[Footnote 62: Written in 1900. (_The_Times_.)]
The practice to which we have become accustomed of late, of
publishing original documents relating to naval and military
history, has been amply justified by the results. These meet
the requirements of two classes of readers. The publications
satisfy, or at any rate go far towards satisfying, the wishes
of those who want to be entertained, and also of those whose
higher motive is a desire to discover the truth about notable
historical occurrences. Putting the public in possession of the
materials, previously hidden in more or less inaccessible
muniment-rooms and record offices, with which the narratives of
professed historians have been constructed, has had advantages
likely to become more and more apparent as time goes on. It acts
as a check upon the imaginative tendencies which even eminent
writers have not always been able, by themselves, to keep under
proper control. The certainty, nay the mere probability, that
you will be confronted with the witnesses on whose evidence you
profess to have relied--the 'sources' from which your story is
derived--will suggest the necessity of sobriety of statement and
the advisability of subordinating rhetoric to veracity. Had the
contemporary documents been available for an immediate appeal to
them by the reading public, we should long ago have rid ourselves
of some dangerous superstitions. We should have abandoned our
belief in the fictions that the Armada of 1588 was defeated by the
weather, and that the great Herbert of Torrington was a lubber,
a traitor, and a coward. It is not easy to calculate the benefit
that we should have secured, had the presentation of some important
events in the history of our national defence been as accurate as
it was effective. Enormous sums of money have been wasted in trying
to make our defensive arrangements square with a conception of
history based upon misunderstanding or misinterpretation of facts.
Pecuniary extravagance is bad enough; but there is a greater evil
still. We have been taught to cherish, and we have been reluctant
to abandon, a false standard of defence, though adherence to
such a standard can be shown to have brought the country within
measurable distance of grievous peril. Captain Duro, of the Spanish
Navy, in his 'Armada Invencible,' placed within our reach
contemporary evidence from the side of the assailants, thereby
assisting us to form a judgment on a momentous episode in naval
history. The evidence was completed; some being adduced from
the other side, by our fellow-countryman Sir J. K. Laughton, in
his 'Defeat of the Spanish Armada,' published by the Navy Records
Society. Others have worked on similar lines; and a healthier view
of our strategic conditions and needs is more widely held than
it was; though it cannot be said to be, even yet, universally
prevalent. Superstition, even the grossest, dies hard.
Something deeper than mere literary interest, therefore, is to
be attributed to a work which has recently appeared in Paris.[63]
To speak strictly, it should be said that only the first volume of
three which will complete it has been published. It is, however,
in the nature of a work of the kind that its separate parts should
be virtually independent of each other. Consequently the volume
which we now have may be treated properly as a book by itself.
When completed the work is to contain all the documents relating
to the French preparations during the period 1793-1805, for taking
the offensive against England (_tous_les_documents_se_rapportant_
_à_la_préparation_de_l'offensive_contre_l'Angleterre_).
The search for, the critical examination and the methodical
classification of, the papers were begun in October 1898. The
book is compiled by Captain Desbrière, of the French Cuirassiers,
who was specially authorised to continue his editorial labours
even after he had resumed his ordinary military duties. It bears
the _imprimatur_ of the staff of the army; and its preface is
written by an officer who was--and so signs himself--chief of
the historical section of that department. There is no necessity
to criticise the literary execution of the work. What is wanted
is to explain the nature of its contents and to indicate the
lessons which may be drawn from them. Nevertheless, attention
may be called to a curious misreading of history contained in
the preface. In stating the periods which the different volumes
of the book are to cover, the writer alludes to the Peace of
Amiens, which, he affirms, England was compelled to accept by
exhaustion, want of means of defence, and fear of the menaces of
the great First Consul then disposing of the resources of France,
aggrandised, pacified, and reinforced by alliances. The book being
what it is and coming whence it does, such a statement ought not
to be passed over. 'The desire for peace,' says an author so
easily accessible as J. R. Green, 'sprang from no sense of national
exhaustion. On the contrary, wealth had never increased so fast....
Nor was there any ground for despondency in the aspect of the
war itself.' This was written in 1875 by an author so singularly
free from all taint of Chauvinism that he expressly resolved that
his work 'should never sink into a drum and trumpet history.' A
few figures will be interesting and, it may be added, conclusive.
Between 1793 when the war began and 1802 when the Peace of Amiens
interrupted it, the public income of Great Britain increased from
£16,382,000 to £28,000,000, the war taxes not being included
in the latter sum. The revenue of France, notwithstanding her
territorial acquisitions, sank from £18,800,000 to £18,000,000.
The French exports and imports by sea were annihilated; whilst
the British exports were doubled and the imports increased more
than 50 per cent. The French Navy had at the beginning 73, at
the end of the war 39, ships of the line; the British began the
contest with 135 and ended it with 202. Even as regards the army,
the British force at the end of the war was not greatly inferior
numerically to the French. It was, however, much scattered, being
distributed over the whole British Empire. In view of the question
under discussion, no excuse need be given for adducing these
facts.
[Footnote 63: 1793-1805. _Projets_et_Tentatives_de_Débarquement_
_aux_Iles_Britanniques_, par Édouard Desbrière, Capitaine breveté
aux 1er Cuirassiers. Paris, Chapelot et Cie. 1900. (Publié sous la
direction de la section historique de l'État-Major de l'Armée.)]
Captain Desbrière in the present volume carries his collection
of documents down to the date at which the then General Bonaparte
gave up his connection with the flotilla that was being equipped
in the French Channel ports, and prepared to take command of
the expedition to Egypt. The volume therefore, in addition to
accounts of many projected, but never really attempted, descents
on the British Isles, gives a very complete history of Hoche's
expedition to Ireland; of the less important, but curious, descent
in Cardigan Bay known as the Fishguard, or Fishgard, expedition;
and of the formation of the first 'Army of England,' a designation
destined to attain greater celebrity in the subsequent war, when
France was ruled by the great soldier whom we know as the Emperor
Napoleon. The various documents are connected by Captain Desbrière
with an explanatory commentary, and here and there are illustrated
with notes. He has not rested content with the publication of
MSS. selected from the French archives. In preparing his book he
visited England and examined our records; and, besides, he has
inserted in their proper place passages from Captain Mahan's works
and also from those of English authors. The reader's interest in
the book is likely to be almost exclusively concentrated on the
detailed, and, where Captain Desbrière's commentary appears,
lucid, account of Hoche's expedition. Of course, the part devoted
to the creation of the 'Army of England' is not uninteresting;
but it is distinctly less so than the part relating to the
proceedings of Hoche. Several of the many plans submitted by
private persons, who here describe them in their own words, are
worth examination; and some, it may be mentioned, are amusing
in the _naïveté_ of their Anglophobia and in their obvious
indifference to the elementary principles of naval strategy.
In this indifference they have some distinguished companions.
We are informed by Captain Desbrière that the idea of a hostile
descent on England was during a long time much favoured in France.
The national archives and those of the Ministries of War and
of Marine are filled with proposals for carrying it out, some
dating back to 1710. Whether emanating from private persons or
formulated in obedience to official direction, there are certain
features in all the proposals so marked that we are able to classify
the various schemes by grouping together those of a similar
character. In one class may be placed all those which aimed at
mere annoyance, to be effected by landing small bodies of men, not
always soldiers, to do as much damage as possible. The appearance
of these at many different points, it was believed, would so
harass the English that they would end the war, or at least so
divide their forces that their subjection might be looked for
with confidence. In another class might be placed proposals to
seize outlying, out not distant, British territory--the Channel
Islands or the Isle of Wight, for example. A third class might
comprise attempts on a greater scale, necessitating the employment
of a considerable body of troops and meriting the designation
'Invasion.' Some of these attempts were to be made in Great Britain,
some in Ireland. In every proposal for an attempt of this class,
whether it was to be made in Great Britain or in Ireland, it
was assumed that the invaders would receive assistance from the
people of the country invaded. Indeed, generally the bulk of the
force to be employed was ultimately to be composed of native
sympathisers, who were also to provide--at least at the
beginning--all the supplies and transport, both vehicles and
animals, required. Every plan, no matter to which class it might
belong, was based upon the assumption that the British naval
force could be avoided. Until we come to the time when General
Bonaparte, as he then was, dissociated himself from the first
'Army of England,' there is no trace, in any of the documents
now printed, of a belief in the necessity of obtaining command
of the sea before sending across it a considerable military
expedition. That there was such a thing as the command of the sea
is rarely alluded to; and when it is, it is merely to accentuate
the possibility of neutralising it by evading the force holding
it. There is something which almost deserves to be styled comical
in the absolutely unvarying confidence, alike of amateurs and
highly placed military officers, with which it was held that
a superior naval force was a thing that might be disregarded.
Generals who would have laughed to scorn anyone maintaining that,
though there was a powerful Prussian army on the road to one city
and an Austrian army on the road to the other, a French army
might force its way to either Berlin or Vienna without either
fighting or even being prepared to fight, such generals never
hesitated to approve expeditions obliged to traverse a region
in the occupation of a greatly superior force, the region being
pelagic and the force naval. We had seized the little islands
of St. Marcoff, a short distance from the coast of Normandy,
and held them for years. It was expressly admitted that their
recapture was impossible, 'à raison de la supériorité des forces
navales Anglaises'; but it was not even suspected that a much
more difficult operation, requiring longer time and a longer
voyage, was likely to be impracticable. We shall see by and by
how far this remarkable attitude of mind was supported by the
experience of Hoche's expedition to Ireland.
Hoche himself was the inventor of a plan of harassing the English
enemy which long remained in favour. He proposed to organise what
was called a _Chouannerie_ in England. As that country had no
_Chouans_ of her own, the want was to be supplied by sending over
an expedition composed of convicts. Hoche's ideas were approved
and adopted by the eminent Carnot. The plan, to which the former
devoted great attention, was to land on the coast of Wales from
1000 to 1200 _forçats_, to be commanded by a certain Mascheret,
of whom Hoche wrote that he was 'le plus mauvais sujet dont on
puisse purger la France.' In a plan accepted and forwarded by
Hoche, it was laid down that the band, on reaching the enemy's
country, was, if possible, not to fight, but to pillage; each man
was to understand that he was sent to England to steal 100,000f.,
'pour ensuite finir sa carrière tranquillement dans l'aisance,'
and was to be informed that he would receive a formal pardon from
the French Government. The plan, extraordinary as it was, was
one of the few put into execution. The famous Fishguard Invasion
was carried out by some fourteen hundred convicts commanded by an
American adventurer named Tate. The direction to avoid fighting
was exactly obeyed by Colonel Tate and the armed criminals under
his orders. He landed in Cardigan Bay from a small squadron of
French men-of-war at sunset on the 22nd February 1797; and, on the
appearance of Lord Cawdor with the local Yeomanry and Militia, asked
to be allowed to surrender on the 24th. At a subsequent exchange
of prisoners the French authorities refused to receive any of the
worthies who had accompanied Tate. At length 512 were allowed to
land; but were imprisoned in the forts of Cherbourg. The French
records contain many expressions of the dread experienced by the
inhabitants of the coast lest the English should put on shore in
France the malefactors whom they had captured at Fishguard.
A more promising enterprise was that in which it was decided to
obtain the assistance of the Dutch, at the time in possession of
a considerable fleet. The Dutch fleet was to put to sea with the
object of engaging the English. An army of 15,000 was then to be
embarked in the ports of Holland, and was to effect a diversion in
favour of another and larger body, which, starting from France, was
to land in Ireland, repeating the attempt of Hoche in December 1796,
which will be dealt with later on. The enterprise was frustrated
by the action of Admiral Duncan, who decisively defeated the Dutch
fleet off Camperdown in October. It might have been supposed
that this would have driven home the lesson that no considerable
military expedition across the water has any chance of success
till the country sending it has obtained command of the sea; but
it did not. To Bonaparte the event was full of meaning; but no
other French soldier seems to have learned it--if we may take
Captain Desbrière's views as representative--even down to the
present day. On the 23rd February 1798 Bonaparte wrote: 'Opérer une
descente en Angleterre sans être maître de la mer est l'opération
la plus hardie et la plus difficile qui ait été faite.' There has
been much speculation as to the reasons which induced Bonaparte
to quit the command of the 'Army of England' after holding it
but a short time, and after having devoted great attention to
its organisation and proposed methods of transport across the
Channel. The question is less difficult than it has appeared
to be to many. One of the foremost men in France, Bonaparte was
ready to take the lead in any undertaking which seemed likely
to have a satisfactory ending--an ending which would redound
to the glory of the chief who conducted it. The most important
operation contemplated was the invasion of England; and--now that
Hoche was no more--Bonaparte might well claim to lead it. His
penetrating insight soon enabled him to see its impracticability
until the French had won the command of the Channel. Of that
there was not much likelihood; and at the first favourable moment
he dissociated himself from all connection with an enterprise
which offered so little promise of a successful termination that
it was all but certain not to be begun. An essential condition,
as already pointed out, of all the projected invasions was the
receipt of assistance from sympathisers in the enemy's country.
Hoche himself expected this even in Tate's case; but experience
proved the expectation to be baseless. When the prisoners taken
with Tate were being conducted to their place of confinement,
the difficulty was to protect them, 'car la population furieuse
contre les Français voulait les lyncher.' Captain Desbrière dwells
at some length on the mutinies in the British fleet in 1797, and
asks regretfully, 'Qu'avait-on fait pour profiter de cette chance
unique?' He remarks on the undoubted and really lamentable fact
that English historians have usually paid insufficient attention
to these occurrences. One, and perhaps the principal reason of their
silence, was the difficulty, at all events till quite lately, of
getting materials with which to compose a narrative. The result is
that the real character of the great mutinies has been altogether
misunderstood. Lord Camperdown's recently published life of his
great ancestor, Lord Duncan, has done something to put them in
their right light. As regards defence against the enemy, the
mutinies affected the security of the country very little. The
seamen always expressed their determination to do their duty if
the enemy put to sea. Even at the Nore they conspicuously displayed
their general loyalty; and, as a matter of fact, discipline had
regained its sway some time before the expedition preparing in
Holland was ready. How effectively the crews of the ships not
long before involved in the mutiny could fight, was proved at
Camperdown.
Though earlier in date than the events just discussed, the celebrated
first expedition to Ireland has been intentionally left out of
consideration till now. As to the general features of the
undertaking, and even some of its more important details, the
documents now published add little to our knowledge. The literature
of the expedition is large, and Captain Chevalier had given us an
admirable account of it in his 'Histoire de la Marine Française
sous la première République.' The late Vice-Admiral Colomb submitted
it to a most instructive examination in the _Journal_of_the_
_Royal_United_Service_Institution_ for January 1892. We can,
however, learn something from Captain Desbrière's collection.
The perusal suggests, or indeed compels, the conclusion that the
expedition was doomed to failure from the start. It had no money,
stores, or means of transport. There was no hope of finding these
in a country like the south-western corner of Ireland. Grouchy's
decision not to land the troops who had reached Bantry Bay was
no doubt dictated in reality by a perception of this; and by
the discovery that, even if he got on shore, sympathisers with him
would be practically non-existent. On reading the letters now made
public, one is convinced of Hoche's unfitness for the leadership
of such an enterprise. The adoration of mediocrities is confined
to no one cult and to no one age. Hoche's canonisation, for he
is a prominent saint in the Republican calendar, was due not so
much to what he did as to what he did not do. He did not hold the
supreme command in La Vendée till the most trying period of the
war was past. He did not continue the cruelties of the Jacobin
emissaries in the disturbed districts; but then his pacificatory
measures were taken when the spirit of ferocity which caused the
horrors of the _noyades_ and of the Terror had, even amongst
the mob of Paris, burnt itself out. He did not overthrow a
constitutional Government and enslave his country as Bonaparte
did; and, therefore, he is favourably compared with the latter,
whose opportunities he did not have. His letters show him to have
been an adept in the art of traducing colleagues behind their
backs. In writing he called Admiral Villaret-Joyeuse 'perfide,'
and spoke of his 'mauvaise foi.' He had a low opinion of General
Humbert, whom he bracketed with Mascheret. Grouchy, he said, was
'un inconséquent paperassier,' and General Vaillant 'un misérable
ivrogne.' He was placed in supreme command of the naval as well as
of the military forces, and was allowed to select the commander
of the former. Yet he and his nominee were amongst the small
fraction of the expeditionary body which never reached a place
where disembarkation was possible.
Notwithstanding all this, the greater part of the fleet, and
of the troops conveyed by it, did anchor in Bantry Bay without
encountering an English man-of-war; and a large proportion continued
in the Bay, unmolested by our navy, for more than a fortnight. Is
not this, it may be asked, a sufficient refutation of those who
hold that command of the sea gives security against invasion?
As a matter of fact, command of the sea--even in the case in
question--did prevent invasion from being undertaken, still more
from being carried through, on a scale likely to be very formidable.
The total number of troops embarked was under 14,000, of whom
633 were lost, owing to steps taken to avoid the hostile navy,
before the expedition had got fully under way. It is not necessary
to rate Hoche's capacity very highly in order to understand that
he, who had seen something of war on a grand scale, would not
have committed himself to the command of so small a body, without
cavalry, without means of transport on land, without supplies, with
but an insignificant artillery and that not furnished with horses,
and, as was avowed, without hope of subsequent reinforcement or
of open communications with its base--that he would not have
staked his reputation on the fate of a body so conditioned, if
he had been permitted by the naval conditions of the case to lead
a larger, more effectually organised, and better supplied army.
The commentary supplied by Captain Desbrière to the volume under
notice discloses his opinion that the failure of the expedition
to Ireland was due to the inefficiency of the French Navy. He
endeavours to be scrupulously fair to his naval fellow-countrymen;
but his conviction is apparent. It hardly admits of doubt that this
view has generally been, and still is, prevalent in the French
Army. Foreign soldiers of talent and experience generalise from
this as follows: Let them but have the direction of the naval
as well as of the military part of an expedition, and the invasion
of England must be successful. The complete direction which they
would like is exactly what Hoche did have. He chose the commander
of the fleet, and also chose or regulated the choice of the junior
flag officers and several of the captains. Admiral Morard de
Galles was not, and did not consider himself, equal to the task
for which Hoche's favour had selected him. His letter pointing
out his own disqualifications has a striking resemblance to the
one written by Medina Sidonia in deprecation of his appointment
in place of Santa Cruz. Nevertheless, the French naval officers
did succeed in conveying the greater part of the expeditionary
army to a point at which disembarkation was practicable.
Now we have some lessons to learn from this. The advantages conferred
by command of the sea must be utilised intelligently; and it
was bad management which permitted an important anchorage to
remain for more than a fortnight in the hands of an invading
force. We need not impute to our neighbours a burning desire to
invade us; but it is a becoming exercise of ordinary strategic
precaution to contemplate preparations for repelling what, as a
mere military problem, they consider still feasible. No amount
of naval superiority will ever ensure every part of our coast
against incursions like that of Tate and his gaol-birds. Naval
superiority, however, will put in our hands the power of preventing
the arrival of an army strong enough to carry out a real invasion.
The strength of such an army will largely depend upon the amount of
mobile land force of which we can dispose. Consequently, defence
against invasion, even of an island, is the duty of a land army
as well as of a fleet. The more important part may, in our case,
be that of the latter; but the services of the former cannot be
dispensed with. The best method of utilising those services calls
for much thought. In 1798, when the 'First Army of England' menaced
us from the southern coast of the Channel, it was reported to our
Government that an examination of the plans formerly adopted for
frustrating intended invasions showed the advantage of troubling
the enemy in his own home and not waiting till he had come to
injure us in ours.