INVASION
England has not been invaded since A.D. 1066, when, the country having
no fleet in being, William the Conqueror effected a landing and
subjugated the kingdom. During the eight centuries and more that have
since elapsed, every country in Europe has been invaded and its capital
occupied, in many cases more than once. It is by no means for lack of
attempts to invade her that England has been spared the calamity of
invasion for more than eight hundred years. It is not because she has
had at all times--it may indeed be doubted if she has had at any
time--organized military force sufficient to repel an invader, if he
could not be stopped at sea. It is because she can only be invaded
across the sea, and because whenever the attempt has been made she has
always had naval force sufficient to bring the enterprise to nought. It
is merely a truism to say that the invasion of hostile territory across
the sea is a much more difficult and hazardous enterprise than the
crossing of a land frontier by organized military force. But it is no
truism to say that the reason why it is so much more difficult and more
hazardous is that there is no real parallel between the two cases. I
assume a vigorous defensive on the part of the adversary assailed in
both cases--a defensive which, though commonly so called, is really
offensive in its nature. The essential difference lies in this, that two
countries which are separated by the sea have no common frontier. Each
has its own frontier at the limit of its territorial waters, but between
these two there lies a region common to both and from which neither can
be excluded except by the superior naval force of the other.
For the moment an expeditionary force emerges from its own territorial
waters--which may be any distance from a few miles up to many thousands
of miles from the territorial waters of the adversary to be assailed--it
must be prepared to defend itself, and naval force alone can afford it
an adequate measure of defence. Military forces embarked in transports
are defenceless and practically unarmed. They cannot defend themselves
with their own arms, nor can the transports which carry them be so armed
as to afford adequate defence against the smallest warship afloat, least
of all against torpedo craft. Hence, unless the sea to be traversed has
been cleared of the naval forces of the enemy beforehand, the invading
military force must be covered by a naval force sufficient to overcome
any naval force which the enemy is able to bring against it. If the
latter can bring a fleet--as he must be able to do if the invasion is
to be prevented--the covering fleet must be able to beat any fleet that
he can bring. That condition being satisfied, however, it is clear that
the covering fleet must be terribly hampered and handicapped in the
ensuing conflict by the presence of a huge and unwieldy assemblage of
unarmed transports filled with disarmed men, and by the consequent
necessity of defending it against the attack of those portions of the
enemy's naval force to which, albeit not suitable for engaging in the
principal conflict, the transports would offer an otherwise defenceless
prey. Hence the escorting fleet must be stronger than its adversary in a
far larger proportion than it need be if naval issues pure and simple
were alone at stake--so strong indeed that, if the transports were out
of the way, its victory might be taken as certain. But if that is so it
is manifest that the prospects of successful invasion would be
immeasurably improved by seeking to decide the naval issue first--as
Tourville very properly did in the Beachy Head campaign--and keeping the
transports in hand and in port until it had been decided in favour of
the intending invader. This is the eternal dilemma of invasion across a
sea of which the command has not previously been secured. If you are not
strong enough to dispose of the enemy's naval force you are certainly
not strong enough to escort an invading force--itself helpless
afloat--across the sea in his teeth. If you are strong enough to do this
you will certainly be wise to beat him first, because then there will be
nothing left to prevent the transit of your troops. In other words,
command of the sea, if not absolutely and in all cases indispensable to
a successful invasion, is at any rate the only certain way of ensuring
its success.
Naval history from first to last is full of illustrations of the
principles here expounded. I will examine one or two of them, and I must
take my illustrations mainly from the naval history of Britain, first,
because Britain, being an island, is the only country in Europe which
cannot be invaded except across the sea, and secondly, because Britain
for that very reason has often been subjected to attempts at invasion
and has always frustrated them by denying to her adversary that
sufficiency of sea control which, if history is any guide, is essential
to successful invasion. But first I will examine two cases which might
at first sight seem to militate against the principles I have
enunciated. The brilliant campaign of Caesar which ended in the overthrow
of Pompey and his cause at Pharsalus, was opened by Caesar's desperate
venture of carrying his army across the Adriatic to the coast of Epirus,
although Pompey's fleet was in full command of the waters traversed.
This is one of those exceptions which may be said to prove the rule.
Caesar had no alternative. Pompey was in Illyria, and if Caesar could not
overthrow Pompey on that side of the Adriatic it was certain that Pompey
would overthrow Caesar on the other side. For this reason, and perhaps
for this reason alone, Caesar was compelled to undertake a venture which
he must have known to be desperate. How desperate it was is shown by the
fact that, not having transports enough to carry more than half his army
at once, he had to send his transports back as soon as he had landed,
and they were all destroyed on their way back to Brundusium. Antony his
lieutenant did, indeed, succeed after a time in getting the remainder of
his army across, but not before Caesar had been reduced to the utmost
straits. The whole enterprise moreover was not, strictly speaking, an
invasion of hostile territory. The inhabitants of the territory occupied
by both combatants were neutral as between them, and were willing to
furnish Caesar with such scanty supplies as they had. Again, an army in
those days needed no ammunition except the sword which each soldier
carried on his person, and that kind of ammunition was not expended in
fighting. Hence Caesar had no occasion to concern himself with the
security of his communications across the sea--a consideration which
weighs with overwhelming force on the commander of a modern oversea
expedition. "A modern army," as the late Lord Wolseley said, "is such a
complicated organism that any interruption in the line of communications
tends to break up and destroy its very life." An army marches on its
belly. If it cannot be fed it cannot fight. After the Battle of Talavera
Wellington was so paralysed by the failure of the Spanish authorities to
supply his troops with food that he had to abandon the offensive for a
time and to retreat towards his own line of communication with the sea.
Caesar on the other hand abandoned the sea, which could not feed him, and
trusted to the resources of the country. The difference is vital. The
one risk that Caesar ran was the destruction of his army afloat, and that
he ran not because he chose but because he must. The risk of destruction
on land he was prepared to run, and this, at any rate, was, as the event
proved, a case of _bene ausus vana contemnere_.
Again, Napoleon's descent on Egypt is another exception which proves the
rule, and proves it still more conclusively. Napoleon evaded Nelson's
fleet and landed his army in Egypt. The army so landed left Egypt in
British transports, having laid down its arms and surrendered just
before the conclusion of the Peace of Amiens; and but for the timely
conclusion of that short-lived armistice, every French soldier who
survived the Egyptian campaign might have seen the inside of a British
prison. This was because Napoleon, who never fathomed the secrets of the
sea, chose to think that to evade a hostile fleet was the same thing as
to defeat it. He managed for a time to escape Nelson's attentions by the
skin of his teeth, and fondly fancied that because he had done so the
dominion of the East was won. He was quickly undeceived by the Battle of
the Nile. That victory destroyed the fleet which had escorted his army
to Egypt and thereby made it impossible for the army ever to return
except by consent of the Power which he never could vanquish on the sea.
The Battle of the Nile, wrote a Frenchman in Egypt, "is a calamity which
leaves us here as children totally lost to the mother country. Nothing
but peace can restore us to her." Nothing but the so-called Peace of
Amiens did restore them. If it be argued, as it often has been, that
Napoleon's successful descent on Egypt proves that military enterprises
of large moment may sometimes be undertaken without first securing the
command of the sea to be traversed, surely the Battle of the Nile and
its sequel are a triumphant refutation of such an argument. Such
enterprises are merely a roundabout way of presenting the belligerent
who retains the command of the sea with as many prisoners of war as
survive from the original expedition.
I need not labour the point which the unbroken testimony of history
from the time of the Norman Conquest has established, that all attempts
to invade England have been made in the past and must be made in the
future across a sea not commanded by the intending invader. If he has
secured the command of the sea beforehand, there is nothing to prevent
the invasion except the consideration that he can attain his end--that
is, the subjugation of the nation's will--at less cost to himself. That
being premised, let us consider how the intending invader will set about
his task. There are three ways, and three ways only. First, he may seek
to overpower the British naval defence on the seas, that is to obtain
the command of the sea. If he can do that, the whole thing is done. Or
secondly, he may collect the military forces destined for the invasion
in ports suitable for the purpose, and when all is ready he may cover
their embarkation and transit by a naval force sufficient to overcome
any naval force which this country can direct against it. I have already
shown, however, that a force sufficient to do this with any certainty,
or even with any reasonable prospect of success, must needs be more than
sufficient to overpower the British naval defence and thereby to secure
the command of the sea, if the enemy were freed from the entangling and
wellnigh disabling necessity of providing for the safe conduct of an
unwieldy host of otherwise defenceless transports. In other words he is
putting the cart before the horse, a procedure which has never yet
succeeded in getting the cart to its destination. This second
alternative is then merely a clumsy and extremely inefficient way of
attaining the same end as the first, and need only be mentioned in order
to exclude it from further consideration.
There remains only a third alternative. This is to assemble the invading
military force at suitable ports as before, and to attempt to engage the
attention of the defending naval force by operations at a distance for a
time sufficient to secure the unmolested transit of the military
expedition. This is the method which has nearly always been employed by
an enemy projecting an invasion of this country. It has never yet
succeeded, because it always leads in the end to a situation which is
practically indistinguishable from that involved in the second
alternative, which I have already discussed and excluded. The naval and
the military elements in the enterprise of invasion being now, by the
hypothesis, separated in space and for that reason incapable of being
very exactly combined in time, a whole series of highly indeterminate
factors is thereby introduced into the problem to be solved by the
invader. There are elements of naval force, to wit, all manner of small
craft, which are not required for the main conflict of fleets--and it
is this conflict which alone can secure the command of the sea--but
which are eminently adapted for the impeachment and destruction of
unarmed transports. These will be employed in the blockade of the ports
in which the military forces are collecting. If the assailant employs
similar craft to drive the blockaders away, the defender will bring up
larger craft to stiffen his blockading flotillas. The invading force
will therefore still be impeded and impeached. The process thus goes on
until, if it is not otherwise decided by the conflict of the main fleets
at a distance, the contending naval forces of both sides are attracted
to the scene of the proposed embarkation, there to fight it out in the
conditions involved in the second alternative considered above,
conditions which I have already shown to be the least favourable to the
would-be invader. In a masterly analysis Mr Julian Corbett has shown
that the British defence against a threatened invasion has always been
conducted on these lines, that the primary objective of the defence has
been the troops and their transports, and that the vigorous pursuit of
this objective has always resulted in a decision being obtained as
between the main fleets of the two belligerents. That the decision has
always been in favour of the British arms is at once a lesson and a
warning--a lesson that immunity from invasion can only be ensured by
superiority at sea, a warning that such superiority can only be secured
by the adequate preparation, the judicious disposition, and the skilful
handling of the naval forces to be employed, as well as by an
unflinching _animus pugnandi_. But no nation which goes to war can hope
for more or be content with less than the opportunity of obtaining a
decision in these conditions. The issue lies on the knees of the gods.
A few illustrations may here be cited. We have seen how in the Beachy
Head campaign Tourville, having failed to force a decision on
Torrington's fleet in being, could not turn aside with Torrington at his
heels and Killigrew and Shovel on his flank to bring over an invading
force from France. He was paralysed by that abiding characteristic of
French naval strategy which impelled the French naval commanders to fix
their eye on ulterior objects and blinded them to the fact that the best
way to attain those objects was to destroy the naval forces of the enemy
whenever the opportunity offered of so obtaining a decision. Hence their
preference for the leeward position in action, their constant reluctance
to fight a decisive action, their habitual direction of their fire at
the masts and sails of the enemy rather than at his hulls, and in
Tourville's case his failure to annihilate Torrington's fleet in being,
resulting in the total miscarriage of the schemes for invasion, to be
followed by internal insurrection, which, as Admiral Colomb has shown,
were the kernel of the French plan of campaign. In the case of the
Armada in the previous century, the task of invasion was entrusted to
Parma, who had collected troops for the purpose, and vessels for their
transport, in the ports of the Spanish Netherlands. But Justin of Nassau
kept a close watch outside, and Parma could not move. He summoned Medina
Sidonia with the Armada to his assistance, but he summoned him in vain,
for the Armada, harassed throughout the Channel, and, as it were, smoked
out of Calais, was finally shattered at Gravelines. Precisely the same
thing happened in the eighteenth century during the Seven Years' War.
Troops and transports were being collected in the Morbihan, but their
exit was blocked by a British naval force stationed off the ports.
Conflans with the French main fleet was at Brest, and there he was
blockaded by Hawke. Evading the blockade, Conflans put to sea and
straightway went to release the troops and transports, hopelessly
blockaded in the Morbihan. But Hawke swooped down on him and destroyed
him in Quiberon Bay, Boscawen having previously destroyed at Lagos the
fleet which De La Clue was bringing from Toulon to effect a junction
with Conflans.
One more illustration may be cited, and I will treat it at some length,
because it presents certain features which give it peculiar
significance in relation to current controversies. This is the projected
invasion of England by France in 1744. It is, so far as I know, the
solitary instance in our naval history which shows the enemy framing his
plans on the lines of what is now known as "a bolt from the blue"--that
is, he projected a surprise invasion, at a time when the two countries
were nominally at peace, in the hope that the first overt act of the war
he was contemplating might be the landing of his troops on British soil.
In 1743, when this project was conceived, England and France were, as I
have said, nominally at peace, but troops belonging to both had fought
at Dettingen, not in any direct quarrel of their own, but because
England was supporting Maria Theresa and France was supporting her
enemies. The fleets of both Powers were jealously watching each other in
the Mediterranean, a situation which led early in 1744 to the too
notorious action of Mathews off Toulon. Nevertheless, until the very end
of 1743 no direct conflict with France was anticipated by the English
Government.
Yet France was already secretly preparing her "bolt from the blue." She
had resolved to support the Pretender's cause and to prepare an invasion
of England in which the Pretender's son was to take part, and on landing
in England to rally his party to the overthrow of the Hanoverian
dynasty. The bolt was to be launched from Dunkirk and directed at the
Thames, the intention being to land the invading force at Blackwall.
Some ten thousand French troops to be employed in the expedition were
sent into winter-quarters in and around Dunkirk, but this aroused no
suspicion in England, because this region was the natural place for the
left flank of the French army to winter in, and Dunkirk contained no
transports at the time. Transports were, however, being taken up under
false charter-parties at French ports on the Atlantic and in the
Channel, and were ordered as soon as ready to rendezvous secretly and
separately at Dunkirk. At first the intention was for the expeditionary
force to make its attempt without any support from the French fleet. But
Marshal Saxe, who was to command it and knew that the Thames and its
adjacent waters were never denuded of naval force sufficient to make
short work of a fleet of unarmed transports, flatly declined to
entertain this project and demanded adequate naval support for the
enterprise. Accordingly a powerful fleet, held to be sufficient to
contain or defeat any British fleet that was thought likely to be able
to challenge it, was fitted out with all secrecy at Brest and placed
under the command of De Roquefeuil. Even he was not told its
destination, and false rumours on the subject were allowed to circulate
among those who were concerned in its preparation.
So far everything seemed to be going well. The blow was timed for the
first week in January, but the usual delays occurred, and for a month or
more after the date originally fixed, the expeditionary force and its
escort were separated by the whole length of northern France. Yet even
before the date originally fixed, England had got wind of the
preparations. From the middle of December Brest had been kept under
watch, and orders had been issued to the dockyards to prepare for sea as
many ships of the line as were available. These preparations were
continued, without intermission, until the end of January, the purpose
and destination of the armament at Brest still being unknown. Then two
alarming pieces of intelligence reached England at the same time. One
was that Roquefeuil had put to sea on January 26 (O.S.) with twenty-one
sail of the line, and before being lost sight of by the British cruiser
told off to watch him, had been seen to be clearly standing to the
northward. The other was that Prince Charles, the son of the Pretender,
had left Rome and had landed without hindrance in France. This, being a
direct violation of the Treaty of Utrecht, was naturally held to give to
the sailing of the Brest fleet the complexion of a direct hostile
intent. It was on February 1 that these facts were known, and on
February 2, Sir John Norris, a veteran of Barfleur and La Hogue, who was
now well over eighty years of age, but as the event showed was still
fully equal to the task entrusted to him, was ordered to hoist his flag
at Portsmouth and to "take the most effectual measures to prevent the
making of any descent on the Kingdoms." Norris hoisted his flag on the
6th, and by the 18th he had eighteen sail of the line under his command.
Subsequently his force was increased to twenty. Nothing was known of the
movements of the French fleet since January 29, when the frigate set to
watch it had finally lost sight of it. It was in fact still off the
mouth of the Channel, baffled by adverse winds and gales and vainly
seeking to make headway against them. If it had gone to the
Mediterranean, Mathews off Toulon would be placed in grave jeopardy, and
there were some projects for detaching a powerful squadron of Norris's
ships to his support. If, on the other hand, it was aiming at the
Channel, Norris with his whole force would be none too strong to
encounter and defeat it. This was Norris's dilemma, and it was not until
February 9 that he learned from the Duke of Newcastle that an embargo
had been laid on all shipping at Dunkirk, where some fifty vessels of
one hundred and fifty to two hundred tons had by this time assembled.
These might at a pinch and for a short transit be estimated to be
capable of transporting some ten thousand troops. But an embargo,
although clear proof of hostile intent, was not necessarily a sign of
impending invasion. It was a common expedient, preliminary to war,
whereby you deprived your enemy of ships and men very necessary to his
purposes and secured ships and men equally necessary to your own. Hence
no strategic connexion could with any certainty be held to exist between
the embargo at Dunkirk and the sailing of the French fleet from Brest.
On the other hand it was clearly dangerous to uncover the Channel so
long as the destination of the Brest fleet was unknown, and, although
Newcastle had suggested to Norris that he should divide his fleet and
send the major part of it to reinforce Mathews in the Mediterranean, yet
Norris strongly demurred to the suggestion, and before the time came to
act on it the situation had so far developed as to disallow it
altogether. On February 11, Norris received information that a French
fleet of at least sixteen sail of the line had been seen the day before
off the Start. This convinced him that the French had some scheme to the
eastward in hand; and as he had frigates watching the Channel between
the Isle of Wight and Cape Barfleur he was equally convinced that the
French had so far no appreciable armed force to the eastward of him.
Newcastle, however, did not share this conviction. He had received
numerous reports of movements of French ships in the Channel to the
eastward of the Isle of Wight and other information which pointed to a
concentration at Dunkirk. As a matter of fact no French men-of-war were
at this time east of the Isle of Wight, and the vessels reported to
Newcastle must have been transports making for Dunkirk and magnified
into ships of the line by the fog of war. Newcastle, accordingly,
ordered Norris to go forthwith to the Downs. Foul winds prevented Norris
from sailing at once from St Helen's, and on the 13th, the day before he
did sail, he received further information which confirmed his conviction
that the French were still to the westward. But Newcastle's orders
remained peremptory, and on the 14th he sailed with eighteen ships, and
anchored in the Downs on the 17th. There he found two more ships
awaiting him, while two others were on their way to join him from
Plymouth.
I pause here for a moment to point out that Norris's desire, over-ruled
by Newcastle, to remain at Portsmouth was thoroughly well advised. He
knew that there was naval force enough in the Thames and the Downs to
dispose of any expedition coming from Dunkirk unless it were escorted by
the Brest fleet, or by a very considerable detachment therefrom. He was
well assured that no such detachment could have eluded the vigilance of
his frigates, and he felt that in these circumstances he could better
impeach Roquefeuil by lying in wait for him at Spithead or St Helen's
than by preceding him to the Downs. How right he was in this
appreciation will be seen from a closer consideration of the movements
of the French fleet. It was not until February 13 that Roquefeuil
received his final orders off the Start. He was directed to detach De
Baraille, his second in command, with five ships. These were to go
forthwith to Dunkirk and escort Saxe's expedition, while he himself with
the remainder of his fleet was to blockade Norris at Portsmouth and
defeat him if he could. But Roquefeuil and his council of war found
these orders too hazardous for execution. They resolved not to divide
the fleet until at least Norris, presumed to be at Portsmouth, had been
disposed of. On the 17th, the day on which Norris had anchored in the
Downs, they looked into Spithead and persuaded themselves that they had
seen Norris there with eleven sail of the line. Judging that the weather
was too bad for a successful blockade, Roquefeuil then passed on up the
Channel, convinced that Norris was now behind him with too weak a force
to be of any effect. Baraille was then sent on with his detachment to
Dunkirk, but by this time Saxe had lost heart and declined to sail
until Roquefeuil's whole fleet was at hand to escort him.
It never was at hand to escort him, and the expedition never sailed.
Roquefeuil, with his fleet now greatly reduced, anchored off Dungeness
on the 22nd, and never got any further. What had happened in the
meanwhile was this. Norris remained in the Downs, being held there for
some time by a gale. He was not unaware of what was going on at Dunkirk,
but he hesitated to proceed thither lest the French fleet behind him
should be covering another expedition coming from some French port in
the Channel. He sent to reconnoitre, however, and on the 21st received
information that four sixty-gun ships--these were, no doubt, Baraille's
detachment--were at anchor off Gravelines, and there covering the
transports at Dunkirk. On the 22nd, Roquefeuil appeared off Dungeness
and anchored there. As soon as he knew Roquefeuil's whereabouts, Norris
resolved to attack him without delay. The wind, being N.W., was
favourable to his enterprise, and at the same time made it impossible
for the expedition to leave Dunkirk. Should the wind change before
Roquefeuil was brought to action and defeated, Norris held that he was
strong enough to detach a force to impeach Saxe and Baraille, and at the
same time to give a good account of Roquefeuil. But matters did not
exactly turn out in this wise. On the 24th Norris left the Downs, with a
light wind from the N.W., and an ebb tide in his favour, making for
Dungeness, where Roquefeuil was still lying. His appearance in the
offing was Roquefeuil's first information that Norris was to the
eastward of him in superior force, and it greatly disconcerted
Roquefeuil. He held a hasty council of war and decided to cut and run.
By this time the tide had turned and the wind had fallen, so that he
could not stir until the tide again began to ebb. Norris, similarly
disabled, had anchored some few miles to the eastward, intending to make
his attack as soon as wind and tide allowed. But during the night a
furious gale from the N.E. sprang up, which drove most of Norris's ships
from their anchors, and when daylight came the French were nowhere to be
seen. Roquefeuil had slipped his cables, and with the gale behind him
was hurrying back to Brest. Norris went after him as far as Beachy Head,
but there gave up the chase and returned to the Downs, to make sure that
Saxe and Baraille, for whom the wind was now favourable, might find
their way barred should they attempt to set sail. The transports,
however, were by now in no position to move, nor was either Saxe or
Baraille in any mind to allow them to move. They both realized that the
game was up. The troops were in the transports, and they suffered
greatly in the gale that frustrated Norris' attack on Roquefeuil. But
that was merely an accident of warfare. It was not the gale that
shattered the expedition, nor did it save England from invasion. On the
contrary, while it played havoc with the transports and troops at
Dunkirk, it also saved Roquefeuil's fleet from destruction at Dungeness.
But, gale or no gale, the transports and troops never could have crossed
so long as Norris held on to the Downs. Nor could they have crossed had
Norris been allowed to remain at Portsmouth as he desired; for in that
case Baraille could not have been detached.
To point the moral of this memorable story, I cannot do better than
quote Mr Julian Corbett's comment on it. "The whole attempt, it will be
seen, with everything in its favour, had exhibited the normal course of
degradation. For all the nicely framed plan and perfect deception, the
inherent difficulties, when it came to the point of execution, had as
usual forced a clumsy concentration of the enemy's battle fleet with his
transports, and we on our part were able to forestall it with every
advantage in our favour by the simple expedient of a central mass on a
revealed and certain line of passage." We were certainly taken at a
disadvantage at the outset, for the "bolt from the blue" was preparing
some time before any one in England got wind of it. The country had
been largely denuded of troops for foreign enterprises, Scotland was
deeply disaffected, the Jacobites were full of hope and intrigue, the
Ministry was supine and feeble, the navy was deplorably weak in home
waters, and such ships as were available had been dispersed to their
ports for refit. Nevertheless with all these conditions in its favour
the projected "bolt from the blue" was detected and anticipated--tardily,
it is true, and with no great sagacity except on the part of Norris--long
before the expedition was ready to start. Surely the moral needs no
further pointing.
By these instances, and others which might be quoted, the law seems to
be established that in default of an assured command of the sea the
fleet which seeks to cover an invasion is drawn by irresistible
attraction towards the place of embarkation, and that the same
attraction brings it there--if not earlier--into conflict with the
superior forces of the enemy. If in the Trafalgar campaign, which I have
no space to examine in detail, the law does not seem to operate to the
extent that it did in the other cases examined, that is only because the
disposition of the British fleets was so masterly that Napoleon never
got the opportunity he yearned for of bringing his fleets to the place
of embarkation. They were outmanoeuvred beforehand and finally
overthrown at Trafalgar.
There is indeed a fourth alternative which has been advanced by some
speculative writers, though history lends it no countenance, and it has
never, I believe, been taken seriously by any naval authority of repute.
I cannot take it seriously myself. It assumes that some naval Power,
suitably situated as regards this country, might without either
provocation or overt international dispute, clandestinely take up
transport--either a comparatively small number of very large merchant
vessels or a very large number of barges, lighters, or what not to be
towed by steam vessels--might clandestinely put an army with all its
necessary _impedimenta_ on board the transports so provided and then
clandestinely, and without either notice or warning, send them to sea,
with or without escort, with intent to effect a landing at some suitable
point on the English coast. The whole theory seems to me to involve at
least three monstrous improbabilities: first, a piratical intent on the
part of a civilized nation; secondly, a concealment of such intent in
conditions wellnigh incompatible with the degree of secrecy required;
and thirdly, a precision and a punctuality of movement in the operations
of embarkation, transit, and landing of which history affords no
example, while naval opinion and experience scoff at them as utterly
impracticable. Of course the future may not resemble the past, and naval
wars of the future may not be conducted on a pattern sealed by the
unbroken teaching of over eight hundred years. But that is an assumption
which I cannot seriously entertain.