THE FRENCH NAVAL OFFICER.
Laperouse first obtained employment in the French navy in the CELEBRE,
from March to November, 1757. From this date until his death,
thirty-one years later, he was almost continuously engaged, during
peace and war, in the maritime service of his country. The official
list of his appointments contains only one blank year, 1764. He had
then experienced close upon seven years of continuous sea fighting and
had served in as many ships: the CELEBRE, the POMONE, the ZEPHIR, the
CERF, the FORMIDABLE, the ROBUSTE, and the SIX CORPS. But the peace of
Paris was signed in the early part of 1763. After that, having been
promoted to the rank of ensign, he had a rest.
It was not a popular peace on either side. In Paris there was a current
phrase, "BETE COMME LA PAIX," stupid as the peace. In England, the
great Pitt was so indignant on account of its conditions that, all
swollen and pinched with gout as he was, he had himself carried to the
House of Commons, his limbs blanketted in bandages and his face
contorted with pain, and, leaning upon a crutch, denounced it in a
speech lasting three hours and forty minutes. The people cheered him to
the echo when he came out to his carriage, and the vote favourable to
the terms of the treaty was carried by wholesale corruption. But
all the same, Great Britain did very well out of it, and both
countries--though neither was satisfied--were for the time being tired
of war.
For Laperouse the seven years had been full of excitement. The most
memorable engagement in which he took part was a very celebrated one,
in November, 1759. A stirring ballad has been written about it by Henry
Newbolt:--
"In seventeen hundred and fifty-nine
When Hawke came swooping from the West,
The French King's admiral with twenty of the line
Came sailing forth to sack us out of Brest."
Laperouse's ship, the FORMIDABLE, was one of the French fleet of
twenty-one sail. What happened was this. The French foreign minister,
Choiseul, had hatched a crafty plan for the invasion of England, but
before it could be executed the British fleet had to be cleared out of
the way. There was always that tough wooden wall with the hearts of oak
behind it, standing solidly in the path. It baffled Napoleon in the
same fashion when he thought out an invasion plan in the next century.
The French Admiral, Conflans, schemed to lure Sir Edward Hawke into
Quiberon Bay, on the coast of Brittany. A strong westerly gale was
blowing and was rapidly swelling into a raging tempest. Conflans,
piloted by a reliable guide who knew the Bay thoroughly, intended to
take up a fairly safe, sheltered position on the lee side, and hoped
that the wind would force Hawke, who was not familiar with the
ground, on to the reefs and shoals, where his fleet would be destroyed
by the storm and the French guns together. But Hawke, whose name
signally represents the bold, swift, sure character of the man,
understood the design, took the risk, avoided the danger, and clutched
the prey. Following the French as rapidly as wind and canvas could take
him, he caught their rearmost vessels, smashed them up, battered the
whole fleet successively into flight or splinters, and himself lost
only two vessels, which ran upon a shoal. Plodding prose does scant
justice to the extraordinary brilliancy of Hawke's victory, described
by Admiral Mahan as "the Trafalgar of this war." We cannot pass on
without quoting one of Mr. Newbolt's graphic verses:--
"'Twas long past the noon of a wild November day
When Hawke came swooping from the west;
He heard the breakers thundering in Quiberon Bay,
But he flew the flag for battle, line abreast.
Down upon the quicksands, roaring out of sight,
Fiercely blew the storm wind, darkly fell the night,
For they took the foe for pilot and the cannon's glare for light,
When Hawke came swooping from the West."
"They took the foe for pilot:" that is a most excellent touch, both
poetical and true.
The FORMIDABLE was the first to be disposed of in the fight. She was an
80-gun line-of-battle ship, carrying the flag of Admiral du
Verger. Her position being in the rear of the squadron, she was early
engaged by the RESOLUTION, and in addition received the full broadside
of every other British ship that passed her. The Admiral fell mortally
wounded, and two hundred on board were killed. She struck her colours
at four o'clock after receiving a terrible battering, and was the only
French ship captured by Hawke's fleet. All the others were sunk, burnt,
or beached, or else escaped. The young Laperouse was amongst the
wounded, though his hurts were not dangerous; and, after a brief period
spent in England as a prisoner of war, he returned to service.
An amusing rhyme in connection with this engagement is worth recalling.
Supplies for Hawke's fleet did not come to hand for a considerable time
after they were due, and in consequence the victorious crews had to be
put on "short commons." Some wag--it is the way of the British sailor
to do his grumbling with a spice of humour--put the case thus:--
"Ere Hawke did bang
Monsieur Conflans,
You sent us beef and beer;
Now Monsieur's beat
We've nought to eat,
Since you have nought to fear."
An interesting coincidence must also be noted. Thirty-five years later,
only a few leagues from the place where Laperouse first learnt
what it meant to fight the British on the sea, another young officer
who was afterwards greatly concerned with Australasian exploration had
his introduction to naval warfare. It was in 1794 that Midshipman
Matthew Flinders, on the BELLEROPHON, Captain Pasley, played his
valiant little part in a great fleet action off Brest. Both of these
youths, whose longing was for exploration and discovery, and who are
remembered by mankind in that connection, were cradled on the sea
amidst the smoke and flame of battle, both in the same waters.
During the next twenty-five years Laperouse saw a considerable amount
of fighting in the East and West Indies, and in Canadian waters. He was
commander of the AMAZON, under D'Estaing, during a period when events
did not shape themselves very gloriously for British arms, not because
our admirals had lost their skill and nerve, or our seamen their grit
and courage, but because Governments at home muddled, squabbled,
starved the navy, misunderstood the problem, and generally made a mess
of things. We need not follow him through the details of these years,
but simply note that Laperouse's dash and good seamanship won him a
high reputation among French naval officers, and brought him under the
eye of the authorities who afterwards chose him to command an
expedition of discovery.
One incident must be recorded, because it throws a light on the
character of Laperouse. In 1782, whilst serving under Admiral
Latouche-Treville in the West, he was ordered to destroy the British
forts on the Hudson River. He attacked them with the SCEPTRE, 74 guns.
The British had been engaged in their most unfortunate war with the
American Colonies, and in 1781, in consequence of wretchedly bad
strategy, had lost command of the sea. The French had been helping the
revolted Americans, not for love of them, but from enmity to their
rivals. After the capitulation of the British troops at Yorktown, a
number of loyalists still held out under discouraging conditions in
Canada, and the French desired to dislodge them from the important
waterway of the Hudson.
Laperouse found little difficulty in fulfilling his mission, for the
defence was weak and the garrisons of the forts, after a brief
resistance, fled to the woods. It was then that he did a thing
described in our principal naval history as an act of "kindness and
humanity, rare in the annals of war." Laperouse knew that if he totally
destroyed the stores as well as the forts, the unfortunate British,
after he had left, would perish either from hunger or under the
tomahawks of the Red Indians. So he was careful to see that the food
and clothing, and a quantity of powder and small arms, were left
untouched, for, as he nobly said, "An enemy conquered should have
nothing more to fear from a civilised foe; he then becomes a friend."
Some readers may like to see the verses in which a French poet
has enshrined this incident. For their benefit they are appended:--
"Un jour ayant appris que les Anglais en fuite
Se cachaient dans un bois redoutant la poursuite,
Tu laissas sur la plage aux soldats affames,
Par la peur affoles, en haillons, desarmes,
Des vivres abondantes, des habits et des armes;
Tu t'eloignas apres pour calmer leurs alarmes,
Et quand on s'etonnait: 'Sachez qu' un ennemi
Vaincu n'a rien a craindre, et devient un ami.'"
The passage may be rendered in English thus: "One day, having heard
that the fleeing English were hidden in a forest dreading pursuit, you
left upon the shore for those soldiers--famished, ragged, disarmed,
and paralysed by fear--abundance of food, clothes and arms; then, to
calm their fears, you removed your forces to a distance; and, when
astonishment was expressed, you said: 'Understand that a beaten enemy
has nothing to fear from us, and becomes a friend.'"