admiral De Ruyter found the force given him unequal to
cope with the French alone. With the eyes of the government fixed on
the land frontier, the navy rapidly declined. In 1688, when William of
Orange needed a fleet to convoy him to England, the burgomasters of
Amsterdam objected that the navy was incalculably decreased in
strength, as well as deprived of its ablest commanders. When king of
England, William still kept his position as stadtholder, and with it
his general European policy. He found in England the sea power he
needed, and used the resources of Holland for the land war. This Dutch
prince consented that in the allied fleets, in councils of war, the
Dutch admirals should sit below the junior English captain; and Dutch
interests at sea were sacrificed as readily as Dutch pride to the
demands of England. When William died, his policy was still followed
by the government which succeeded him. Its aims were wholly centred
upon the land, and at the Peace of Utrecht, which closed a series of
wars extending over forty years, Holland, having established no sea
claim, gained nothing in the way of sea resources, of colonial
extension, or of commerce.
Of the last of these wars an English historian says: "The economy of
the Dutch greatly hurt their reputation and their trade. Their
men-of-war in the Mediterranean were always victualled short, and
their convoys were so weak and ill-provided that for one ship that we
lost, they lost five, which begat a general notion that we were the
safer carriers, which certainly had a good effect. Hence it was that
our trade rather increased than diminished in this war."
From that time Holland ceased to have a great sea power, and rapidly
lost the leading position among the nations which that power had built
up. It is only just to say that no policy could have saved from
decline this small, though determined, nation, in face of the
persistent enmity of Louis XIV. The friendship of France, insuring
peace on her landward frontier, would have enabled her, at least for a
longer time, to dispute with England the dominion of the seas; and as
allies the navies of the two continental States might have checked the
growth of the enormous sea power which has just been considered. Sea
peace between England and Holland was only possible by the virtual
subjection of one or the other, for both aimed at the same object.
Between France and Holland it was otherwise; and the fall of Holland
proceeded, not necessarily from her inferior size and numbers, but
from faulty policy on the part of the two governments. It does not
concern us to decide which was the more to blame.
France, admirably situated for the possession of sea power, received a
definite policy for the guidance of her government from two great
rulers, Henry IV. and Richelieu. With certain well-defined projects of
extension eastward upon the land were combined a steady resistance to
the House of Austria, which then ruled in both Austria and Spain, and
an equal purpose of resistance to England upon the sea. To further
this latter end, as well as for other reasons, Holland was to be
courted as an ally. Commerce and fisheries as the basis of sea power
were to be encouraged, and a military navy was to be built up.
Richelieu left what he called his political will, in which he pointed
out the opportunities of France for achieving sea power, based upon
her position and resources; and French writers consider him the
virtual founder of the navy, not merely because he equipped ships, but
from the breadth of his views and his measures to insure sound
institutions and steady growth. After his death, Mazarin inherited his
views and general policy, but not his lofty and martial spirit, and
during his rule the newly formed navy disappeared. When Louis XIV.
took the government into his own hands, in 1661, there were but thirty
ships of war, of which only three had as many as sixty guns. Then
began a most astonishing manifestation of the work which can be done
by absolute government ably and systematically wielded. That part of
the administration which dealt with trade, manufactures, shipping, and
colonies, was given to a man of great practical genius, Colbert, who
had served with Richelieu and had drunk in fully his ideas and policy.
He pursued his aims in a spirit thoroughly French. Everything was to
be organized, the spring of everything was in the minister's cabinet.
"To organize producers and merchants as a powerful army, subjected to
an active and intelligent guidance, so as to secure an industrial
victory for France by order and unity of efforts, and to obtain the
best products by imposing on all workmen the processes recognized as
best by competent men.... To organize seamen and distant commerce in
large bodies like the manufactures and internal commerce, and to give
as a support to the commercial power of France a navy established on a
firm basis and of dimensions hitherto unknown,"--such, we are told,
were the aims of Colbert as regards two of the three links in the
chain of sea power. For the third, the colonies at the far end of the
line, the same governmental direction and organization were evidently
purposed; for the government began by buying back Canada,
Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the French West India Islands from the
parties who then owned them. Here, then, is seen pure, absolute,
uncontrolled power gathering up into its hands all the reins for the
guidance of a nation's course, and proposing so to direct it as to
make, among other things, a great sea power.
To enter into the details of Colbert's action is beyond our purpose.
It is enough to note the chief part played by the government in
building up the sea power of the State, and that this very great man
looked not to any one of the bases on which it rests to the exclusion
of the others, but embraced them all in his wise and provident
administration. Agriculture, which increases the products of the
earth, and manufactures, which multiply the products of man's
industry; internal trade routes and regulations, by which the exchange
of products from the interior to the exterior is made easier; shipping
and customs regulations tending to throw the carrying-trade into
French hands, and so to encourage the building of French shipping, by
which the home and colonial products should be carried back and forth;
colonial administration and development, by which a far-off market
might be continually growing up to be monopolized by the home trade;
treaties with foreign States favoring French trade, and imposts on
foreign ships and products tending to break down that of rival
nations,--all these means, embracing countless details, were employed
to build up for France (1) Production; (2) Shipping; (3) Colonies and
Markets,--in a word, sea power. The study of such a work is simpler
and easier when thus done by one man, sketched out by a kind of
logical process, than when slowly wrought by conflicting interests in
a more complex government. In the few years of Colbert's
administration is seen the whole theory of sea power put into practice
in the systematic, centralizing French way; while the illustration of
the same theory in English and Dutch history is spread over
generations. Such growth, however, was forced, and depended upon the
endurance of the absolute power which watched over it; and as Colbert
was not king, his control lasted only till he lost the king's favor.
It is, however, most interesting to note the results of his labors in
the proper field for governmental action--in the navy. It has been
said that in 1661, when he took office, there were but thirty armed
ships, of which three only had over sixty guns. In 1666 there were
seventy, of which fifty were ships of the line and twenty were
fire-ships; in 1671, from seventy the number had increased to one
hundred and ninety-six. In 1683 there were one hundred and seven ships
of from twenty-four to one hundred and twenty guns, twelve of which
carried over seventy-six guns, besides many smaller vessels. The order
and system introduced into the dock-yards made them vastly more
efficient than the English. An English captain, a prisoner in France
while the effect of Colbert's work still lasted in the hands of his
son, writes:--
"When I was first brought prisoner thither, I lay four months in
a hospital at Brest for care of my wounds. While there I was
astonished at the expedition used in manning and fitting out
their ships, which till then I thought could be done nowhere
sooner than in England, where we have ten times the shipping,
and consequently ten times the seamen, they have in France; but
there I saw twenty sail of ships, of about sixty guns each, got
ready in twenty days' time; they were brought in and the men
were discharged; and upon an order from Paris they were
careened, keeled up, rigged, victualled, manned, and out again
in the said time with the greatest ease imaginable. I likewise
saw a ship of one hundred guns that had all her guns taken out
in four or five hours' time; which I never saw done in England
in twenty-four hours, and this with the greatest ease and less
hazard than at home. This I saw under my hospital window."
A French naval historian cites certain performances which are simply
incredible, such as that the keel of a galley was laid at four
o'clock, and that at nine she left port, fully armed. These traditions
may be accepted as pointing, with the more serious statements of the
English officer, to a remarkable degree of system and order, and
abundant facilities for work.
Yet all this wonderful growth, forced by the action of the government,
withered away like Jonah's gourd when the government's favor was
withdrawn. Time was not allowed for its roots to strike down deep into
the life of the nation. Colbert's work was in the direct line of
Richelieu's policy, and for a time it seemed there would continue the
course of action which would make France great upon the sea as well as
predominant upon the land. For reasons which it is not yet necessary
to give, Louis came to have feelings of bitter enmity against Holland;
and as these feelings were shared by Charles II., the two kings
determined on the destruction of the United Provinces. This war, which
broke out in 1672, though more contrary to natural feeling on the part
of England, was less of a political mistake for her than for France,
and especially as regards sea power. France was helping to destroy a
probable, and certainly an indispensable, ally; England was assisting
in the ruin of her greatest rival on the sea, at this time, indeed,
still her commercial superior. France, staggering under debt and utter
confusion in her finances when Louis mounted the throne, was just
seeing her way clear in 1672, under Colbert's reforms and their happy
results. The war, lasting six years, undid the greater part of his
work. The agricultural classes, manufactures, commerce, and the
colonies, all were smitten by it; the establishments of Colbert
languished, and the order he had established in the finances was
overthrown. Thus the action of Louis--and he alone was the directing
government of France--struck at the roots of her sea power, and
alienated her best sea ally. The territory and the military power of
France were increased, but the springs of commerce and of a peaceful
shipping had been exhausted in the process; and although the military
navy was for some years kept up with splendor and efficiency, it soon
began to dwindle, and by the end of the reign had practically
disappeared. The same false policy, as regards the sea, marked the
rest of this reign of fifty-four years. Louis steadily turned his back
upon the sea interests of France, except the fighting-ships, and
either could not or would not see that the latter were of little use
and uncertain life, if the peaceful shipping and the industries, by
which they were supported, perished. His policy, aiming at supreme
power in Europe by military strength and territorial extension, forced
England and Holland into an alliance, which, as has before been said,
directly drove France off the sea, and indirectly swamped Holland's
power thereon. Colbert's navy perished, and for the last ten years of
Louis' life no great French fleet put to sea, though there was
constant war. The simplicity of form in an absolute monarchy thus
brought out strongly how great the influence of government can be upon
both the growth and the decay of sea power.
The latter part of Louis' life thus witnessed that power failing by
the weakening of its foundations, of commerce, and of the wealth that
commerce brings. The government that followed, likewise absolute, of
set purpose and at the demand of England, gave up all pretence of
maintaining an effective navy. The reason for this was that the new
king was a minor; and the regent, being bitterly at enmity with the
king of Spain, to injure him and preserve his own power, entered into
alliance with England. He aided her to establish Austria, the
hereditary enemy of France, in Naples and Sicily to the detriment of
Spain, and in union with her destroyed the Spanish navy and
dock-yards. Here again is found a personal ruler disregarding the sea
interests of France, ruining a natural ally, and directly aiding, as
Louis XIV. indirectly and unintentionally aided, the growth of a
mistress of the seas. This transient phase of policy passed away with
the death of the regent in 1726; but from that time until 1760 the
government of France continued to disregard her maritime interests. It
is said, indeed, that owing to some wise modifications of her fiscal
regulations, mainly in the direction of free trade (and due to Law, a
minister of Scotch birth), commerce with the East and West Indies
wonderfully increased, and that the islands of Guadeloupe and
Martinique became very rich and thriving; but both commerce and
colonies lay at the mercy of England when war came, for the navy fell
into decay. In 1756, when things were no longer at their worst, France
had but forty-five ships-of-the-line, England nearly one hundred and
thirty; and when the forty-five were to be armed and equipped, there
was found to be neither material nor rigging nor supplies; not even
enough artillery. Nor was this all.
"Lack of system in the government," says a French writer,
"brought about indifference, and opened the door to disorder and
lack of discipline. Never had unjust promotions been so
frequent; so also never had more universal discontent been seen.
Money and intrigue took the place of all else, and brought in
their train commands and power. Nobles and upstarts, with
influence at the capital and self-sufficiency in the seaports,
thought themselves dispensed with merit. Waste of the revenues
of the State and of the dock-yards knew no bounds. Honor and
modesty were turned into ridicule. As if the evils were not thus
great enough, the ministry took pains to efface the heroic
traditions of the past which had escaped the general wreck. To
the energetic fights of the great reign succeeded, by order of
the court, 'affairs of circumspection.' To preserve to the
wasted material a few armed ships, increased opportunity was
given to the enemy. From this unhappy principle we were bound to
a defensive as advantageous to the enemy as it was foreign to
the genius of our people. This circumspection before the enemy,
laid down for us by orders, betrayed in the long run the
national temper; and the abuse of the system led to acts of
indiscipline and defection under fire, of which a single
instance would vainly be sought in the previous century."
A false policy of continental extension swallowed up the resources of
the country, and was doubly injurious because, by leaving defenceless
its colonies and commerce, it exposed the greatest source of wealth to
be cut off, as in fact happened. The small squadrons that got to sea
were destroyed by vastly superior force; the merchant shipping was
swept away, and the colonies, Canada, Martinique, Guadeloupe, India,
fell into England's hands. If it did not take too much space,
interesting extracts might be made, showing the woful misery of
France, the country that had abandoned the sea, and the growing wealth
of England amid all her sacrifices and exertions. A contemporary
writer has thus expressed his view of the policy of France at this
period:--
"France, by engaging so heartily as she has done in the German
war, has drawn away so much of her attention and her revenue
from her navy that it enabled us to give such a blow to her
maritime strength as possibly she may never be able to recover.
Her engagement in the German war has likewise drawn her from the
defence of her colonies, by which means we have conquered some
of the most considerable she possessed. It has withdrawn her
from the protection of her trade, by which it is entirely
destroyed, while that of England has never, in the profoundest
peace, been in so flourishing a condition. So that, by embarking
in this German war, France has suffered herself to be undone, so
far as regards her particular and immediate quarrel with
England."
In the Seven Years' War France lost thirty-seven ships-of-the-line and
fifty-six frigates,--a force three times as numerous as the whole navy
of the United States at any time in the days of sailing-ships. "For
the first time since the Middle Ages," says a French historian,
speaking of the same war, "England had conquered France single-handed,
almost without allies, France having powerful auxiliaries. She had
conquered solely by the superiority of her government." Yes; but it
was by the superiority of her government using the tremendous weapon
of her sea power,--the reward of a consistent policy perseveringly
directed to one aim.
The profound humiliation of France, which reached its depths between
1760 and 1763, at which latter date she made peace, has an instructive
lesson for the United States in this our period of commercial and
naval decadence. We have been spared her humiliation; let us hope to
profit by her subsequent example. Between the same years (1760 and
1763) the French people rose, as afterward in 1793, and declared they
would have a navy. "Popular feeling, skilfully directed by the
government, took up the cry from one end of France to the other, 'The
navy must be restored.' Gifts of ships were made by cities, by
corporations, and by private subscriptions. A prodigious activity
sprang up in the lately silent ports; everywhere ships were building
or repairing." This activity was sustained; the arsenals were
replenished, the material of every kind was put on a satisfactory
footing, the artillery reorganized, and ten thousand trained gunners
drilled and maintained.
The tone and action of the naval officers of the day instantly felt
the popular impulse, for which indeed some loftier spirits among them
had been not only waiting but working. At no time was greater mental
and professional activity found among French naval officers than just
then, when their ships had been suffered to rot away by governmental
inaction. Thus a prominent French officer of our own day writes:--
"The sad condition of the navy in the reign of Louis XV., by
closing to officers the brilliant career of bold enterprises and
successful battles, forced them to fall back upon themselves.
They drew from study the knowledge they were to put to the proof
some years later, thus putting into practice that fine saying of
Montesquieu, 'Adversity is our mother, Prosperity our
step-mother.'... By the year 1769 was seen in all its splendor
that brilliant galaxy of officers whose activity stretched to
the ends of the earth, and who embraced in their works and in
their investigations all the branches of human knowledge. The
Académie de Marine, founded in 1752, was reorganized."[9]
The Académie's first director, a post-captain named Bigot de Morogues,
wrote an elaborate treatise on naval tactics, the first original work
on the subject since Paul Hoste's, which it was designed to supersede.
Morogues must have been studying and formulating his problems in
tactics in days when France had no fleet, and was unable so much as to
raise her head at sea under the blows of her enemy. At the same time
England had no similar book; and an English lieutenant, in 1762, was
just translating a part of Hoste's great work, omitting by far the
larger part. It was not until nearly twenty years later that Clerk, a
Scotch private gentleman, published an ingenious study of naval
tactics, in which he pointed out to English admirals the system by
which the French had thwarted their thoughtless and ill-combined
attacks.[10] "The researches of the Académie de Marine, and the
energetic impulse which it gave to the labors of officers, were not,
as we hope to show later, without influence upon the relatively
prosperous condition in which the navy was at the beginning of the
American war."
It has already been pointed out that the American War of Independence
involved a departure from England's traditional and true policy, by
committing her to a distant land war, while powerful enemies were
waiting for an opportunity to attack her at sea. Like France in the
then recent German wars, like Napoleon later in the Spanish war,
England, through undue self-confidence, was about to turn a friend
into an enemy, and so expose the real basis of her power to a rude
proof. The French government, on the other hand, avoided the snare
into which it had so often fallen. Turning her back on the European
continent, having the probability of neutrality there, and the
certainty of alliance with Spain by her side, France advanced to the
contest with a fine navy and a brilliant, though perhaps relatively
inexperienced, body of officers. On the other side of the Atlantic she
had the support of a friendly people, and of her own or allied ports,
both in the West Indies and on the continent. The wisdom of this
policy, the happy influence of this action of the government upon her
sea power, is evident; but the details of the war do not belong to
this part of the subject. To Americans, the chief interest of that war
is found upon the land; but to naval officers upon the sea, for it was
essentially a sea war. The intelligent and systematic efforts of
twenty years bore their due fruit; for though the warfare afloat ended
with a great disaster, the combined efforts of the French and Spanish
fleets undoubtedly bore down England's strength and robbed her of her
colonies. In the various naval undertakings and battles the honor of
France was upon the whole maintained; though it is difficult, upon
consideration of the general subject, to avoid the conclusion that
the inexperience of French seamen as compared with English, the narrow
spirit of jealousy shown by the noble corps of officers toward those
of different antecedents, and above all, the miserable traditions of
three quarters of a century already alluded to, the miserable policy
of a government which taught them first to save their ships, to
economize the material, prevented French admirals from reaping, not
the mere glory, but the positive advantages that more than once were
within their grasp. When Monk said the nation that would rule upon the
sea must always attack, he set the key-note to England's naval policy;
and had the instructions of the French government consistently
breathed the same spirit, the war of 1778 might have ended sooner and
better than it did. It seems ungracious to criticise the conduct of a
service to which, under God, our nation owes that its birth was not a
miscarriage; but writers of its own country abundantly reflect the
spirit of the remark. A French officer who served afloat during this
war, in a work of calm and judicial tone, says:--
"What must the young officers have thought who were at Sandy
Hook with D'Estaing, at St. Christopher with De Grasse, even
those who arrived at Rhode Island with De Ternay, when they saw
that these officers were not tried at their return?"[11]
Again, another French officer, of much later date, justifies the
opinion expressed, when speaking of the war of the American Revolution
in the following terms:--
"It was necessary to get rid of the unhappy prejudices of the
days of the regency and of Louis XV.; but the mishaps of which
they were full were too recent to be forgotten by our ministers.
Thanks to a wretched hesitation, fleets, which had rightly
alarmed England, became reduced to ordinary proportions.
Intrenching themselves in a false economy, the ministry claimed
that, by reason of the excessive expenses necessary to maintain
the fleet, the admirals must be ordered to maintain the
'_greatest circumspection_,' as though in war half measures have
not always led to disasters. So, too, the orders given to our
squadron chiefs were to keep the sea as long as possible,
without engaging in actions which might cause the loss of
vessels difficult to replace; so that more than once complete
victories, which would have crowned the skill of our admirals
and the courage of our captains, were changed into successes of
little importance. A system which laid down as a principle that
an admiral should not use the force in his hands, which sent him
against the enemy with the foreordained purpose of receiving
rather than making the attack, a system which sapped moral power
to save material resources, must have unhappy results.... It is
certain that this deplorable system was one of the causes of the
lack of discipline and startling defections which marked the
periods of Louis XVI., of the [first] Republic, and of the
[first] Empire."[12]
Within ten years of the peace of 1783 came the French Revolution; but
that great upheaval which shook the foundations of States, loosed the
ties of social order, and drove out of the navy nearly all the trained
officers of the monarchy who were attached to the old state of things,
did not free the French navy from a false system. It was easier to
overturn the form of government than to uproot a deep-seated
tradition. Hear again a third French officer, of the highest rank and
literary accomplishments, speaking of the inaction of Villeneuve, the
admiral who commanded the French rear at the battle of the Nile, and
who did not leave his anchors while the head of the column was being
destroyed:--
"A day was to come [Trafalgar] in which Villeneuve in his turn,
like De Grasse before him, and like Duchayla, would complain of
being abandoned by part of his fleet. We have come to suspect
some secret reason for this fatal coincidence. It is not natural
that among so many honorable men there should so often be found
admirals and captains incurring such a reproach. If the name of
some of them is to this very day sadly associated with the
memory of our disasters, we may be sure the fault is not wholly
their own. We must rather blame the nature of the operations in
which they were engaged, and that system of defensive war
prescribed by the French government, which Pitt, in the English
Parliament, proclaimed to be the forerunner of certain ruin.
That system, when we wished to renounce it, had already
penetrated our habits; it had, so to say, weakened our arms and
paralyzed our self-reliance. Too often did our squadrons leave
port with a special mission to fulfil, and with the intention of
avoiding the enemy; to fall in with him was at once a piece of
bad luck. It was thus that our ships went into action; they
submitted to it instead of forcing it.... Fortune would have
hesitated longer between the two fleets, and not have borne in
the end so heavily against ours, if Brueys, meeting Nelson half
way, could have gone out to fight him. This fettered and timid
war, which Villaret and Martin had carried on, had lasted long,
thanks to the circumspection of some English admirals and the
traditions of the old tactics. It was with these traditions that
the battle of the Nile had broken; the hour for decisive action
had come."[13]
Some years later came Trafalgar, and again the government of France
took up a new policy with the navy. The author last quoted speaks
again:--
"The emperor, whose eagle glance traced plans of campaign for
his fleets as for his armies, was wearied by these unexpected
reverses. He turned his eyes from the one field of battle in
which fortune was faithless to him, and decided to pursue
England elsewhere than upon the seas; he undertook to rebuild
his navy, but without giving it any part in the struggle which
became more furious than ever.... Nevertheless, far from
slackening, the activity of our dock-yards redoubled. Every year
ships-of-the-line were either laid down or added to the fleet.
Venice and Genoa, under his control, saw their old splendors
rise again, and from the shores of the Elbe to the head of the
Adriatic all the ports of the continent emulously seconded the
creative thought of the emperor. Numerous squadrons were
assembled in the Scheldt, in Brest Roads, and in Toulon.... But
to the end the emperor refused to give this navy, full of ardor
and self-reliance, an opportunity to measure its strength with
the enemy.... Cast down by constant reverses, he had kept up our
armed ships only to oblige our enemies to blockades whose
enormous cost must end by exhausting their finances."
When the empire fell, France had one hundred and three
ships-of-the-line and fifty-five frigates.
To turn now from the particular lessons drawn from the history of the
past to the general question of the influence of government upon the
sea career of its people, it is seen that that influence can work in
two distinct but closely related ways.
First, in peace: The government by its policy can favor the natural
growth of a people's industries and its tendencies to seek adventure
and gain by way of the sea; or it can try to develop such industries
and such sea-going bent, when they do not naturally exist; or, on the
other hand, the government may by mistaken action check and fetter the
progress which the people left to themselves would make. In any one of
these ways the influence of the government will be felt, making or
marring the sea power of the country in the matter of peaceful
commerce; upon which alone, it cannot be too often insisted, a
thoroughly strong navy can be based.
Secondly, for war: The influence of the government will be felt in its
most legitimate manner in maintaining an armed navy, of a size
commensurate with the growth of its shipping and the importance of the
interests connected with it. More important even than the size of the
navy is the question of its institutions, favoring a healthful spirit
and activity, and providing for rapid development in time of war by an
adequate reserve of men and of ships and by measures for drawing out
that general reserve power which has before been pointed to, when
considering the character and pursuits of the people. Undoubtedly
under this second head of warlike preparation must come the
maintenance of suitable naval stations, in those distant parts of the
world to which the armed shipping must follow the peaceful vessels of
commerce. The protection of such stations must depend either upon
direct military force, as do Gibraltar and Malta, or upon a
surrounding friendly population, such as the American colonists once
were to England, and, it may be presumed, the Australian colonists now
are. Such friendly surroundings and backing, joined to a reasonable
military provision, are the best of defences, and when combined with
decided preponderance at sea, make a scattered and extensive empire,
like that of England, secure; for while it is true that an unexpected
attack may cause disaster in some one quarter, the actual superiority
of naval power prevents such disaster from being general or
irremediable. History has sufficiently proved this. England's naval
bases have been in all parts of the world; and her fleets have at once
protected them, kept open the communications between them, and relied
upon them for shelter.
Colonies attached to the mother-country afford, therefore, the surest
means of supporting abroad the sea power of a country. In peace, the
influence of the government should be felt in promoting by all means a
warmth of attachment and a unity of interest which will make the
welfare of one the welfare of all, and the quarrel of one the quarrel
of all; and in war, or rather for war, by inducing such measures of
organization and defence as shall be felt by all to be a fair
distribution of a burden of which each reaps the benefit.
Such colonies the United States has not and is not likely to have. As
regards purely military naval stations, the feeling of her people was
probably accurately expressed by an historian of the English navy a
hundred years ago, speaking then of Gibraltar and Port Mahon.
"Military governments," said he, "agree so little with the industry of
a trading people, and are in themselves so repugnant to the genius of
the British people, that I do not wonder that men of good sense and of
all parties have inclined to give up these, as Tangiers was given up."
Having therefore no foreign establishments, either colonial or
military, the ships of war of the United States, in war, will be like
land birds, unable to fly far from their own shores. To provide
resting-places for them, where they can coal and repair, would be one
of the first duties of a government proposing to itself the
development of the power of the nation at sea.
As the practical object of this inquiry is to draw from the lessons of
history inferences applicable to one's own country and service, it is
proper now to ask how far the conditions of the United States involve
serious danger, and call for action on the part of the government, in
order to build again her sea power. It will not be too much to say
that the action of the government since the Civil War, and up to this
day, has been effectively directed solely to what has been called the
first link in the chain which makes sea power. Internal development,
great production, with the accompanying aim and boast of
self-sufficingness, such has been the object, such to some extent the
result. In this the government has faithfully reflected the bent of
the controlling elements of the country, though it is not always easy
to feel that such controlling elements are truly representative, even
in a free country. However that may be, there is no doubt that,
besides having no colonies, the intermediate link of a peaceful
shipping, and the interests involved in it, are now likewise lacking.
In short, the United States has only one link of the three.
The circumstances of naval war have changed so much within the last
hundred years, that it may be doubted whether such disastrous effects
on the one hand, or such brilliant prosperity on the other, as were
seen in the wars between England and France, could now recur. In her
secure and haughty sway of the seas England imposed a yoke on neutrals
which will never again be borne; and the principle that the flag
covers the goods is forever secured. The commerce of a belligerent can
therefore now be safely carried on in neutral ships, except when
contraband of war or to blockaded ports; and as regards the latter, it
is also certain that there will be no more paper blockades. Putting
aside therefore the question of defending her seaports from capture or
contribution, as to which there is practical unanimity in theory and
entire indifference in practice, what need has the United States of
sea power? Her commerce is even now carried on by others; why should
her people desire that which, if possessed, must be defended at great
cost? So far as this question is economical, it is outside the scope
of this work; but conditions which may entail suffering and loss on
the country by war are directly pertinent to it. Granting therefore
that the foreign trade of the United States, going and coming, is on
board ships which an enemy cannot touch except when bound to a
blockaded port, what will constitute an efficient blockade? The
present definition is, that it is such as to constitute a manifest
danger to a vessel seeking to enter or leave the port. This is
evidently very elastic. Many can remember that during the Civil War,
after a night attack on the United States fleet off Charleston, the
Confederates next morning sent out a steamer with some foreign consuls
on board, who so far satisfied themselves that no blockading vessel
was in sight that they issued a declaration to that effect. On the
strength of this declaration some Southern authorities claimed that
the blockade was technically broken, and could not be technically
re-established without a new notification. Is it necessary, to
constitute a real danger to blockade-runners, that the blockading
fleet should be in sight? Half a dozen fast steamers, cruising twenty
miles off-shore between the New Jersey and Long Island coast, would be
a very real danger to ships seeking to go in or out by the principal
entrance to New York; and similar positions might effectively blockade
Boston, the Delaware, and the Chesapeake. The main body of the
blockading fleet, prepared not only to capture merchant-ships but to
resist military attempts to break the blockade, need not be within
sight, nor in a position known to the shore. The bulk of Nelson's
fleet was fifty miles from Cadiz two days before Trafalgar, with a
small detachment watching close to the harbor. The allied fleet began
to get under way at 7 A.M., and Nelson, even under the conditions of
those days, knew it by 9.30. The English fleet at that distance was a
very real danger to its enemy. It seems possible, in these days of
submarine telegraphs, that the blockading forces in-shore and
off-shore, and from one port to another, might be in telegraphic
communication with one another along the whole coast of the United
States, readily giving mutual support; and if, by some fortunate
military combination, one detachment were attacked in force, it could
warn the others and retreat upon them. Granting that such a blockade
off one port were broken on one day, by fairly driving away the ships
maintaining it, the notification of its being re-established could be
cabled all over the world the next. To avoid such blockades there must
be a military force afloat that will at all times so endanger a
blockading fleet that it can by no means keep its place. Then neutral
ships, except those laden with contraband of war, can come and go
freely, and maintain the commercial relations of the country with the
world outside.
It may be urged that, with the extensive sea-coast of the United
States, a blockade of the whole line cannot be effectively kept up. No
one will more readily concede this than officers who remember how the
blockade of the Southern coast alone was maintained. But in the
present condition of the navy, and, it may be added, with any
additions not exceeding those so far proposed by the government,[14]
the attempt to blockade Boston, New York, the Delaware, the
Chesapeake, and the Mississippi, in other words, the great centres of
export and import, would not entail upon one of the large maritime
nations efforts greater than have been made before. England has at the
same time blockaded Brest, the Biscay coast, Toulon, and Cadiz, when
there were powerful squadrons lying within the harbors. It is true
that commerce in neutral ships can then enter other ports of the
United States than those named; but what a dislocation of the carrying
traffic of the country, what failure of supplies at times, what
inadequate means of transport by rail or water, of dockage, of
lighterage, of warehousing, will be involved in such an enforced
change of the ports of entry! Will there be no money loss, no
suffering, consequent upon this? And when with much pain and expense
these evils have been partially remedied, the enemy may be led to stop
the new inlets as he did the old. The people of the United States will
certainly not starve, but they may suffer grievously. As for supplies
which are contraband of war, is there not reason to fear that the
United States is not now able to go alone if an emergency should
arise?
The question is eminently one in which the influence of the government
should make itself felt, to build up for the nation a navy which, if
not capable of reaching distant countries, shall at least be able to
keep clear the chief approaches to its own. The eyes of the country
have for a quarter of a century been turned from the sea; the results
of such a policy and of its opposite will be shown in the instance of
France and of England. Without asserting a narrow parallelism between
the case of the United States and either of these, it may safely be
said that it is essential to the welfare of the whole country that the
conditions of trade and commerce should remain, as far as possible,
unaffected by an external war. In order to do this, the enemy must be
kept not only out of our ports, but far away from our coasts.[15]
Can this navy be had without restoring the merchant shipping? It is
doubtful. History has proved that such a purely military sea power can
be built up by a despot, as was done by Louis XIV.; but though so fair
seeming, experience showed that his navy was like a growth which
having no root soon withers away. But in a representative government
any military expenditure must have a strongly represented interest
behind it, convinced of its necessity. Such an interest in sea power
does not exist, cannot exist here without action by the government.
How such a merchant shipping should be built up, whether by subsidies
or by free trade, by constant administration of tonics or by free
movement in the open air, is not a military but an economical
question. Even had the United States a great national shipping, it may
be doubted whether a sufficient navy would follow; the distance which
separates her from other great powers, in one way a protection, is
also a snare. The motive, if any there be, which will give the United
States a navy, is probably now quickening in the Central American
Isthmus. Let us hope it will not come to the birth too late.
Here concludes the general discussion of the principal elements which
affect, favorably or unfavorably, the growth of sea power in nations.
The aim has been, first to consider those elements in their natural
tendency for or against, and then to illustrate by particular examples
and by the experience of the past. Such discussions, while undoubtedly
embracing a wider field, yet fall mainly within the province of
strategy, as distinguished from tactics. The considerations and
principles which enter into them belong to the unchangeable, or
unchanging, order of things, remaining the same, in cause and effect,
from age to age. They belong, as it were, to the Order of Nature, of
whose stability so much is heard in our day; whereas tactics, using as
its instruments the weapons made by man, shares in the change and
progress of the race from generation to generation. From time to time
the superstructure of tactics has to be altered or wholly torn down;
but the old foundations of strategy so far remain, as though laid upon
a rock. There will next be examined the general history of Europe and
America, with particular reference to the effect exercised upon that
history, and upon the welfare of the people, by sea power in its broad
sense. From time to time, as occasion offers, the aim will be to
recall and reinforce the general teaching, already elicited, by
particular illustrations. The general tenor of the study will
therefore be strategical, in that broad definition of naval strategy
which has before been quoted and accepted: "Naval strategy has for its
end to found, support, and increase, as well in peace as in war, the
sea power of a country." In the matter of particular battles, while
freely admitting that the change of details has made obsolete much of
their teaching, the attempt will be made to point out where the
application or neglect of true general principles has produced
decisive effects; and, other things being equal, those actions will be
preferred which, from their association with the names of the most
distinguished officers, may be presumed to show how far just tactical
ideas obtained in a particular age or a particular service. It will
also be desirable, where analogies between ancient and modern weapons
appear on the surface, to derive such probable lessons as they offer,
without laying undue stress upon the points of resemblance. Finally,
it must be remembered that, among all changes, the nature of man
remains much the same; the personal equation, though uncertain in
quantity and quality in the particular instance, is sure always to be
found.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] By a base of permanent operations "is understood a country whence
come all the resources, where are united the great lines of
communication by land and water, where are the arsenals and armed
posts."
[8] An interesting proof of the weight attributed to the naval power
of Great Britain by a great military authority will be found in the
opening chapter of Jomini's "History of the Wars of the French
Revolution." He lays down, as a fundamental principle of European
policy, that an unlimited expansion of naval force should not be
permitted to any nation which cannot be approached by land,--a
description which can apply only to Great Britain.
[9] Gougeard: La Marine de Guerre; Richelieu et Colbert.
[10] Whatever may be thought of Clerk's claim to originality in
constructing a system of naval tactics, and it has been seriously
impugned, there can be no doubt that his criticisms on the past were
sound. So far as the author knows, he in this respect deserves credit
for an originality remarkable in one who had the training neither of a
seaman nor of a military man.
[11] La Serre: Essais Hist. et Crit. sur la Marine Française.
[12] Lapeyrouse-Bonfils: Hist. de la Marine Française.
[13] Jurien de la Gravière: Guerres Maritimes.
[14] Since the above was written, the secretary of the navy, in his
report for 1889, has recommended a fleet which would make such a
blockade as here suggested very hazardous.
[15] The word "defence" in war involves two ideas, which for the sake
of precision in thought should be kept separated in the mind. There is
defence pure and simple, which strengthens itself and awaits attack.
This may be called passive defence. On the other hand, there is a view
of defence which asserts that safety for one's self, the real object
of defensive preparation, is best secured by attacking the enemy. In
the matter of sea-coast defence, the former method is exemplified by
stationary fortifications, submarine mines, and generally all immobile
works destined simply to stop an enemy if he tries to enter. The
second method comprises all those means and weapons which do not wait
for attack, but go to meet the enemy's fleet, whether it be but for a
few miles, or whether to his own shores. Such a defence may seem to be
really offensive war, but it is not; it becomes offensive only when
its object of attack is changed from the enemy's fleet to the enemy's
country. England defended her own coasts and colonies by stationing
her fleets off the French ports, to fight the French fleet if it came
out. The United States in the Civil War stationed her fleets off the
Southern ports, not because she feared for her own, but to break down
the Confederacy by isolation from the rest of the world, and
ultimately by attacking the ports. The methods were the same; but the
purpose in one case was defensive, in the other offensive.
The confusion of the two ideas leads to much unnecessary wrangling as
to the proper sphere of army and navy in coast-defence. Passive
defences belong to the army; everything that moves in the water to the
navy, which has the prerogative of the offensive defence. If seamen
are used to garrison forts, they become part of the land forces, as
surely as troops, when embarked as part of the complement, become part
of the sea forces.