ENGLISH REVOLUTION.--WAR OF THE LEAGUE OF AUGSBURG,
1688-1697.--SEA BATTLES OF BEACHY HEAD AND LA HOUGUE.
The Peace of Nimeguen was followed by a period of ten years in which
no extensive war broke out. They were, however, far from being years
of political quiet. Louis XIV. was as intent upon pushing on his
frontiers to the eastward in peace as in war, and grasped in quick
succession fragments of territory which had not been given him by the
peace. Claiming this and that in virtue of ancient feudal ties; this
and that other as implicitly surrendered by the treaty, because
dependent upon something else that had been explicitly surrendered;
purchasing at one time, using bare force in other cases, and backing
up all the so-called peaceful methods of obtaining his asserted rights
by the presence of armed power, he carried on this process of
extension between 1679 and 1682. The aggression most startling to
Europe, and above all to the German Empire, was the seizure of the
then imperial city of Strasburg on the 30th of September, 1681; and on
the same day Casale, in Italy, was sold to him by the Duke of Mantua,
showing that his ambitions were directed that way as well as to the
north and east. Both of these were positions of great strategic
importance, threatening, the one Germany, the other Italy, in case of
war.
The excitement throughout Europe was very great; in every direction
Louis, serenely trusting to his power, was making new enemies and
alienating former friends. The king of Sweden, directly insulted, and
injured in his duchy of Deux-Ponts, turned against him, as did the
Italian States; and the Pope himself sided with the enemies of a king
who was already showing his zeal for the conversion of the
Protestants, and was preparing for the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes. But the discontent, though deep and general, had to be
organized and directed; the spirit necessary to give it form and final
effective expression was found again in Holland, in William of Orange.
Time, however, was needed to mature the work. "No one yet armed
himself; but every one talked, wrote, agitated, from Stockholm to
Madrid.... The war of the pen preceded by many years the war of the
sword; incessant appeals were made to European opinion by
indefatigable publicists; under all forms was diffused the terror of
the New Universal Monarchy," which was seeking to take the place once
filled by the House of Austria. It was known that Louis sought to make
himself or his son emperor of Germany. But complications of different
kinds, private interests, lack of money, all combined to delay action.
The United Provinces, despite William's wishes, were yet unwilling to
act again as banker for a coalition, and the emperor was so threatened
on his eastern frontier by the rebel Hungarians and the Turks that he
dared not risk a western war.
Meanwhile the armed navy of France was daily growing in strength and
efficiency under Colbert's care, and acquiring the habit of war by
attacks upon the Barbary pirates and their ports. During the same
years the navies both of England and of Holland were declining in
numbers and efficiency. It has already been said that in 1688, when
William needed Dutch ships for his expedition to England, it was
objected that the navy was in a far different condition from 1672,
"being incalculably decreased in strength and deprived of its most
able commanders." In England, the decline of discipline had been
followed by an economical policy as to material, gradually lessening
the numbers and injuring the condition of the fleet; and after the
little flare-up and expected war with France in 1678, the king gave
the care of the navy to a new body of men, concerning whom an English
naval historian says: "This new administration lasted five years, and
if it had continued five years longer would in all probability have
remedied even the numerous and mighty evils it had introduced, by
wearing out the whole royal navy, and so leaving no room for future
mistakes. However, a just sense of this induced the king, in 1684, to
resume the management of the fleet into his own hands, restoring most
of the old officers; but before any great progress in the work of
restoration could be made, his Majesty died,"[66]--in 1685. The change
of sovereigns was of vast importance, not merely to the English navy,
but from the ultimate effect it was to have upon the designs of Louis
XIV. and the fortune of the general war which his aggressions were
preparing. James II. was peculiarly interested in the navy, being
himself a seaman, and having commanded in chief at Lowestoft and
Southwold Bay. He knew its actual depressed condition; and the
measures he at once took to restore it, both in numbers and
efficiency, were thoughtful and thorough. In the three years of his
reign very much indeed was done to prepare a weapon which was first
proved against himself and his best friend.
The accession of James II., which promised fairly for Louis,
precipitated the action of Europe against him. The House of Stuart,
closely allied to the King of France, and sympathizing with his
absolutist rule, had used the still great power of the sovereign to
check the political and religious enmity of the English nation to
France. James II. added to the same political sympathies a strength of
Roman Catholic fervor which led him into acts peculiarly fitted to
revolt the feeling of the English people, with the final result of
driving him from the throne, and calling to it, by the voice of
Parliament, his daughter Mary, whose husband was William of Orange.
In the same year that James became king, a vast diplomatic combination
against France began. This movement had two sides, religious and
political. The Protestant States were enraged at the increasing
persecutions of the French Protestants, and their feelings became
stronger as the policy of James of England showed itself more and more
bent toward Rome. The Protestant northern States, Holland, Sweden, and
Brandenburg, drew together in alliances; and they counted for support
upon the Emperor of Austria and Germany, upon Spain and other Roman
Catholic States whose motives were political apprehension and anger.
The emperor had latterly been successful against the Turks, thus
freeing his hands for a move against France. July 9, 1686, there was
signed at Augsburg a secret agreement between the emperor, the kings
of Spain and Sweden, and a number of German princes. Its object was at
first defensive only against France, but it could readily be turned
into an offensive alliance. This compact took the name of the League
of Augsburg, and from it the general war which followed two years
later was called the War of the League of Augsburg.
The next year, 1687, saw yet greater successes of the Empire over the
Turks and Hungarians. It was evident that France could expect no more
from diversions in that quarter. At the same time the discontent of
the English and the ambitions of the Prince of Orange, who hoped from
his accession to the throne of England no ordinary personal
aggrandizement, but the fulfilment of his strongest political wish and
conviction, in curbing forever the power of Louis XIV., became more
and more plain. But for his expedition into England, William needed
ships, money, and men from the United Provinces; and they hung back,
knowing that the result would be war with the French king, who
proclaimed James his ally. Their action was at last decided by the
course of Louis, who chose this moment to revoke concessions made at
Nimeguen to Dutch trade. The serious injury thus done to Holland's
material interests turned the wavering scale. "This violation of the
conventions of Nimeguen," says a French historian,[67] "by giving a
severe blow to Dutch commerce, reducing her European trade more than
one fourth, removed the obstacle that religious passions still
encountered in material interests, and put all Holland at the
disposition of William, none having reason longer to conciliate
France." This was in November, 1687. In the summer of the following
year the birth of an heir to the English throne brought things to an
issue. English loyalty might have put up with the reign of the father,
now advanced in years, but could not endure the prospect of a
continued Roman Catholic royalty.
Matters had at last reached the crisis to which they had been tending
for years. Louis and William of Orange, long-standing enemies, and at
the moment the two chief figures in European politics, alike from
their own strong personalities and the cause which either represented,
stood on the brink of great actions, whose effects were to be felt
through many generations. William, despotic in temper himself, stood
on the shores of Holland looking hopefully toward free England, from
which he was separated by the narrow belt of water that was the
defence of the island kingdom, and might yet be an impassable barrier
to his own high aims; for the French king at that moment could control
the sea if he would. Louis, holding all the power of France in his
single grasp, facing eastward as before, saw the continent gathering
against him; while on his flank was England heartily hostile, longing
to enter on the strife against him, but as yet without a leader. It
still remained with him to decide whether he would leave the road open
for the head to join the waiting body, and to bring Holland and
England, the two sea powers, under one rule. If he attacked Holland by
land, and sent his superior navy into the Channel, he might well keep
William in his own country; the more so as the English navy, beloved
and petted by the king, was likely to have more than the usual loyalty
of seamen to their chief. Faithful to the bias of his life, perhaps
unable to free himself from it, he turned toward the continent, and
September 24, 1688, declared war against Germany and moved his armies
toward the Rhine. William, overjoyed, saw removed the last obstacle to
his ambition. Delayed for some weeks by contrary winds, he finally
set sail from Holland on the 30th of October. More than five hundred
transports, with fifteen thousand troops, escorted by fifty
men-of-war, formed the expedition; and it is typical of its mingled
political and religious character, that the larger part of the army
officers were French Protestants who had been driven from France since
the last war, the commander-in-chief under William being the Huguenot
Schomberg, late a marshal of France. The first start was foiled by a
violent storm; but sailing again on the 10th of November, a fresh,
fair breeze carried the ships through the Straits and the Channel, and
William landed on the 15th at Torbay. Before the end of the year,
James had fled from his kingdom. On the 21st of the following April,
William and Mary were proclaimed sovereigns of Great Britain, and
England and Holland were united for the war, which Louis had declared
against the United Provinces as soon as he heard of William's
invasion. During all the weeks that the expedition was preparing and
delayed, the French ambassador at the Hague and the minister of the
navy were praying the king to stop it with his great sea power,--a
power so great that the French fleet in the first years of the war
outnumbered those of England and Holland combined; but Louis would
not. Blindness seems to have struck the kings of England and France
alike; for James, amid all his apprehensions, steadily refused any
assistance from the French fleet, trusting to the fidelity of the
English seamen to his person, although his attempts to have Mass
celebrated on board the ships had occasioned an uproar and mutiny
which nearly ended in the crews throwing the priests overboard.
France thus entered the War of the League of Augsburg without a single
ally. "What her policy had most feared, what she had long averted, was
come to pass. England and Holland were not only allied, but united
under the same chief; and England entered the coalition with all the
eagerness of passions long restrained by the Stuart policy." As
regards the sea war, the different battles have much less tactical
value than those of De Ruyter. The chief points of strategic interest
are the failure of Louis, having a decided superiority at sea,
properly to support James II. in Ireland, which remained faithful to
him, and the gradual disappearance from the ocean of the great French
fleets, which Louis XIV. could no longer maintain, owing to the
expense of that continental policy which he had chosen for himself. A
third point of rather minor interest is the peculiar character and
large proportions taken on by the commerce-destroying and privateering
warfare of the French, as their large fleets were disappearing. This,
and the great effect produced by it, will appear at first to
contradict what has been said as to the general inadequacy of such a
warfare when not supported by fleets; but an examination of the
conditions, which will be made later on, will show that the
contradiction is rather apparent than real.
Taught by the experience of the last conflict, the chief effort of the
French king, in the general war he had brought upon himself, should
have been directed against the sea powers,--against William of Orange
and the Anglo-Dutch alliance. The weakest point in William's position
was Ireland; though in England itself not only were there many
partisans of the exiled king, but even those who had called in William
fenced his kingship about with jealous restrictions. His power was not
secure so long as Ireland was not subdued. James, having fled from
England in January, 1689, landed in Ireland in the following March,
accompanied by French troops and a French squadron, and was
enthusiastically welcomed everywhere but in the Protestant North. He
made Dublin his capital, and remained in the country until July of the
next year. During these fifteen months the French were much superior
at sea; they landed troops in Ireland on more than one occasion; and
the English, attempting to prevent this, were defeated in the naval
battle of Bantry Bay.[68] But although James was so well established,
and it was of the utmost importance to sustain him; although it was
equally important to keep William from getting a foothold till James
was further strengthened and Londonderry, then passing through its
famous siege, reduced; and although the French were superior to the
united English and Dutch on the seas in 1689 and 1690; nevertheless,
the English admiral Rooke was able, unmolested, to throw succors and
troops into Londonderry, and afterward landed Marshal Schomberg, with
a small army, near Carrickfergus. Rooke stopped intercourse between
Ireland and Scotland, where were many Stuart partisans, and then with
his small squadron passed along the east coast of Ireland, attempted
to burn the shipping in Dublin harbor, failing only through lack of
wind, and finally came off Cork, then occupied by James, took
possession of an island in the harbor, and returned in safety to the
Downs in October. These services, which raised the siege of
Londonderry and kept open the communications between England and
Ireland, extended throughout the summer months; nor was any attempt
made by the French to stop them. There can be little doubt that an
effective co-operation of the French fleet in the summer of 1689 would
have broken down all opposition to James in Ireland, by isolating that
country from England, with corresponding injury to William's power.
The following year the same strategic and political mistake was made.
It is the nature of an enterprise such as James's, dependent upon a
weaker people and foreign help, to lose strength if it does not
progress; but the chances were still in his favor, provided France
co-operated heartily, and above all, with her fleet. It is equally the
nature of a merely military navy like that of France to be strongest
at the beginning of hostilities; whereas that of the allied sea powers
grew daily stronger, drawing upon the vast resources of their merchant
shipping and their wealth. The disparity of force was still in favor
of France in 1690, but it was not as great as the year before. The
all-important question was where to direct it. There were two
principal courses, involving two views of naval strategy. The one was
to act against the allied fleet, whose defeat, if sufficiently severe,
might involve the fall of William's throne in England; the other was
to make the fleet subsidiary to the Irish campaign. The French king
decided upon the former, which was undoubtedly the proper course; but
there was no reason for neglecting, as he did, the important duty of
cutting off the communications between the two islands. As early as
March he had sent a large fleet with six thousand troops and supplies
of war, which were landed without any trouble in the southern ports of
Ireland; but after performing that service, the ships employed
returned to Brest, and there remained inactive during May and June
while the grand fleet under the Comte de Tourville was assembling.
During those two months the English were gathering an army on their
west coast, and on the 21st of June, William embarked his forces at
Chester on board two hundred and eighty-eight transports, escorted by
only six men-of-war. On the 24th he landed in Carrickfergus, and the
ships-of-war were dismissed to join the English grand fleet, which,
however, they were not able to do; Tourville's ships having in the
mean time got to sea and occupied the channel to the eastward. There
is nothing more striking than the carelessness shown by both the
contending parties, during the time that Ireland was in dispute, as to
the communications of their opponents with the island; but this was
especially strange in the French, as they had the larger forces, and
must have received pretty accurate information of what was going on
from disaffected persons in England. It appears that a squadron of
twenty-five frigates, to be supported by ships-of-the-line, were told
off for duty in St. George's Channel; but they never reached their
station, and only ten of the frigates had got as far as Kinsale by the
time James had lost all at the battle of the Boyne. The English
communications were not even threatened for an hour.
Tourville's fleet, complete in numbers, having seventy-eight ships, of
which seventy were in the line-of-battle, with twenty-two fire-ships,
got to sea June 22, the day after William embarked. On the 30th the
French were off the Lizard, to the dismay of the English admiral, who
was lying off the Isle of Wight in such an unprepared attitude that
he had not even lookout ships to the westward. He got under way,
standing off-shore to the southeast, and was joined from time to time,
during the next ten days, by other English and Dutch ships. The two
fleets continued moving to the eastward, sighting each other from time
to time.
The political situation in England was critical. The Jacobites were
growing more and more open in their demonstrations, Ireland had been
in successful revolt for over a year, and William was now there,
leaving only the queen in London. The urgency of the case was such
that the council decided the French fleet must be fought, and orders
to that effect were sent to the English admiral, Herbert. In obedience
to his instructions he went out, and on the 10th of July, being to
windward, with the wind at northeast, formed his line-of-battle, and
then stood down to attack the French, who waited for him, with their
foretopsails aback[69] on the starboard tack, heading to the northward
and westward.
The fight that followed is known as the battle of Beachy Head. The
ships engaged were, French seventy, English and Dutch according to
their own account fifty-six, according to the French sixty. In the
allied line of battle the Dutch were in the van; the English,
commanded in person by Herbert, in the centre; and the rear was made
up partly of English and partly of Dutch ships. The stages of the
battle were as follows:--
1. The allies, being to windward, bore down together in line abreast.
As usual, this manoeuvre was ill performed, and as also generally
happens, the van came under fire before the centre and rear, and bore
the brunt of the injury.
2. Admiral Herbert, though commander-in-chief, failed to attack
vigorously with the centre, keeping it at long range. The allied van
and rear came to close action (Plate VI., A). Paul Hoste's[70] account
of this manoeuvre of the allies is that the admiral intended to fall
mainly on the French rear. To that end he closed the centre to the
rear and kept it to windward at long cannon-shot (refused it), so as
to prevent the French from tacking and doubling on the rear. If that
were his purpose, his plan, though tolerably conceived in the main,
was faulty in detail, for this manoeuvre of the centre left a great
gap between it and the van. He should rather have attacked, as Ruyter
did at the Texel, as many of the rear ships as he thought he could
deal with, and refused his van, assigning to it the part of checking
the French van. It may be conceded that an admiral who, from inferior
numbers, cannot spread as long and close a line as his enemy, should
not let the latter overlap the extremities of his fleet; but he should
attain his end not, as Herbert did, by leaving a great opening in the
centre, but by increasing each interval between the ships refused. The
allied fleet was thus exposed to be doubled on at two points, both van
and centre; and both points were attacked.
3. The commander of the French van, seeing the Dutch close to his line
and more disabled than himself, pressed six of his leading ships
ahead, where they went about, and so put the Dutch between two fires
(Plate VI. B).
[Illustration: Pl. VI. LA HOUGUE MAY 29, 1692. Pl. VIa. BEACHY
HEAD JULY 10, 1690.]
At the same time Tourville, finding himself without adversaries in the
centre, having beaten off the leading division of the enemy's centre,
pushed forward his own leading ships, which Herbert's dispositions had
left without opponents; and these fresh ships strengthened the attack
upon the Dutch in the van (B).
This brought about a _mêlée_ at the head of the lines, in which the
Dutch, being inferior, suffered heavily. Luckily for the allies the
wind fell calm; and while Tourville himself and other French ships got
out their boats to tow into action again, the allies were shrewd
enough to drop anchor with all sail set, and before Tourville took in
the situation the ebb-tide, setting southwest, had carried his fleet
out of action. He finally anchored a league from his enemy.
At nine P.M., when the tide changed, the allies weighed and stood to
the eastward. So badly had many of them been mauled, that, by English
accounts, it was decided rather to destroy the disabled ships than to
risk a general engagement to preserve them.
Tourville pursued; but instead of ordering a general chase, he kept
the line-of-battle, reducing the speed of the fleet to that of the
slower ships. The occasion was precisely one of those in which a
_mêlée_ is permissible, indeed, obligatory. An enemy beaten and in
flight should be pursued with ardor, and with only so much regard to
order as will prevent the chasing vessels from losing mutual
support,--a condition which by no means implies such relative bearings
and distances as are required in the beginning or middle of a
well-contested action. The failure to order such general pursuit
indicates the side on which Tourville's military character lacked
completeness; and the failure showed itself, as is apt to be the case,
at the supreme moment of his career. He never had such another
opportunity as in this, the first great general action in which he
commanded in chief, and which Hoste, who was on board the flag-ship,
calls the most complete naval victory ever gained. It was so indeed at
that time,--the most complete, but not the most decisive, as it
perhaps might have been. The French, according to Hoste, lost not even
a boat, much less a ship, which, if true, makes yet more culpable the
sluggishness of the pursuit; while the allies fled, casting sixteen of
their ships ashore and burning them in sight of the enemy, who pursued
as far as the Downs. The English indeed give the allied loss as only
eight ships,--an estimate probably full as much out one way as the
French the other. Herbert took his fleet to the Thames, and baffled
the enemy's further pursuit by removing the buoys.[71]
Tourville's is the only great historical name among the seamen of this
war, if we except the renowned privateersmen at whose head was Jean
Bart. Among the English, extraordinary merit cannot be claimed for any
one of the gallant and enterprising men who commanded squadrons.
Tourville, who by this time had served afloat for nearly thirty
years, was at once a seaman and a military man. With superb courage,
of which he had given dazzling examples in his youth, he had seen
service wherever the French fleets had fought,--in the Anglo-Dutch
war, in the Mediterranean, and against the Barbary pirates. Reaching
the rank of admiral, he commanded in person all the largest fleets
sent out during the earlier years of this war, and he brought to the
command a scientific knowledge of tactics, based upon both theory and
experience, joined to that practical acquaintance with the seaman's
business which is necessary in order to apply tactical principles upon
the ocean to the best advantage. But with all these high qualities he
seems to have failed, where so many warriors fail, in the ability to
assume a great responsibility.[72] The caution in his pursuit of the
allies after Beachy Head, though so different in appearance, came from
the same trait which impelled him two years later to lead his fleet
into almost certain destruction at La Hougue, because he had the
king's order in his pocket. He was brave enough to do anything, but
not strong enough to bear the heaviest burdens. Tourville was in fact
the forerunner of the careful and skilful tacticians of the coming
era, but with the savor still of the impetuous hard-fighting which
characterized the sea commanders of the seventeenth century. He
doubtless felt, after Beachy Head, that he had done very well and
could be satisfied; but he could not have acted as he did had he felt,
to use Nelson's words, that "if we had taken ten ships out of the
enemy's eleven, and let the eleventh escape, being able to take her, I
could never call such a good day."
The day after the sea fight off Beachy Head, with its great but still
partial results, the cause of James II. was lost ashore in Ireland.
The army which William had been allowed to transport there unmolested
was superior in number and quality to that of James, as William
himself was superior as a leader to the ex-king. The counsel of Louis
XIV. was that James should avoid decisive action, retiring if
necessary to the Shannon, in the midst of a country wholly devoted to
him. It was, however, a good deal to ask, this abandonment of the
capital after more than a year's occupancy, with all the consequent
moral effect; it would have been much more to the purpose to stop
William's landing. James undertook to cover Dublin, taking up the line
of the river Boyne, and there on the 11th of July the two armies met,
with the result that James was wholly defeated. The king himself fled
to Kinsale, where he found ten of those frigates that had been meant
to control St. George's Channel. He embarked, and again took refuge in
France, begging Louis to improve the victory at Beachy Head by landing
him with another French army in England itself. Louis angrily refused,
and directed that the troops still remaining in Ireland should be at
once withdrawn.
The chances of a rising in favor of James, at least upon the shores of
the Channel, if they existed at all, were greatly exaggerated by his
own imagination. After the safe retreat of the allied fleet to the
Thames, Tourville, in accordance with his instructions, made several
demonstrations in the south of England; but they were wholly fruitless
in drawing out any show of attachment to the Stuart cause.
In Ireland it was different. The Irish army with its French contingent
fell back, after the battle of the Boyne, to the Shannon, and there
again made a stand; while Louis, receding from his first angry
impulse, continued to send reinforcements and supplies. But the
increasing urgency of the continental war kept him from affording
enough support, and the war in Ireland came to a close a little over a
year later, by the defeat at Aghrim and capitulation of Limerick. The
battle of the Boyne, which from its peculiar religious coloring has
obtained a somewhat factitious celebrity, may be taken as the date at
which the English crown was firmly fixed on William's head. Yet it
would be more accurate to say that the success of William, and with it
the success of Europe against Louis XIV. in the War of the League of
Augsburg, was due to the mistakes and failure of the French naval
campaign in 1690; though in that campaign was won the most conspicuous
single success the French have ever gained at sea over the English. As
regards the more striking military operations, it is curious to remark
that Tourville sailed the day after William left Chester, and won
Beachy Head the day before the battle of the Boyne; but the real
failure lay in permitting William to transport that solid body of men
without hindrance. It might have been favorable to French policy to
let him get into Ireland, but not with such a force at his back. The
result of the Irish campaign was to settle William safely on the
English throne and establish the Anglo-Dutch alliance; and the union
of the two sea peoples under one crown was the pledge, through their
commercial and maritime ability, and the wealth they drew from the
sea, of the successful prosecution of the war by their allies on the
continent.
The year 1691 was distinguished by only one great maritime event. This
was ever afterward known in France as Tourville's "deep-sea" or
"off-shore" cruise; and the memory of it as a brilliant strategic and
tactical display remains to this day in the French navy. That staying
power, which has already been spoken of as distinctive of nations
whose sea power is not a mere military institution, but based upon the
character and pursuits of the people, had now come into play with the
allies. Notwithstanding the defeat and loss of Beachy Head, the united
fleets took the sea in 1691 with one hundred ships-of-the-line under
the command of Admiral Russell. Tourville could only gather
seventy-two, the same number as the year before. "With these he left
Brest June 25. As the enemy had not yet appeared upon the coasts of
the Channel, he took up his cruising ground at the entrance, sending
lookout ships in all directions. Informed that the allies had
stationed themselves near the Scilly Islands to cover the passage of a
convoy expected from the Levant, Tourville did not hesitate to steer
for the English coasts, where the approaching arrival of another
merchant fleet from Jamaica was equally expected. Deceiving the
English cruisers by false courses, he reached the latter fleet, took
from it several ships, and dispersed it before Russell could come up
to fight him. When at last Tourville was in presence of the allied
fleet, he manoeuvred so skilfully, always keeping the weather-gage,
that the enemy, drawn far out into the ocean, lost fifty days without
finding an opportunity to engage. During this time French privateers,
scattered throughout the Channel, harassed the enemy's commerce and
protected convoys sent into Ireland. Worn out by fruitless efforts,
Russell steered for the Irish coast. Tourville, after having protected
the return of the French convoys, anchored again in Brest Roads."
The actual captures made by Tourville's own fleet were insignificant,
but its service to the commerce-destroying warfare of the French, by
occupying the allies, is obvious; nevertheless, the loss of English
commerce was not as great this year as the next. The chief losses of
the allies seem to have been in the Dutch North Sea trade.
The two wars, continental and maritime, that were being waged, though
simultaneous, were as yet independent of each other. It is unnecessary
in connection with our subject to mention the operations of the
former. In 1692 there occurred the great disaster to the French fleet
which is known as the battle of La Hougue. In itself, considered
tactically, it possesses little importance, and the actual results
have been much exaggerated; but popular report has made it one of the
famous sea battles of the world, and therefore it cannot be wholly
passed by.
Misled by reports from England, and still more by the representations
of James, who fondly nursed his belief that the attachment of many
English naval officers to his person was greater than their love of
country or faithfulness to their trust, Louis XIV. determined to
attempt an invasion of the south coast of England, led by James in
person. As a first step thereto, Tourville, at the head of between
fifty and sixty ships-of-the-line, thirteen of which were to come
from Toulon, was to engage the English fleet; from which so many
desertions were expected as would, with the consequent demoralization,
yield the French an easy and total victory. The first hitch was in the
failure of the Toulon fleet, delayed by contrary winds, to join; and
Tourville went to sea with only forty-four ships, but with a
peremptory order from the king to fight when he fell in with the
enemy, were they few or many, and come what might.
On the 29th of May, Tourville saw the allies to the northward and
eastward; they numbered ninety-nine sail-of-the-line. The wind being
southwest, he had the choice of engaging, but first summoned all the
flag-officers on board his own ship, and put the question to them
whether he ought to fight. They all said not, and he then handed them
the order of the king.[73] No one dared dispute that; though, had they
known it, light vessels with contrary orders were even then searching
for the fleet. The other officers then returned to their ships, and
the whole fleet kept away together for the allies, who waited for
them, on the starboard tack, heading south-southeast, the Dutch
occupying the van, the English the centre and rear. When they were
within easy range, the French hauled their wind on the same tack,
keeping the weather-gage. Tourville, being so inferior in numbers,
could not wholly avoid the enemy's line extending to the rear of his
own, which was also necessarily weak from its extreme length; but he
avoided Herbert's error at Beachy Head, keeping his van refused with
long intervals between the ships, to check the enemy's van, and
engaging closely with his centre and rear (Plate VIa. A, A, A). It is
not necessary to follow the phases of this unequal fight; the
extraordinary result was that when the firing ceased at night, in
consequence of a thick fog and calm, not a single French ship had
struck her colors nor been sunk. No higher proof of military spirit
and efficiency could be given by any navy, and Tourville's seamanship
and tactical ability contributed largely to the result, which it must
also be confessed was not creditable to the allies. The two fleets
anchored at nightfall (B, B, B), a body of English ships (B')
remaining to the southward and westward of the French, Later on, these
cut their cables and allowed themselves to drift through the French
line in order to rejoin their main body; in doing which they were
roughly handled.
Having amply vindicated the honor of his fleet, and shown the
uselessness of further fighting, Tourville now thought of retreat,
which was begun at midnight with a light northeast wind and continued
all the next day. The allies pursued, the movements of the French
being much embarrassed by the crippled condition of the flag-ship
"Royal Sun," the finest ship in the French navy, which the admiral
could not make up his mind to destroy. The direction of the main
retreat was toward the Channel Islands, thirty-five ships being with
the admiral; of them twenty passed with the tidal current through the
dangerous passage known as the Race of Alderney, between the island of
that name and the mainland, and got safe to St. Malo. Before the
remaining fifteen could follow, the tide changed; and the anchors
which had been dropped dragging, these ships were carried to the
eastward and to leeward of the enemy. Three sought refuge in
Cherbourg, which had then neither breakwater nor port, the remaining
twelve at Cape La Hougue; and they were all burned either by their own
crews or by the allies. The French thus lost fifteen of the finest
ships in their navy, the least of which carried sixty guns; but this
was little more than the loss of the allies at Beachy Head. The
impression made upon the public mind, accustomed to the glories and
successes of Louis XIV., was out of all proportion to the results, and
blotted out the memory of the splendid self-devotion of Tourville and
his followers. La Hougue was also the last general action fought by
the French fleet, which did rapidly dwindle away in the following
years, so that this disaster seemed to be its death-blow. As a matter
of fact, however, Tourville went to sea the next year with seventy
ships, and the losses were at the time repaired. The decay of the
French navy was not due to any one defeat, but to the exhaustion of
France and the great cost of the continental war; and this war was
mainly sustained by the two sea peoples whose union was secured by the
success of William in the Irish campaign. Without asserting that the
result would have been different had the naval operations of France
been otherwise directed in 1690, it may safely be said that their
misdirection was the immediate cause of things turning out as they
did, and the first cause of the decay of the French navy.
The five remaining years of the War of the League of Augsburg, in
which all Europe was in arms against France, are marked by no great
sea battles, nor any single maritime event of the first importance. To
appreciate the effect of the sea power of the allies, it is necessary
to sum up and condense an account of the quiet, steady pressure which
it brought to bear and maintained in all quarters against France. It
is thus indeed that sea power usually acts, and just because so quiet
in its working, it is the more likely to be unnoticed and must be
somewhat carefully pointed out.
The head of the opposition to Louis XIV. was William III., and his
tastes being military rather than naval combined with the direction of
Louis' policy to make the active war continental rather than maritime;
while the gradual withdrawal of the great French fleets, by leaving
the allied navies without enemies on the sea, worked in the same way.
Furthermore, the efficiency of the English navy, which was double in
numbers that of the Dutch, was at this time at a low pitch; the
demoralizing effects of the reign of Charles II. could not be wholly
overcome during the three years of his brother's rule, and there was a
yet more serious cause of trouble growing out of the political state
of England. It has been said that James believed the naval officers
and seamen to be attached to his person; and, whether justly or
unjustly, this thought was also in the minds of the present rulers,
causing doubts of the loyalty and trustworthiness of many officers,
and tending to bring confusion into the naval administration. We are
told that "the complaints made by the merchants were extremely well
supported, and showed the folly of preferring unqualified men to that
board which directed the naval power of England; and yet the mischief
could not be amended, because the more experienced people who had been
long in the service were thought disaffected, and it appeared the
remedy might have proved worse than the disease."[74] Suspicion
reigned in the cabinet and the city, factions and irresolution among
the officers; and a man who was unfortunate or incapable in action
knew that the yet more serious charge of treason might follow his
misadventure.
After La Hougue, the direct military action of the allied navies was
exerted in three principal ways, the first being in attacks upon the
French ports, especially those in the Channel and near Brest. These
had rarely in view more than local injury and the destruction of
shipping, particularly in the ports whence the French privateers
issued; and although on some occasions the number of troops embarked
was large, William proposed to himself little more than the diversion
which such threats caused, by forcing Louis to take troops from the
field for coast defence. It may be said generally of all these
enterprises against the French coast, in this and later wars, that
they effected little, and even as a diversion did not weaken the
French armies to any great extent. If the French ports had been less
well defended, or French water-ways open into the heart of the
country, like our own Chesapeake and Delaware bays and the Southern
sounds, the result might have been different.
In the second place, the allied navies were of great direct military
value, though they fought no battles, when Louis XIV. decided in 1694
to make his war against Spain offensive. Spain, though so weak in
herself, was yet troublesome from her position in the rear of France;
and Louis finally concluded to force her to peace by carrying the war
into Catalonia, on the northeast coast. The movement of his armies was
seconded by his fleet under Tourville; and the reduction of that
difficult province went on rapidly until the approach of the allied
navies in largely superior force caused Tourville to retire to Toulon.
This saved Barcelona; and from that time until the two sea nations had
determined to make peace, they kept their fleets on the Spanish coast
and arrested the French advance. When, in 1697, William had become
disposed to peace and Spain refused it, Louis again invaded, the
allied fleet did not appear, and Barcelona fell. At the same time a
French naval expedition was successfully directed against Cartagena in
South America, and under the two blows, both of which depended upon
the control of the sea, Spain yielded.
The third military function of the allied navies was the protection of
their sea commerce; and herein, if history may be trusted, they
greatly failed. At no time has war against commerce been conducted on
a larger scale and with greater results than during this period; and
its operations were widest and most devastating at the very time that
the great French fleets were disappearing, in the years immediately
after La Hougue, apparently contradicting the assertion that such a
warfare must be based on powerful fleets or neighboring seaports. A
somewhat full discussion is due, inasmuch as the distress to commerce
wrought by the privateers was a large factor in bringing the sea
nations to wish for peace; just as the subsidies, which their
commerce enabled them to pay the continental armies, besides keeping
up their own, were the chief means by which the war was prolonged and
France brought to terms. The attack and defence of commerce is still a
living question.
In the first place it is to be observed that the decay of the French
fleet was gradual, and that the moral effect of its appearance in the
Channel, its victory at Beachy Head, and gallant conduct at La Hougue
remained for some time impressed on the minds of the allies. This
impression caused their ships to be kept together in fleets, instead
of scattering in pursuit of the enemy's cruisers, and so brought to
the latter a support almost equal to an active warfare on the seas.
Again, the efficiency of the English navy, as has been said, was low,
and its administration perhaps worse; while treason in England gave
the French the advantage of better information. Thus in the year
following La Hougue, the French, having received accurate information
of a great convoy sailing for Smyrna, sent out Tourville in May,
getting him to sea before the allies were ready to blockade him in
Brest, as they had intended. This delay was due to bad administration,
as was also the further misfortune that the English government did not
learn of Tourville's departure until after its own fleet had sailed
with the trade. Tourville surprised the convoy near the Straits,
destroyed or captured one hundred out of four hundred ships, and
scattered the rest. This is not a case of simple cruising warfare, for
Tourville's fleet was of seventy-one ships; but it shows the
incompetency of the English administration. In truth, it was
immediately after La Hougue that the depredations of cruisers became
most ruinous; and the reason was twofold: first, the allied fleet was
kept together at Spithead for two months and more, gathering troops
for a landing on the continent, thus leaving the cruisers unmolested;
and in the second place, the French, not being able to send their
fleet out again that summer, permitted the seamen to take service in
private ships, thus largely increasing the numbers of the latter. The
two causes working together gave an impunity and extension to
commerce-destroying which caused a tremendous outcry in England. "It
must be confessed," says the English naval chronicler, "that our
commerce suffered far less the year before, when the French were
masters at sea, than in this, when their grand fleet was blocked up in
port." But the reason was that the French having little commerce and a
comparatively large number of seamen, mainly employed in the fleet,
were able, when this lay by, to release them to cruisers. As the
pressure of the war became greater, and Louis continued to reduce the
number of his ships in commission, another increase was given to the
commerce-destroyers. "The ships and officers of the royal navy were
loaned, under certain conditions, to private firms, or to companies
who wished to undertake privateering enterprises, in which even the
cabinet ministers did not disdain to take shares;" indeed, they were
urged to do so to please the king. The conditions generally provided
that a certain proportion of the profits should go to the king, in
return for the use of the ships. Such employment would be demoralizing
to any military service, but not necessarily all at once; and the
conditions imparted for the time a tone and energy to privateering
that it cannot always have. In truth, the public treasury, not being
able to maintain the navy, associated with itself private capital,
risking only material otherwise useless, and looking for returns to
robbing the enemy. The commerce-destroying of this war, also, was no
mere business of single cruisers; squadrons of three or four up to
half a dozen ships acted together under one man, and it is only just
to say that under seamen like Jean Bart, Forbin, and Duguay-Trouin,
they were even more ready to fight than to pillage. The largest of
these private expeditions, and the only one that went far from the
French shores, was directed in 1697 against Cartagena, on the Spanish
Main. It numbered seven ships-of-the-line and six frigates, besides
smaller vessels, and carried twenty-eight hundred troops. The chief
object was to lay a contribution on the city of Cartagena; but its
effect on the policy of Spain was marked, and led to peace. Such a
temper and concert of action went far to supply the place of
supporting fleets, but could not wholly do so; and although the allies
continued to keep their large fleets together, still, as the war went
on and efficiency of administration improved, commerce-destroying was
brought within bounds. At the same time, as an evidence of how much
the unsupported cruisers suffered, even under these favorable
conditions, it may be mentioned that the English report fifty-nine
ships-of-war captured against eighteen admitted by the French during
the war,--a difference which a French naval historian attributes, with
much probability, to the English failing to distinguish between
ships-of-war properly so called, and those loaned to private firms.
Captures of actual privateers do not appear in the list quoted from.
"The commerce-destroying of this war, therefore, was marked by the
particular characteristics of cruisers acting together in squadron,
not far from their base, while the enemy thought best to keep his
fleet concentrated elsewhere; notwithstanding which, and the bad
administration of the English navy, the cruisers were more and more
controlled as the great French fleets disappeared." The results of the
war of 1689-1697 do not therefore vitiate the general conclusion that
"a cruising, commerce-destroying warfare, to be destructive, must be
seconded by a squadron warfare, and by divisions of ships-of-the-line;
which, forcing the enemy to unite his forces, permit the cruisers to
make fortunate attempts upon his trade. Without such backing the
result will be simply the capture of the cruisers." Toward the end of
this war the real tendency was becoming manifest, and was still more
plainly seen in the next, when the French navy had sunk to a yet lower
state of weakness.
Notwithstanding their losses, the sea nations made good their cause.
The war, which began with the French taking the offensive, ended by
reducing them everywhere to the defensive, and forced Louis to do
violence at once to his strongest prejudices and his most reasonable
political wishes, by recognizing as king of England him whom he looked
upon as a usurper as well as his own inveterate enemy. On its
surface, and taken as a whole, this war will appear almost wholly a
land struggle, extending from the Spanish Netherlands down the line of
the Rhine, to Savoy in Italy and Catalonia in Spain. The sea fights in
the Channel, the Irish struggle receding in the distance, look like
mere episodes; while the underlying action of trade and commerce is
wholly disregarded, or noticed only as their outcries tell of their
sufferings. Yet trade and shipping not only bore the burden of
suffering, but in the main paid the armies that were fighting the
French; and this turning of the stream of wealth from both sea nations
into the coffers of their allies was perhaps determined, certainly
hastened, by the misdirection of that naval supremacy with which
France began the war. It was then possible, as it will usually be
possible, for a really fine military navy of superior force to strike
an overwhelming blow at a less ready rival; but the opportunity was
allowed to slip, and the essentially stronger, better founded sea
power of the allies had time to assert itself.
The peace signed at Ryswick in 1697 was most disadvantageous to
France; she lost all that had been gained since the Peace of Nimeguen,
nineteen years before, with the single important exception of
Strasburg. All that Louis XIV. had gained by trick or force during the
years of peace was given up. Immense restitutions were made to Germany
and to Spain. In so far as the latter were made in the Netherlands,
they were to the immediate advantage of the United Provinces, and
indeed of all Europe as well as of Spain. To the two sea nations the
terms of the treaty gave commercial benefits, which tended to the
increase of their own sea power and to the consequent injury of that
of France.
France had made a gigantic struggle; to stand alone as she did then,
and as she has since done more than once, against all Europe is a
great feat. Yet it may be said that as the United Provinces taught the
lesson that a nation, however active and enterprising, cannot rest
upon external resources alone, if intrinsically weak in numbers and
territory, so France in its measure shows that a nation cannot
subsist indefinitely off itself, however powerful in numbers and
strong in internal resources.
It is said that a friend once found Colbert looking dreamily from his
windows, and on questioning him as to the subject of his meditations,
received this reply: "In contemplating the fertile fields before my
eyes, I recall those which I have seen elsewhere; what a rich country
is France!" This conviction supported him amid the many
discouragements of his official life, when struggling to meet the
financial difficulties arising from the extravagance and wars of the
king; and it has been justified by the whole course of the nation's
history since his days. France is rich in natural resources as well as
in the industry and thrift of her people. But neither individual
nations nor men can thrive when severed from natural intercourse with
their kind; whatever the native vigor of constitution, it requires
healthful surroundings, and freedom to draw to itself from near and
from far all that is conducive to its growth and strength and general
welfare. Not only must the internal organism work satisfactorily, the
processes of decay and renewal, of movement and circulation, go on
easily, but, from sources external to themselves, both mind and body
must receive healthful and varied nourishment. With all her natural
gifts France wasted away because of the want of that lively
intercourse between the different parts of her own body and constant
exchange with other people, which is known as commerce, internal or
external. To say that war was the cause of these defects is to state
at least a partial truth; but it does not exhaust the matter. War,
with its many acknowledged sufferings, is above all harmful when it
cuts a nation off from others and throws it back upon itself. There
may indeed be periods when such rude shocks have a bracing effect, but
they are exceptional, and of short duration, and they do not
invalidate the general statement. Such isolation was the lot of France
during the later wars of Louis XIV., and it well-nigh destroyed her;
whereas to save her from the possibility of such stagnation was the
great aim of Colbert's life.
War alone could not entail it, if only war could be postponed until
the processes of circulation within and without the kingdom were
established and in vigorous operation. They did not exist when he took
office; they had to be both created and firmly rooted in order to
withstand the blast of war. Time was not given to accomplish this
great work, nor did Louis XIV. support the schemes of his minister by
turning the budding energies of his docile and devoted subjects into
paths favorable to it. So when the great strain came upon the powers
of the nation, instead of drawing strength from every quarter and
through many channels, and laying the whole outside world under
contribution by the energy of its merchants and seamen, as England has
done in like straits, it was thrown back upon itself, cut off from the
world by the navies of England and Holland, and the girdle of enemies
which surrounded it upon the continent. The only escape from this
process of gradual starvation was by an effectual control of the sea;
the creation of a strong sea power which should insure free play for
the wealth of the land and the industry of the people. For this, too,
France had great natural advantages in her three seaboards, on the
Channel, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean; and politically she had
had the fair opportunity of joining to her own maritime power that of
the Dutch in friendly alliance, hostile or at least wary toward
England. In the pride of his strength, conscious of absolute control
in his kingdom, Louis cast away this strong reinforcement to his
power, and proceeded to rouse Europe against him by repeated
aggressions. In the period which we have just considered, France
justified his confidence by a magnificent, and upon the whole
successful, maintenance of his attitude against all Europe; she did
not advance, but neither did she greatly recede. But this display of
power was exhausting; it ate away the life of the nation, because it
drew wholly upon itself and not upon the outside world, with which it
could have been kept in contact by the sea. In the war that next
followed, the same energy is seen, but not the same vitality; and
France was everywhere beaten back and brought to the verge of ruin.
The lesson of both is the same; nations, like men, however strong,
decay when cut off from the external activities and resources which at
once draw out and support their internal powers. A nation, as we have
already shown, cannot live indefinitely off itself, and the easiest
way by which it can communicate with other peoples and renew its own
strength is the sea.
FOOTNOTES:
[66] Campbell: Lives of the Admirals.
[67] Martin: History of France.
[68] See Map of English Channel, etc., p. 107.
[69] That is, nearly motionless.
[70] Hoste: Naval Tactics.
[71] Ledyard says the order to remove the buoys was not carried out
(Naval History, vol. ii. p. 636).
[72] Seignelay, the French minister of marine of the day, called him
"poltron de tête, mais pas de coeur."
[73] The author has followed in the text the traditional and generally
accepted account of Tourville's orders and the motives of his action.
A French writer, M. de Crisenoy, in a very interesting paper upon the
secret history preceding and accompanying the event, traverses many of
these traditional statements. According to him, Louis XIV. was not
under any illusion as to the loyalty of the English officers to their
flag; and the instructions given to Tourville, while peremptory under
certain conditions, did not compel him to fight in the situation of
the French fleet on the day of the battle. The tone of the
instructions, however, implied dissatisfaction with the admiral's
action in previous cruises, probably in the pursuit after Beachy Head,
and a consequent doubt of his vigor in the campaign then beginning.
Mortification therefore impelled him to the desperate attack on the
allied fleet; and, according to M. de Crisenoy, the council of war in
the admiral's cabin, and the dramatic production of the king's orders,
had no existence in fact.
[74] Campbell: Lives of the Admirals.