CHAPTER II.

THE CONDITION OF THE NAVIES IN 1793—AND ESPECIALLY OF THE FRENCH NAVY.

Before following the narrative of directly warlike action, or

discussing the influence of the naval factor upon the military and

political events, it is proper to examine the relative position,

strength, and resources, of the rival nations, particularly in the

matter of Sea Power,—to weigh the chances of the struggle, as it

were, beforehand, from the known conditions,—to analyze and point out

certain reasons why the sea war took the turn it did, in order that the

experience of the past may be turned to the profit of the future.

First of all, it must be recognized that the problem to be thus

resolved is by no means so simple as in most wars. It is not here a

mere question of the extent, population, and geographical position of a

country; of the number of its seamen, the tonnage of its shipping, the

strength of its armed fleet; nor yet again, chiefly of the wealth and

vigor of its colonies, the possession of good and well-placed maritime

bases in different parts of the world; not even, at first hand, of the

policy and character of its government, although it is undoubtedly

true that in the action of French governments is to be found the chief

reason for the utter disaster and overthrow which awaited the Sea Power

of France. It was because the government so faithfully and necessarily

reflected the social disorder, the crude and wild habits of thought

which it was powerless to check, that it was incapable of dealing with

the naval necessities of the day. The seamen and the navy of France

were swept away by the same current of thought and feeling which was

carrying before it the whole nation; and the government, tossed to and

fro by every wave of popular emotion, was at once too weak and too

ignorant of the needs of the service to repress principles and to amend

defects which were fatal to its healthy life.

It is particularly instructive to dwell upon this phase of the

revolutionary convulsions of France, because the result in this

comparatively small, but still most important, part of the body politic

was so different from that which was found elsewhere. Whatever the

mistakes, the violence, the excesses of every kind, into which this

popular rising was betrayed, they were symptomatic of strength, not of

weakness,—deplorable accompaniments of a movement which, with all its

drawbacks, was marked by overwhelming force.

It was the inability to realize the might in this outburst of popular

feeling, long pent up, that caused the mistaken forecasts of many

statesmen of the day; who judged of the power and reach of the movement

by indications—such as the finances, the condition of the army, the

quality of the known leaders—ordinarily fairly accurate tests of a

country's endurance, but which utterly misled those who looked to them

only and did not take into account the mighty impulse of a whole nation

stirred to its depths. Why, then, was the result so different in the

navy? Why was it so weak, not merely nor chiefly in quantity, but in

quality? and that, too, in days so nearly succeeding the prosperous

naval era of Louis XVI. Why should the same throe which brought forth

the magnificent armies of Napoleon have caused the utter weakness of

the sister service, not only amid the disorders of the Republic, but

also under the powerful organization of the Empire?

The immediate reason was that, to a service of a very special

character, involving special exigencies, calling for special aptitudes,

and consequently demanding special knowledge of its requirements in

order to deal wisely with it, were applied the theories of men wholly

ignorant of those requirements,—men who did not even believe that they

existed. Entirely without experimental knowledge, or any other kind of

knowledge, of the conditions of sea life, they were unable to realize

the obstacles to those processes by which they would build up their

navy, and according to which they proposed to handle it. This was true

not only of the wild experiments of the early days of the Republic;

the reproach may fairly be addressed to the great emperor himself,

that he had scarcely any appreciation of the factors conditioning

efficiency at sea; nor did he seemingly ever reach any such sense of

them as would enable him to understand why the French navy failed.

"Disdaining," says Jean Bon Saint-André, the Revolutionary commissioner

whose influence on naval organization was unbounded, "_disdaining_,

through calculation and reflection, _skilful evolutions_, perhaps our

seamen will think it more fitting and useful to try those boarding

actions in which the Frenchman was always conqueror, and thus astonish

Europe by new prodigies of valor."[13] "Courage and audacity," says

Captain Chevalier, "had become in his eyes the only qualities necessary

to our officers." "The English," said Napoleon, "will become very small

when France shall have two or three admirals willing to die."[14] So

commented, with pathetic yet submissive irony, the ill-fated admiral,

Villeneuve, upon whom fell the weight of the emperor's discontent with

his navy: "Since his Majesty thinks that nothing but audacity and

resolve are needed to succeed in the naval officer's calling, I shall

leave nothing to be desired."[15]

It is well to trace in detail the steps by which a fine military

service was broken down, as well as the results thus reached, for,

while the circumstances under which the process began were undoubtedly

exceptional, the general lesson remains good. To disregard the

teachings of experience, to cut loose wholly from the traditions of

the past, to revolutionize rather than to reform, to launch out boldly

on new and untried paths, blind to or ignoring the difficulties to

be met,—such a tendency, such a school of thought exists in every

generation. At times it gets the mastery. Certainly at the present day

it has unusual strength, which is not to be wondered at in view of the

change and development of naval weapons. Yet if the campaigns of Cæsar

and Hannibal are still useful studies in the days of firearms, it is

rash to affirm that the days of sail have no lessons for the days of

steam. Here, however, are to be considered questions of discipline and

organization; of the adaptation of means to ends; of the recognition,

not only of the possibilities, but also of the limitations, imposed

upon a calling, upon a military organization, by the nature of the

case, by the element in which it moves, by the force to which it owes

its motion, by the skill or lack of skill with which its powers are

used and its deficiencies compensated.

It is indeed only by considering the limitations as well as the

possibilities of any form of warlike activity, whether it be a

general plan of action,—as for instance commerce-destroying,—or

whether it be the use of a particular weapon,—such as the ram,—that

correct conclusions can be reached as to the kind of men, in natural

capacities, in acquired skill, in habits of thought and action, who

are needed to use such weapon. The possibilities of the ram, for

instance, are to be found in the consequences of a successful thrust;

its limitations, in the difficulties imposed by any lack of handiness,

speed, or steering qualities in the ship carrying it, in the skill

of the opponent in managing his vessel and the weapons with which he

is provided for counter-offence. If these limitations are carefully

considered, there will be little doubt how to answer the question

as to the chance of a man picked up at hazard, untrained for such

encounter except by years of ordinary sea-going, reaching his aim if

pitted against another who has at least given thought and had some

professional training directed to the special end.

Now the one sea-weapon of the period of the French Revolution was

the gun; the cold steel, the hand-to-hand fight, commonly came into

play only toward the end of an action, if at all. In naming the gun,

however, it can by no means be separated from its carriage; using

this word not merely in its narrow technical sense, but as belonging

rightly to the whole ship which bore the gun alongside the enemy, and

upon whose skilful handling depended placing it in those positions of

advantage that involved most danger to the opponent and the least to

one's self. This was the part of the commander; once there, the skill

of the gunner came into play, to work his piece with rapidity and

accuracy despite the obstacles raised by the motion of the sea, the

rapid shifting of the enemy, the difficulty of catching sight of him

through the narrow ports. Thus the skill of the military seaman and

the skill of the trained gunner, the gun and the ship, the piece and

its carriage, supplemented each other. The ship and its guns together

formed one weapon, a moving battery which needed quick and delicate

handling and accurate direction in all its parts. It was wielded by a

living organism, knit also into one by the dependence of all the parts

upon the head, and thus acting by a common impulse, sharing a common

tradition, and having a common life, which, like all other life, is not

found fully ripened without having had a beginning and a growth.

It would be foolish, because untrue, to say that these things were

easy to see. They were easy to men of the profession; they were not at

all easy to outsiders, apt to ignore difficulties of which they have

neither experience nor conception. The contempt for skilful manœuvres

was not confined to Jean Bon Saint-André, though he was unusually open

in avowing it. But the difficulties none the less existed; neither is

the captain without the gunner, nor the gunner without the captain,

and both must be specially trained men. It was not to be expected that

the man newly taken from the merchant vessel, whose concern with other

ships was confined to keeping out of their way, should at once be

fitted to manœuvre skilfully around an antagonist actively engaged in

injuring him, nor yet be ready to step at once from the command of a

handful of men shipped for a short cruise, to that of a numerous body

which he was to animate with a common spirit, train to act together

for a common purpose, and subject to a common rigorous discipline

to which he himself was, by previous habit, a stranger. The yoke of

military service sits hard on those who do not always bear it. Yet

the efficiency of the military sea-officer depended upon his fitness

to do these things well because they had been so wrought into his own

personal habit as to become a second nature.

This was true, abundantly true, of the single ship in fight: but

when it came to the question of combining the force of a great

many guns, mounted on perhaps twenty-five or thirty heavy ships,

possessing unequal qualities, but which must nevertheless keep close

to one another, in certain specified positions, on dark nights, in

bad weather, above all when before the enemy; when these ships were

called upon to perform evolutions all together, or in succession, to

concentrate upon a part of the enemy, to frustrate by well combined

and well executed movements attacks upon themselves, to remedy the

inconveniences arising from loss of sails and masts and consequent

loss of motive power, to provide against the disorders caused by

sudden changes of wind and the various chances of the sea,—under these

conditions, even one not having the knowledge of experience begins

to see that such demands can only be met by a body of men of special

aptitudes and training, such as in fact has very rarely, if ever, been

found in perfection, in even the most highly organized fleets of any

navy in the world.

To these things the French National Assembly was blind, but not because

it was not warned of them. In truth men's understandings, as well as

their _morale_ and beliefs, were in a chaotic state. In the navy, as

in society, the _morale_ suffered first. Insubordination and mutiny,

insult and murder, preceded the blundering measures which in the end

destroyed the fine _personnel_ that the monarchy bequeathed to the

French republic. This insubordination broke out very soon after the

affairs of the Bastille and the forcing of the palace at Versailles;

that is, very soon after the powerlessness of the executive was

felt. Singularly, yet appropriately, the first victim was the most

distinguished flag-officer of the French navy.

During the latter half of 1789 disturbances occurred in all the

seaport towns; in Havre, in Cherbourg, in Brest, in Rochefort, in

Toulon. Everywhere the town authorities meddled with the concerns of

the navy yards and of the fleet; discontented seamen and soldiers,

idle or punished, rushed to the town halls with complaints against

their officers. The latter, receiving no support from Paris, yielded

continually, and things naturally went from bad to worse.

In Toulon, however, matters were worst of all. The naval

commander-in-chief in that port was Commodore D'Albert de Rions,

a member of the French nobility, as were all the officers of the

navy. He was thought the most able flag-officer in the fleet; he

was also known and beloved in Toulon for his personal integrity and

charitable life. After working his way with partial success through the

earlier disorders, by dint of tact, concession, and his own personal

reputation, he found himself compelled to send on shore from the fleet

two subordinate officers who had excited mutiny. The men went at once

to the town hall, where they were received with open arms, and a story

before prevalent was again started that the city was mined and would

be attacked the day or two following. Excitement spread, and the next

day a number of people assembled round the arsenal, demanding to speak

with De Rions. He went out with a few of his officers. The crowd closed

round and forced him away from the gates. He went toward his house,

apparently his official residence, the mob hustling, insulting, and

even laying hands on his person. Having reached his home, the mayor and

another city official came to him and asked forgiveness for the two

culprits. He refused for a long time, but at length yielded against

his judgment,—saying truly enough that such an act of weakness, wrung

from him by the commune on the plea of re-establishing order, in other

words of appeasing and so quieting the rabble, would but encourage new

disorders and do irreparable wrong to discipline and the state.

It proved also insufficient to arrest the present tumult. An officer

coming to the door was insulted and attacked. A rioter rushed at

another, who was leaning over a terrace attached to the house, and cut

his head open with a sabre. Then the windows were broken. The national

guard, or, as we might say, the city militia, were paraded, but did no

service. An officer leaving the house was attacked, knocked down with

stones and the butts of muskets, and would have lost his life had not

De Rions sallied out with thirty others and carried him off.

The national guard now surrounded the house, forbidding entry or

withdrawal, and soon after demanded the surrender of an officer whom

they accused of having ordered some seamen-gunners to fire on the

mob. To De Rions's explanations and denials they replied that he was

a liar, and that the officers were a lot of aristocrats who wished

to assassinate the people. The commodore refusing to give up his

subordinate, the guards prepared to attack them; thereupon all drew

their swords, but the officer himself, to save his comrades, stepped

quickly out and put himself in the hands of his enemies.

Meanwhile, the city authorities, as is too usual, made no effective

interference. Part of their own forces, the national guards, were

foremost in the riot. Soon after, De Rions was required to give up

another officer. He again refused, and laid orders upon this one

not to yield himself as the former had done. "If you want another

victim," said he, stepping forward, "here am I; but if you want one

of my officers, you must first pass over me." His manliness caused

only irritation. A rush was made, his sword snatched from him, and

he himself dragged out of the house amid the hoots and jeers of the

mob. The national guards formed two parties,—one to kill, the other

to save him. Pricked with bayonets, clubbed with muskets, and even

ignominiously kicked, this gallant old seaman, the companion of De

Grasse and Suffren, was dragged through the streets amid cries of "Hang

him! Cut off his head!" and thrust into the common prison. Bad as all

this was, there was yet worse. Any age and any country may suffer from

a riot, but De Rions could get from the national authority no admission

of his wrongs. The assembly ordered an investigation, and six weeks

later made this declaration: "The National Assembly, taking a favorable

view of the motives which animated M. D'Albert de Rions, the other

naval officers implicated in the affair, _the municipal officers,

and the National Guard_, declares that there is no ground to blame

any one."[16] De Rions told his wrongs in words equally pathetic and

dignified: "The volunteers," said he, "have outraged the decrees of the

National Assembly in all that concerns the rights of the man and of the

citizen. Let us not here be considered, if you will, as officers, and

I myself as the head of a respectable corps; see in us only quiet and

well-behaved citizens, and every honest man cannot but be revolted at

the unjust and odious treatment we have undergone."[17] His words were

not heeded.

The Toulon affair was the signal for the spread of mutiny among the

crews and the breaking-up of the corps of commissioned sea-officers.

Similar incidents occurred often and everywhere. The successor of De

Rions was also hauled by the mob to prison, where he remained several

days. The second in command to him, a little later, was dragged to

a gallows, whence he was only accidentally delivered. In Brest, a

captain who had been ordered to command a ship on foreign service was

assaulted as an aristocrat by a mob of three thousand people and only

saved by being taken to prison, where he remained with nineteen others

similarly detained. Orders to release them and prosecute the offenders

were issued in vain by the cabinet and the king. "It was evident," says

Chevalier, "that the naval officers could no longer depend upon the

support of local authorities, nor upon that of the government; they

were outlaws."[18] "Thenceforth," says another French naval historian,

"if some naval officers were found sanguine enough and patriotic enough

to be willing to remain at their post, they but came, on account of

their origin and without further inquiry, to the prison and to the

scaffold."[19]

In the fleets, insubordination soon developed into anarchy. In the

spring of 1790 a quarrel arose between Spain and Great Britain, on

account of the establishment of trading-posts, by British subjects, at

Nootka Sound, on the north-west coast of America. These posts, with

the vessels at them, were seized by Spanish cruisers. Upon news of

the affair both nations made conflicting claims, and both began to

arm their fleets. Spain claimed the help of France, in virtue of the

still existing Bourbon Family Compact. The king sent a message to the

Assembly, which voted to arm forty-five ships-of-the-line. D'Albert

de Rions was ordered to command the fleet at Brest, where he was

coldly received by the city authorities. The seamen at the time were

discontented at certain new regulations. De Rions, seeing the danger

of the situation, recommended to the Assembly some modifications,

which it refused to make, yet, at the same time, took no vigorous

steps to ensure order. On the same day that it confirmed its first

decree, September 15, 1790, a seaman from a ship called the "Léopard,"

visiting on board another, the "Patriote," used mutinous language

and insulted one of the principal officers. The man was drunk. The

case being reported to the admiral, he ordered him sent on board the

flag-ship. This measure, though certainly very mild, called forth great

indignation among the seamen of the "Patriote." De Rions, hearing that

mutiny was beginning, summoned before him a petty officer, a coxswain,

who was actively stirring up the crew. He quietly explained to this man

that the first offender had not even been punished. The coxswain, being

insolent, was sent back, saying, as he went, "that it belonged to the

strongest to make the law; that he was the strongest, and that the man

should not be punished."

The next morning the admiral went to the "Patriote," mustered the crew,

told them that the first offender had not been punished, but that

the conduct of the coxswain had been so bad that he must be put in

confinement. The crew kept silent so far, but now broke out into cries

of "He shall not go." De Rions, having tried in vain to re-establish

order, took his boat to go ashore and consult with the commandant

of the arsenal. As he pulled away, several seamen cried out to her

coxswain, "Upset the boat!"

Meanwhile a riot had broken out in the town against the second in

command at the dockyard, based upon a report that he had said he would

soon bring the San Domingo rebels to order, if he were sent against

them. This officer, named Marigny, one of a distinguished naval family,

only escaped death by being out of his house; a gallows was put up

before it. These various outrages moved the National Assembly for a

moment, but its positive action went no further than praying the king

to order a prosecution according to legal forms, and ordering that the

crew of the Léopard, which ship had been the focus of sedition, should

be sent to their homes. D'Albert de Rions, seeing that he could not

enforce obedience, asked for and obtained his relief. On the 15th of

October this distinguished officer took his final leave of the navy and

left the country. He had served at Grenada, at Yorktown, and against

Rodney, and when the great Suffren, bending under the burden of cares

in his Indian campaign, sought for a second upon whom the charge might

fitly fall, he wrote thus to the minister of the day: "If my death,

or my health, should leave the command vacant, who would take my

place?... I know only one person who has all the qualities that can be

desired; who is very brave, very accomplished, full of ardor and zeal,

disinterested, a good seaman. That is D'Albert de Rions, and should he

be in America even, send a frigate for him. I shall be good for more if

I have him, for he will help me; and if I die, you will be assured that

the service will not suffer. If you had given me him when I asked you,

we should now be masters of India."[20]

It was a significant, though accidental, coincidence that the

approaching humiliation of the French navy should thus be prefigured,

both ashore and afloat, both north and south, on the Mediterranean

and on the Atlantic, in the person of its most distinguished

representative. The incidents, however, though conspicuous, were but

samples of what was going on everywhere. In the West India colonies

the revolutionary impulse transmitted from the mother-country had taken

on a heat and violence of its own, characteristic alike of the climate

and of the undisciplined temper of the colonists. Commotions amounting

to civil war broke out, and both parties tried to command the support

of the navy, even at the price of inciting mutiny. Here the Léopard,

afterwards the centre of the Brest mutiny, first inhaled the germs of

disorder. In July, 1790, the crew revolted, and deprived the captain of

the command, to assume which, however, only one commissioned officer

was found willing. The commandant of the naval station at the Isle

of France, Captain McNamara, after once escaping threatened death,

was enticed ashore under promise of protection, and then murdered in

the streets by the colonial troops themselves. In the peninsula of

India, Great Britain, being then at war with Tippoo Saib, undertook

to search neutral vessels off the coast. The French commodore sent a

frigate to convoy two merchant ships, and the attempt of the British

to search them led to a collision, in which the French vessel hauled

down her colors after losing twelve killed and fifty-six wounded. The

significance, however, of this affair lies in the fact that when the

commandant of the division announced that another such aggression would

be not only resisted, but followed by reprisals, the crews of two ships

told him they would not fight unless attacked. The officer, being thus

unable to maintain what he thought the honor of the flag demanded,

found it necessary to abandon the station.

Things abroad thus went on from bad to worse. Ships-of-war arriving

in San Domingo, the most magnificent of the French colonies in

size and fruitfulness, were at once boarded by the members of the

party uppermost in the port. Flattered and seduced, given money and

entertainment, filled with liquor, the crews were easily persuaded to

mutiny. Here and there an officer gifted with tact and popularity, or

perhaps an adept in that deft cajoling with words which so takes with

the French people, and of which the emperor afterwards was so great

a master, induced rather than ordered his ship's company to do their

duty up to a certain point. As usual the tragedy of the situation

had a comical side. Three ships, one of the line, anchored in San

Domingo. The seamen as usual were worked upon; but in addition two of

the commanders, with several officers, were arrested on shore and,

after being threatened with death, were deprived of their commands

by the local assembly. The next day the crew of the ship-of-the-line

sent ashore to protest against the deprivation, which, they observed,

"was null and void, as to them alone (the crew) belonged the right to

take cognizance of and judge the motives of their officers."[21] An

admiral on the United States coast was ordered by the French chargé

d'affaires to take his ships, two of-the-line and two frigates, and

seize the little islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon near Newfoundland.

A few days after sailing, the crews said the orders were nonsense and

forced the officers to go to France[22] No captain knew how long he

would be in his nominal position, or receive the obedience it claimed.

"It was not so easy," says a French historian, speaking of the one

who most successfully kept his dizzy height, "it was not so easy for

Grimouard to leave Port-au-Prince with his flag-ship; he had to get

the consent of a crew which was incessantly told that its own will

was the only orders it should follow. In fifteen months Grimouard had

not taken a night's rest; always active, always on deck, reasoning

with one, coaxing another, appealing to the honor of this, to the

generosity of that, to the patriotism of all, he had kept up on board

a quasi-discipline truly phenomenal for the times."[23] Later on, this

same man lost his life by the guillotine. Nothing more disastrous to

the French colonies could have happened than this weakening of the

military authority, both ashore and afloat, for which the colonists

were mainly answerable. The strife of parties,—at first confined to the

whites, a very small minority of the population,—spread to the mixed

bloods and the negroes, and a scene of desolation followed over all the

islands, finding however its most frightful miseries and excesses in

San Domingo, whence the whites were finally exterminated.

Such was the condition of anarchy in which the fleet was as early as

1790 and 1791, and to which the whole social order was unmistakably

drifting. In the military services, and above all in the navy, where

submission to constituted authority is the breath of life, the

disappearance of that submission anticipated, but only anticipated,

the period of ruin and terror which awaited all France. The weakness

which prevented the executive and legislature from enforcing obedience

in the fleet was hurrying them, along with the whole people, to the

abysses of confusion; the more highly organized and fragile parts of

the state first fell to pieces under the shaking of the whole fabric.

After what has been said, little surprise will be felt that naval

officers in increasing numbers refused to serve and left the country;

but it is a mistake to say on the one hand that they did so from pure

motives of opposition to the new order of things, or on the other that

they were forced by the acts of the first, or Constituent, Assembly.

Both mistakes have been made. Emigration of the nobility and of princes

of the blood began indeed soon after the storming of the Bastille, but

large numbers of officers remained attending to their duties. The Brest

mutiny was fourteen months later, and complaints are not then found of

the lack of officers.

After that event their departure went on with increasing rapidity. The

successor of De Rions held his office but one week, and then gave it

up. He was followed by a distinguished officer, De Bougainville. Aided

by a temporary return to sober ideas on the part of the government

and the town authorities, this flag-officer for a moment, by strong

measures, restored discipline; but mutiny soon reappeared, and, from

the complaints made by him later on, there can be little doubt that

he must have asked for his detachment had not the fleet been disarmed

in consequence of the ending of the Anglo-Spanish dispute. In the

following March, 1791, Mirabeau died, and with him the hopes which the

court party and moderate men had based upon his genius. In April the

Assembly passed a bill re-organizing the navy, the terms of which could

not have been acceptable to the officers; although, candidly read, it

cannot be considered to have ignored the just claims of those actually

in service. In June occurred the king's unsuccessful attempt at flight.

On the first of July a return made of officers of the navy showed

that more than three-fourths of the old corps had disappeared.[24]

The result was due partly to royalist feeling and prejudice shocked;

partly, perhaps, to distaste for the new organization: but those

familiar with the feelings of officers will attribute it with more

likelihood to the utter subversion of discipline, destructive to

their professional pride and personal self-respect, and for which the

weakness and military ignorance of the Constituent Assembly are mainly

responsible.

It is now time to consider the plans upon which that Assembly proposed

to re-create the navy, in accordance with the views popular at that day.

During the War of the American Revolution, the corps of naval officers

had been found too small for the needs of the service; there was a

deficiency of lieutenants and junior officers to take charge of the

watches and gun-divisions. A systematic attempt was made to remedy

this trouble in the future. By a royal decree, dated January 1, 1786,

the navy was re-organized, and two sources of supply for officers

were opened. The first was drawn wholly from the nobles, the youths

composing it having to show satisfactory proofs of nobility before

being admitted to the position of _élèves_, as they were called. These

received a practical and rigorous training especially directed to the

navy; and, so far as education went, there is reason to believe they

would have made a most efficient body of men. The second source from

which the royal navy was to be supplied with officers was a class

called volunteers. Admission to this was also restricted, though

extended to a wider circle. There could be borne upon its rolls only

the sons of noblemen, or of sub-lieutenants serving either afloat

or in the dockyards, of wholesale merchants, shipowners, captains,

and of people living "nobly." These, though required to pass certain

examinations and to have seen certain sea-service, were only admitted

to the grade of sub-lieutenant, and could be promoted no further except

for distinguished and exceptional acts.[25]

Such was the organization with which, in 1791, a popular assembly was

about to deal. The invidious privilege by which the naval career,

except in the lower ranks, was closed to all but a single, and not

specially deserving, class, was of course done away without question.

There still remained to decide whether the privilege should in the

future be confined to a single class, which should deserve it by

giving all its life and energies to the career—whether the navy

should be recognized as a special calling requiring like others a

special training—or whether there was so little difference between it

and the merchant service that men could pass from one to the other

without injuring either. These two views each found upholders, but

the latter prevailed even in the first Assembly; those who wished a

wholly military service only succeeded in modifying the original scheme

presented by the committee.

The new organization was established by two successive acts, passed

on the 22d and 28th of April, 1790.[26] Like the old, it provided two

sources of supply; the one from men specially trained in youth, the

other from the merchant service. The former began in a class called

_Aspirants_, three hundred of whom were in pay on board ships of war;

they were not then officers, but simply youths between fifteen and

twenty learning their business. The lowest grade of officer was the

_Enseigne_; they were of two kinds, paid[27] and unpaid, the former

being actually in the navy. The latter were in the merchant service,

but susceptible of employment in the fleet, and, when so engaged, took

rank with other _enseignes_ according to the length of time afloat in

national ships. Admission to the grade of paid, or naval, _enseigne_

could be had between eighteen and thirty, by passing the required

examination and proving four years service at sea, no distinction

being then made in favor of those who had begun as _aspirants_ or had

served in the navy. Those passing for _enseigne_ and wishing to enter

the navy had a more severe and more mathematical examination, while,

on the other hand, those who returned to the merchant service had to

have two years longer service, six in all, one of which on board a ship

of war. All _enseignes_ twenty-four years old, and only they, could

command ships in the foreign trade and certain parts of the home, or

coasting, trade. By the age of forty, a definitive choice had to be

made between the two services. Up to that time _enseignes_ could pass

for lieutenant, and there seems to have been no inducement to follow

one branch of the sea service rather than the other, except this:

that five-sixths of the lieutenant vacancies at any one time were to

be given to those who had most service as _enseignes_ on board ships

of war. To pass for lieutenant at the mature age of forty, only two

years of military sea service were absolutely required. Thenceforth the

officer was devoted to the military navy.

The essential spirit and tendency of the new legislation is summed up

in the requirements for the lieutenancy. Up to the age of forty, that

is, during the formative years of a man's life, it was left to the

choice, interest, or caprice of the individual, how he would pass his

time between the two services. The inducements to stick to the navy

were too slight to weigh against the passing inclinations of young

or restless men. If the navy is the specialty that has been before

asserted, there can be no doubt that this scheme was radically vicious.

A period of commercial prosperity would have robbed it of its best men

during their best years.

It is due to the Constituent Assembly to say that, while thus

establishing the navy of the future on foundations that reason and

experience have both condemned, it did not, as has sometimes been said,

reject or drive away the able officers still in France; that is, by

direct legislative act. Although the decree of April 22 abolished the

existing corps of the navy, it provided also that the new organization

should be constituted, "for this time only," by a selection made from

the officers of the old service then available; from whom the higher

grades, including lieutenants, were to be, as far as possible, filled.

Those who were not so selected were to be retired with at least

two-thirds of their present pay; and with the next higher grade, if

they had served over ten years in the one they then held. Whatever

dislike these officers may rightly have felt for the new organization,

they personally lost little by it, unless not selected; but the

failure on the part of the Assembly to realize the irreparable loss

with which the country was threatened,—the unique value of a body of

men already, and alone, fitted for the performance of very delicate

duties,—and the consequent neglect to uphold and protect them, were

as fatal in their results as though they had been legislated out of

existence.

The second, or Legislative, Assembly during its year of existence made

no radical changes in the organization it found; but the increasing

want of officers led inevitably to lowering the qualifications exacted

for the different grades, which was done by several acts. The National

Convention went still farther in the same direction. January 13,

1793, immediately before the war with Great Britain, it decreed that

rear-admirals might be taken from any captains whose commission dated

back the month before. Merchant captains who had commanded privateers

or ships in the foreign trade for five years, could be at once made

post-captains. To be made lieutenant were needed only five years'

sea-service, either in the navy or on board merchant ships. Decree now

followed decree, all in the same direction, winding up on July 28 by

authorizing the minister of marine, until otherwise ordered, to fill

the places of flag and other officers from any grade and without regard

to existing laws. Most of these measures were probably justified by

stern and pressing necessity.[28]

The reign of terror was now at hand. The scourge fell upon the

naval officers who had not fled the country as well as upon others.

Grimouard, whose activity in the West Indies has been noted;

Philippe d'Orléans, admiral of France, who had commanded the van at

Ushant; Vice-Admiral Kersaint, who had stood in the foremost rank of

revolutionists till the murder of the king; D'Estaing, also admiral

of France, who had held high command with distinguished courage, if

not with equal ability, in the war of American Independence,—perished

on the scaffold. The companions of their glory had for the most died

before the evil days. D'Orvilliers, De Grasse, Guichen, the first

Latouche-Tréville, Suffren, La Motte Piquet, passed away before the

meeting of the States-General.

Besides the judicial and other murders, the effect of the general

suspiciousness was felt by the navy in new legislation of a yet more

disastrous kind. By a decree of October 7, 1793, the minister of marine

was to lay before the naval committee of the Assembly a list of all

officers and _aspirants_ whose ability or _civisme_,—_i. e._, fidelity

to the new order of things,—was suspected. This may have been well

enough; but, in addition, lists of all officers and _aspirants_ were to

be posted in different places, and all people were invited to send in

denunciations of those whom they believed to be lacking in ability or

fidelity. These denunciations were to be passed upon by an assembly,

made up of the general council of the Commune and all the seamen of the

district. The decision was reached by majority of votes and forwarded

to the minister, who was obliged to dismiss those against whom the

charges were thus sustained.[29]

The navy being in this way purged, the vacancies were to be filled on

a similar principle. The naval officers, merchant captains and other

seamen of each district, who had qualified for _enseignes_, were to

meet and name three candidates for each of the different vacancies.

In the great want of officers then prevailing, some such system of

nomination might have been very useful in lightening the immense burden

resting on the minister; but it is obvious that the assemblies thus

constituted were too numerous, too popular, too little fitted to carry

on formal discussion, and too destitute of special technical knowledge,

to be good judges. There was found here the same essential defect that

underlay all the conceptions of the different assemblies of the early

republic; ignorant of, and therefore undervaluing, the high and special

requirements of the naval profession, they were willing to entrust its

interests and the selection of its officers to hands that could not be

competent.

The result was depicted in a letter of Admiral Villaret Joyeuse, who

was at once an officer of the old service, and yet had entered it from

the auxiliary navy, having been captain of fireship; who, therefore,

stood as nearly as possible between the two extremes of opinion. As a

subordinate he had won the admiration of Suffren in the East Indies,

and as admiral he commanded with honor the fleets of the Republic. He

wrote: "The popular societies have been called on to point out the men

having both seamanship and patriotism. The societies believed that it

was enough for a man to have been long at sea to be a seaman, if he was

besides a patriot. They did not reflect that patriotism alone cannot

handle a ship. The grades consequently have been given to men without

merit beyond that of having been much at sea, not remembering that such

a man often is in a ship just as a bale is. It must be frankly said

it is not always the man at once most skilful and patriotic that has

had the suffrages of the societies, but often the most intriguing and

the falsest,—he, who by effrontery and talk has been able to impose

upon the majority."[30] In another letter he says: "You doubtless know

that the best seamen of the different commercial ports kept behind

the curtain in the beginning of the Revolution; and that on the other

hand there came forward a crowd who, not being able to find employment

in commerce, because they had no other talent than the phraseology

of patriotism, by means of which they misled the popular societies

of which they were members, got the first appointments. Experienced

captains, who might have served the republic efficiently by their

talents and skill, have since then steadily refused to go to sea, and

with inexcusable self-love still prefer service in the National Guard

(ashore) to going to sea, where they say they would have to be under

captains to whom they have often refused the charge of a watch. Hence

the frequent accidents met with by the ships of the republic. Since

justice and consequently talents are now (1795) the order of the day,

and all France is now convinced that patriotism, doubtless one of the

most necessary virtues in an officer of the government, is yet not the

only one required to command armies and fleets, as was once claimed,

you are quite right," etc.[31]

Enough has been said to show the different causes that destroyed the

corps of French naval officers. Some of these were exceptional in their

character and not likely to recur; but it is plain that even their

operation was hastened by the false notions prevalent in the government

as to the character and value of professional training, while the same

false notions underlay the attempts both to fill the vacant places

and to provide a new basis for the official staff of the future. The

results of these mistaken ideas will be seen in the narrative; but it

may be useful to give here the professional antecedents (taken from

a French naval historian) of the admirals and captains in the first

great battle of this war, June 1, 1794, by which time the full effect

of the various changes had been reached. These three admirals and

twenty-six captains of 1794 held in 1791 the following positions: the

commander-in-chief, Villaret Joyeuse, was a lieutenant; the two other

flag-officers, one a lieutenant, the other a sub-lieutenant; of the

captains, three were lieutenants, eleven sub-lieutenants, nine captains

or mates of merchant ships, one a seaman in the navy, one a boatswain,

one not given.[32]

The action of the Assemblies with regard to the enlisted men of the

fleet was as unreasonable and revolutionary as that touching the

officers. For twenty years before the meeting of the States-General

the navy had contained nine divisions of trained seamen-gunners,

numbering some ten thousand men, and commanded, as in all services,

by naval officers. It is scarcely possible to over-rate the value,

in _esprit-de-corps_ as well as in fighting effect, of such a body

of trained men. In 1792 these were replaced by a force of marine

artillerists, commanded by artillery officers. The precise relation

of these to the sea-officers is not stated; but from the change must

have sprung jealousies harmful to discipline, as well as injury to

the military spirit of the naval officer. In 1794, these marine

artillerists, and also the marine infantry, were suppressed on motion

of Jean Bon Saint-André, so well known in connection with the French

navy of the day. In his opinion, endorsed by the vote of the National

Convention, it savored of aristocracy that any body of men should have

an exclusive right to fight at sea. "The essential basis of our social

institutions," said he, "is equality; to this touchstone you must bring

all parts of the government, both military and civil. In the navy there

exists an abuse, the destruction of which is demanded by the Committee

of Public Safety by my mouth. There are in the navy troops which bear

the name of 'marine regiments.' Is this because these troops have the

_exclusive privilege_ of defending the republic upon the sea? Are we

not _all_ called upon to fight for liberty? Why could not the victors

of Landau, of Toulon, go upon our fleets to show their courage to Pitt,

and lower the flag of George? This right cannot be denied them; they

themselves would claim it, were not their arms serving the country

elsewhere. Since they cannot now enjoy it, we must at least give them

the prospect of using it."[33]

"Thus," says a French writer, "a marine artillerist, a soldier trained

in the difficult art of pointing a gun at sea and especially devoted

to that service, became a kind of aristocrat."[34] None the less did

the Convention, in those days of the Terror, vote the change. "Take

care," wrote Admiral Kerguelen, "you need trained gunners to serve guns

at sea. Those on shore stand on a steady platform and aim at fixed

objects; those at sea, on the contrary, are on a moving platform, and

fire always, so to speak, on the wing. The experience of the late

actions should teach you that our gunners are inferior to those of

the enemy."[35] The words of common sense could get no hearing in

those days of flighty ideas and excited imaginations. "How," asks La

Gravière, "could these prudent words draw the attention of republicans,

more touched by the recollections of Greece and Rome than by the

glorious traditions of our ancestors? Those were the days in which

presumptuous innovators seriously thought to restore to the oar its

importance, and to throw flying bridges on the decks of English ships

of the line, as the Romans did on board the galleys of Carthage; candid

visionaries, who with simplicity summed up the titles of their mission

in words such as these, preserved among the archives of the Navy:

'Legislators, here are the outpourings of an ingenuous patriot, who

has for guide no other principle than that of nature and a heart truly

French.'"[36]

The effects of this legislation were soon seen in the fighting at sea.

The British seventy-four, Alexander, fought three French ships of her

own size for two hours; the average loss of each of the latter equalled

that of the one enemy. In June, 1795, twelve French ships-of-the-line

found themselves in presence of five British. There was bad management

in more ways than one, but five of the French had three of the enemy

under their fire for several hours; only thirteen Englishmen were

hurt, and no ship so crippled as to be taken. A few days later the

same French fleet fell in with a British of somewhat superior force.

Owing to light airs and other causes, only a partial engagement

followed, in which eight British and twelve French took part. The

whole British loss was one hundred and forty-four killed and wounded.

Three French ships struck, with a loss of six hundred and seventy;

and the nine others, which had been partially engaged, had a total of

two hundred and twenty-two killed and wounded. In December, 1796, the

British frigate Terpsichore met the French Vestale, of equal force.

The latter surrendered after a sharp action of two hours, in which she

lost sixty-eight killed and wounded against the enemy's twenty-two.

This a French writer speaks of as a simple artillery duel, unmarked

by any manœuvres. These are not instances chosen to prove a case, but

illustrations of the general fact, well known to contemporaries, that

the French gunnery was extremely bad. "In comparing this war with the

American," says Sir Howard Douglas, "it is seen that, in the latter,

the loss of English ships in action with French of equal force, was

much more considerable. In the time of Napoleon, whole batteries of

ships-of-the-line were fired without doing more harm than two pieces,

well directed."

Nor was it only by direct legislation that the Assemblies destroyed

the efficiency of the crews. The neglect of discipline and its bad

results have before been mentioned. The same causes kept working

for many years, and the spirit of insubordination, which sprang

from revolutionary excess, doubtless grew stronger as the crews

found themselves more and more under incapable officers, through the

emigration of their old leaders. As they threw off wholesome restraint,

they lost unavoidably in self-respect; and the class of men to whom the

confusion of an ill-ordered ship was intolerable, as it becomes even to

the humblest seaman who has been used to regularity, doubtless did as

the merchant officers of whom Villaret Joyeuse wrote. They withdrew,

under cover of the confusion of the times, from the naval service. "The

tone of the seamen is wholly ruined," wrote Admiral Morard de Galles,

on March 22, 1793, a month after the declaration of war with England:

"if it does not change we can expect nothing but reverses in action,

even though we be superior in force. The boasted ardor attributed to

them" (by themselves and national representatives) "stands only in the

words 'patriot,' 'patriotism,' which they are ever repeating, and in

shouts of 'Vive la nation! Vive la République!' when they have been

well flattered. No idea of doing right or attending to their duties."

The government thought best not to interfere, for fear of alienating

the seamen. Morard de Galles's flag-ship, having carried away her

head-sails in a storm, tried unsuccessfully to wear. "If I had had

a crew such as we formerly had," wrote the admiral to the minister,

"I would have used means which would have succeeded; but, despite

exhortations and threats, I could not get thirty seamen on deck. The

army gunners and greater part of the marine troops behaved better. They

did what they were told; but the seamen, even the petty officers, did

not show themselves."[37]

In May, it being then open war, a mutiny broke out when the Brest

squadron was ordered to get under way. To obtain obedience, the naval

authorities had to call in the city government and the Society of

Friends of Liberty and Equality. In June De Galles wrote again: "I have

sailed in the most numerous squadrons, but never in a year did I see so

many collisions as in the month this squadron has been together." He

kept the sea until toward the end of August, when the fleet anchored

in Quiberon Bay, seventy-five miles south-east of Brest. The Navy

Department, which was only the mouthpiece of the Committee of Public

Safety, directed that the fleet should keep the sea till further

orders. On the 13th of September, news reached it of the insurrection

of Toulon and the reception there of the English fleet. Deputations

from different ships came to the admiral, headed by two midshipmen,

who demanded, with great insolence of manner, that he should return to

Brest, despite his orders. This he firmly refused. The propositions of

one of the midshipmen were such that the admiral lost his temper. "I

called them," says he, "cowards, traitors, foes to the Revolution; and,

as they said they _would_ get under way, I replied (and at the instant

I believed) that there were twenty faithful ships which would fire on

them if they undertook any movements without my orders." The admiral

was mistaken as to the temper of the crews. Next morning seven ships

mast-headed their top-sails in readiness to sail. He in person went on

board, trying to bring them back to obedience, but in vain. To mask his

defeat under a form of discipline, if discipline it could be called,

he consented to call a council of war, made up of one officer and one

seaman from each ship, to debate the question of going back to Brest.

This council decided to send deputies to the representatives of the

Convention, then on mission in the department, and meanwhile to await

further orders from the government. This formality did not hide the

fact that power had passed from the commander-in-chief appointed by the

State to a council representing a military mob.[38]

The deputies from the ships found the commissioners of the Convention,

one of whom came to the fleet. Upon consultation with the admiral,

it appeared that twelve ships out of twenty-one were in open mutiny,

and four of the other nine in doubt. As the fleet needed repairs, the

commissioner ordered its return to Brest. The mob thus got its way,

but the spirit of the government had changed. In June the extreme

revolutionary party had gained the upper hand in the State, and was

no longer willing to allow the anarchy which had hitherto played its

game. The Convention, under the rule of the Mountain, showed extreme

displeasure at the action of the fleet; and though its anger fell

upon the admirals and captains, many of whom were deprived and some

executed, decrees were issued showing that rank insubordination would

no longer be tolerated. The government now felt strong.

The cruise of Morard de Galles is an instance, on a large scale, of the

state to which the navy had come in the three years that had passed

since mutiny had driven De Rions from the service; but it by no means

stood alone. In the great Mediterranean naval port, Toulon, things were

quite as bad. "The new officers," says Chevalier, "obtained no more

obedience than the old; the crews became what they had been made; they

now knew only one thing, to rise against authority. Duty and honor

had become to them empty words." It would be wearisome to multiply

instances and details. Out of their own country such men were a terror

rather to allies than foes. An evidently friendly writer, speaking of

the Mediterranean fleet when anchored at Ajaccio in Corsica, says,

under date of December 31, 1792: "The temper of the fleet and of the

troops is excellent; only, it might be said, there is not enough

discipline. They came near hanging one day a man who, the following

day, was recognized as very innocent of the charge made against him by

the agitators. The lesson, however, has not been lost on the seamen,

who, seeing the mis-steps into which these hangmen by profession lead

them, have denounced one of them."[39] Grave disorders all the same

took place, and two Corsican National Guards were hanged by a mob of

seamen and soldiers from the fleet; but how extraordinary must have

been the feelings of the time when a critic could speak so gingerly of,

not to say praise, the temper that showed itself in this way.

While the tone and the military efficiency of officers and crew

were thus lowered, the material condition of both ships and men was

wretched. Incompetency and disorder directed everywhere. There was

lack of provisions, clothing, timber, rigging, sails. In De Galles's

fleet, though they had just sailed, most of the ships needed repairs.

The crews counted very many sick, and they were besides destitute of

clothing. Although scurvy was raging, the men, almost in sight of

their own coast, were confined to salt food. Of the Toulon squadron

somewhat later, in 1795, we are told almost all the seamen deserted.

"Badly fed, scarcely clothed, discouraged by constant lack of success,

they had but one thought, to fly the naval service. In September, ten

thousand men would have been needed to fill the complements of the

Toulon fleet."[40] The country was ransacked for seamen, who dodged the

maritime conscription as the British sailor of the day hid from the

press-gang.

After the action called by the British the Battle of L'Orient, and by

the French that of the Île de Groix, in 1795, the French fleet took

refuge in L'Orient, where they remained two months. So great was the

lack of provisions that the crews were given leave. When the ships

were again ready for sea "it was not an easy thing to make the seamen

come back; a decree was necessary to recall them to the colors. Even

so only a very small number returned, and it was decided to send out

singly, or at most by divisions, the ships which were in the port.

When they reached Brest the crews were sent round to L'Orient by land

to man other ships. In this way the fleet sailed at different dates

in three divisions."[41] In the Irish expedition of 1796, part of

the failure in handling the ships is laid to the men being benumbed

with cold, because without enough clothes. Pay was constantly in

arrears. The seamen, whatever might be their patriotism, could not

be tempted back to the discomforts and hardships of such a service.

Promises, threats, edicts, were all of no avail. This state of things

lasted for years. The civil commissioner of the navy in Toulon wrote

in 1798, concerning the preparations for Bonaparte's expedition to

Egypt: "Despite the difficulties concerning supplies, they were but a

secondary object of my anxiety. To bring seamen into the service fixed

it entirely. I gave the commissioners of the maritime inscription the

most pressing orders; I invited the municipalities, the commissioners

of the Directory, the commanders of the army, to second them; and to

assure the success of this general measure, I sent with my despatches

money to pay each seaman raised a month's advance and conduct money.

The inveterate insubordination of seamen in most of the western

ports, their pronounced aversion to the service, making almost null

the effects of the maritime commissioners, I sent a special officer

from the port, firm and energetic," to second their efforts; "at

length after using every lawful means, part of the western seamen have

repaired to this port. There are still many stragglers that are being

pursued unremittingly."[42]

The chief causes for this trouble were the hardships and the

irregularity of pay, with the consequent sufferings to their families.

As late as 1801, Admiral Ganteaume drew a moving picture of the state

of the officers and men under his command. "I once more call your

attention to the frightful state in which are left the seamen, unpaid

for fifteen months, naked or covered with rags, badly fed, discouraged;

in a word, sunk under the weight of the deepest and most humiliating

wretchedness. It would be horrible to make them undertake, in this

state, a long and doubtless painful winter cruise."[43] Yet it was in

this condition he had come from Brest to Toulon in mid-winter. At the

same time the admiral said that the officers, receiving neither pay nor

table money, lived in circumstances that lowered them in their own eyes

and deprived them of the respect of the crews. It was at about this

time that the commander of a corvette, taken by a British frigate, made

in his defence before the usual court-martial the following statement:

"Three fourths of the crew were sea-sick from the time of leaving Cape

Sepet until reaching Mahon. Add to this, ill-will, and a panic terror

which seized my crew at the sight of the frigate. Almost all thought it

a ship-of-the-line. Add to this again, that they had been wet through

by the sea for twenty-four hours without having a change of clothes,

as I had only been able to get ten spare suits for the whole ship's

company."[44] The quality of the crews, the conditions of their life,

and the reason why good seamen kept clear of the service, sufficiently

appear from these accounts. In the year of Trafalgar, even, neither

bedding nor clothing was regularly issued to the crews.[45]

Surprise will not be felt, when human beings were thus neglected,

that the needs of the inanimate ships were not met. In the early

part of the war it is not easy to say whether the frequent accidents

were due to bad handling or bad outfit. In 1793, the escape of six

sail-of-the-line, under Admiral Van Stabel, from Lord Howe's fleet, is

attributed to superior sailing qualities of the hulls and the better

staying of the masts.[46] The next year, however, the commissioner

of the Convention who accompanied the great ocean fleet, Jean Bon

Saint-André, tried to account for the many accidents which happened in

good weather by charging the past reign with a deliberate purpose of

destroying the French navy. "This neglect," wrote he, "like so many

more, belonged to the system of ruining the navy by carelessness and

neglect of all the parts composing it."[47] It was well known that

Louis XVI. had given special care to the material and development of

the service; nor is it necessary to seek any deeper cause for the

deterioration of such perishable materials than the disorders of

the five years since he practically ceased to reign. From this time

complaints multiply, and the indications of the entire want of naval

stores cannot be mistaken. To this, rather than to the neglect of the

dockyard officials in Brest, was due the wretched condition of the

fleet sent in December, 1794, by the obstinacy of the Committee of

Public Safety, to make a mid-winter cruise in the Bay of Biscay, the

story of whose disasters is elsewhere told.[48]

The expedition to Ireland in 1796 was similarly ill-prepared; and

indeed, with the British preponderance at sea hampering trade, the

embarrassment could scarcely fail to grow greater. Spars carried

away, rigging parted, sails tore. Some ships had no spare sails.

This, too, was a mid-winter expedition, the squadron having sailed in

December. In 1798 the preparation of Bonaparte's Egyptian expedition

at Toulon met with the greatest difficulty. The naval commissioner

showed much zeal and activity, and was fearless in taking upon himself

responsibility; but the fleet sailed for an unknown destination almost

without spare spars and rigging, and three of the thirteen were not

fit for sea. Two had been condemned the year before, and on one they

did not dare to put her regular battery. In January, 1801, a squadron

of seven sail-of-the-line left Brest under Admiral Ganteaume, having

the all-important mission of carrying a reinforcement of five thousand

troops to the army in Egypt. Becoming discouraged, whether rightly or

wrongly, after entering the Mediterranean, the admiral bore up for

Toulon, where he anchored after being at sea twenty-six days. Here

is his report of his fleet during and after this short cruise: "The

'Indivisible' had lost two topmasts and had no spare one left. The

trestle-trees of the mainmast were sprung and could not support the

new topmast. The 'Desaix' had sprung her bowsprit. The 'Constitution'

and the 'Jean-Bart' were in the same condition as the 'Indivisible,'

neither having a spare main-topmast after carrying away the others.

Both the 'Formidable' and the 'Indomptable,' on the night we got under

way, had an anchor break adrift. They had to cut the cable; but both

had their sides stove in at the water-line, and could not be repaired

at sea. Finally, all the ships, without exception, were short of rope

to a disquieting extent, not having had, on leaving Brest, a single

spare coil; and the rigging in place was all bad, and in a state to

risk every moment the speed and safety of the ships."[49] It will be

unnecessary to quote more of these mishaps, in which lack of skill and

bad equipment each bore its part; nor need we try to disentangle the

one cause from the other.

Enough has now been said to show the general state of the French navy

in the last ten years of the eighteenth century. The time and space

thus used have not been wasted, for these conditions, which continued

under the empire, were as surely the chief cause of the continuous and

overwhelming overthrow of that navy, as the ruin of the French and

Spanish sea-power, culminating at Trafalgar, was a principal factor

in the final result sealed at Waterloo. Great Britain will be seen

to enter the war allied with many of the nations of Europe against

France. One by one the allies drop away, until the island kingdom, with

two-fifths the population of France and a disaffected Ireland, stands

alone face to face with the mighty onset of the Revolution. Again and

again she knits the coalitions, which are as often cut asunder by the

victorious sword of the French army. Still she stands alone on the

defensive, until the destruction of the combined fleets at Trafalgar,

and the ascendency of her own navy, due to the immense physical loss

and yet more to the moral annihilation of that of the enemy, enable her

to assume the offensive in the peninsula after the Spanish uprising,—an

offensive based absolutely upon her control of the sea. Her presence in

Portugal and Spain keeps festering that Spanish ulcer which drained the

strength of Napoleon's empire. As often before, France, contending with

Germany, had Spain again upon her back.

There still remains to consider briefly the state of the other navies

which bore a part in the great struggle; and after that, the strategic

conditions of the sea war, in its length and breadth, at the time it

began.

The British navy was far from being in perfect condition; and it

had no such administrative prescription upon which to fall back as

France always had in the regulations and practice of Colbert and his

son. In the admiralty and the dockyards, at home and abroad, there

was confusion and waste, if not fraud. As is usual in representative

governments, the military establishments had drooped during ten years

of peace. But, although administration lacked system, and agents were

neglectful or dishonest, the navy itself, though costing more than

it should, remained vigorous; the possessor of actual, and yet more

of reserved, strength in the genius and pursuits of the people,—in

a continuous tradition, which struck its roots far back in a great

past,—and above all, in a body of officers, veterans of the last, and

some of yet earlier wars, still in the prime of life for the purposes

of command, and steeped to the core in those professional habits and

feelings which, when so found in the chief, transmit themselves quickly

to the juniors. As the eye of the student familiar with naval history

glances down the lists of admirals and captains in 1793, it recognizes

at once the names of those who fought under Keppel, Rodney, and Howe,

linked with those who were yet to win fame as the companions of Hood,

Jervis, Nelson, and Collingwood.

To this corps of officers is to be added, doubtless, a large number of

trained seamen, who, by choice, remained in the navy under the reduced

peace complement; a nucleus round which could be rapidly gathered and

organized all the sea-faring population fit for active service. The

strength of Great Britain, however, lay in her great body of merchant

seamen; and the absence of so many of these on distant voyages was

always a source of embarrassment when manning a fleet in the beginning

of a war. The naval service was also generally unpopular with the

sailor; to whom, as to his officer, the rigid yoke of discipline was

hard to bear until the neck was used to it. Hence, in the lack of

any system similar to the French maritime inscription, Great Britain

resorted to the press; a method which, though legally authorized, was

stained in execution by a lawlessness and violence strange in a people

that so loved both law and freedom. Even so, with both press-gang

and free enlistment, the navy, as a whole, was always shorthanded in

a great war, so that men of all nations were received and welcomed;

much very bad native material was also accepted. "Consider," wrote

Collingwood, "with such a fleet as we have now, how large a proportion

of the crews of the ships are miscreants of every description, and

capable of every crime. And when those predominate what evils may we

not dread from the demoniac councils and influence of such a mass of

mischief."[50]

The condition of the seamen on board left much to be desired. The pay

had not been increased since the days of Charles II., although the

prices of all the necessaries of life had risen thirty per cent. The

exigencies of the service, combined with the fear of desertion, led

to very close enforced confinement to the ship, even in home ports;

men were long unable to see their families. The discipline, depending

upon the character of the captain, too little defined and limited by

law, varied greatly in different ships; while some were disorganized by

undue leniency, in others punishment was harsh and tyrannical. On the

other hand, there was a large and growing class of officers, both among

the sterner and the laxer disciplinarians, who looked upon the health

and well-being of the crew as the first of their duties and interests;

and better sanitary results have perhaps never been reached, certainly

never in proportion to the science of the day, than under Jervis,

Nelson, Collingwood, and their contemporaries, in fleets engaged in

the hardest, most continuous service, under conditions of monotony and

isolation generally unfavorable to health. Nelson, during a cruise in

which he passed two years without leaving his ship even for another,

often speaks with pride, almost with exultation, of the health of his

crews. After his pursuit of Villeneuve's fleet to the West Indies, he

writes: "We have lost neither officer nor man by sickness since we left

the Mediterranean," a period of ten weeks. The number of men in his

ships must have been near seven thousand. Both French and Spaniards of

the fleet he pursued were very sickly. "They landed a thousand sick

at Martinique, and buried full that number during their stay."[51]

Collingwood writes: "I have not let go an anchor for fifteen months,

and on the first day of the year had not a sick-list in the ship—not

one man."[52] And again a year later: "Yet, with all this sea-work,

never getting fresh beef nor a vegetable, I have not one sick man in

my ship. Tell that to Doctor ——." "His flag-ship had usually eight

hundred men; was, on one occasion, more than a year and a half without

going into port, and during the whole of that time never had more than

six, and generally only four, on her sick-list."[53] Such results show

beyond dispute that the crews were well clothed, well fed, and well

cared for.

Amid ship's companies of such mixed character, and suffering during the

early years of the war from real and severe grievances, it was to be

expected that acts of mutiny should occur. Such there were, rivalling,

if not surpassing, in extent, those which have been told of the French

navy. They also received intelligent guidance at the hands of a class

of men, of higher educational acquirements than the average seaman,

who, through drunkenness, crime, or simple good-for-nothingness, had

found their way on board ship. The feature which distinguished these

revolts from those of the French was the spirit of reasonableness and

respect for law which at the first marked their proceedings; and which

showed how deeply the English feeling for law, duty and discipline,

had taken hold of the naval seamen. Their complaints, unheeded when

made submissively, were at once allowed to be fair when mutiny drew

attention to them. The forms of discipline were maintained by men who

refused to go to sea before their demands were allowed, unless "the

enemy's fleet should put to sea;"[54] and respect to officers was

enjoined, though some who were obnoxious for severity were sent ashore.

One very signal instance is given of military sympathy with obedience

to orders, though at their own expense. A lieutenant, having shot one

of several mutineers, was seized by the others, who made ready to hang

him, and he stood actually under the yard-arm with the halter round

his neck; but upon the admiral saying he himself was responsible,

having given orders to the officer in accordance with his own from the

Admiralty, the seamen stopped, asked to see the orders, and, having

satisfied themselves of their terms, abandoned their purpose.

Captain Brenton, the naval historian, was watch-officer on board a ship

that for many days was in the hands of mutineers. He says, "The seamen,

generally speaking, throughout the mutiny conducted themselves with a

degree of humanity highly creditable, not only to themselves, but to

the national character. They certainly tarred and feathered the surgeon

of a ship at the Nore, but he had been five weeks drunk in his cabin

and had neglected the care of his patients; this was therefore an act

which Lord Bacon would have called 'wild justice.' The delegates of

the 'Agamemnon'" (his own ship) "showed respect to every officer but

the captain; him, after the first day, they never insulted but rather

treated with neglect; they asked permission of the lieutenants to

punish a seaman, who, from carelessness or design, had taken a dish of

meat belonging to the ward-room and left his own, which was honestly

and civilly offered in compensation."[55] Still, though begun under

great provocation and marked at first by such orderly procedure, the

fatal effects of insubordination once indulged long remained, as in

a horse that has once felt his strength; while the self-control and

reasonableness of demand which distinguished the earlier movements lost

their sway. The later mutinies seriously endangered the State, and the

mutinous spirit survived after the causes which palliated it had been

removed.

In meeting the needs of so great and widely scattered a naval force,

even with the best administration and economy, there could not but be

great deficiencies; and the exigencies of the war would not permit

ships to be recalled and refitted as often as the hard cruising

properly required. Still, by care and foresight, the equipment of the

fleet was maintained in sufficient and serviceable condition. In the

year 1783 a plan was adopted "of setting apart for every sea-going

ship a large proportion of her furniture and stores, as well as of

stocking the magazines at the several dockyards with imperishable

stores."[56] The readiness thus sought was tested, and also bettered,

by the two partial armaments of 1790 against Spain and of 1791 against

Russia; so that, when orders to arm were received in 1793, in a very

few weeks the ships-of-the-line in commission were increased from

twenty-six to fifty-four, and the whole number of ships of all sizes

from one hundred and thirty-six to over two hundred. The same care and

foresight was continued into the war. It was as much an object with

Great Britain to hinder the carriage of naval stores from the Baltic

to France as to get them herself, and there was reason to fear that

her seizure of ships so laden and bound to France would, as before,

bring on trouble with the northern States. "In 1796 the quantity of

naval stores remaining on hand was too small to afford a hope of their

lasting to the end of the war; but the government, foreseeing that a

rupture must ensue, provided an abundant supply of materials for naval

equipment; ship timber was imported from the Adriatic, masts and hemp

from North America, and large importations were made from the Baltic.

The number of British ships which passed the Sound in one year was

forty-five hundred, chiefly laden with naval stores, corn, tallow,

hides, hemp, and iron. At the same time the most rigid economy was

enforced in the dockyards and on board ships of war."[57]

A bare sufficiency—to be eked out with the utmost care, turning

everything to account, working old stuff up into new forms—was the

economic condition of the British cruiser of the day. Under such

conditions the knack of the captain and officers made a large part of

the efficiency of the ship. "Some," wrote Collingwood, "who have the

foresight to discern what our first difficulty will be, support and

provide their ships as by enchantment; while others, less provident,

would exhaust a dockyard and still be in want." Of one he said: "He

should never sail without a storeship in company;" while of Troubridge

Nelson wrote that "he was as full of resources as his old 'Culloden'

was of defects." A lieutenant of the day mentions feelingly the

anxieties felt on dark nights and in heavy weather off the enemy's

coast, "doubting this brace or that tack," upon which the safety of the

ship might depend. The correspondence of Nelson often mentions this

dearth of stores.

The condition of the two navies in these various respects being as

described, their comparative strength in mere numbers is given by

the British naval historian James, whose statement bears every mark

of careful study and accuracy. After making every deduction, the

British had one hundred and fifteen ships-of-the-line, and the French

seventy-six, when war was declared. The number of guns carried by these

ships was respectively 8718 and 6002; but the author claims that, in

consequence of the heavier metal of the French guns, the aggregate

weight of broadside, undoubtedly the fairest method of comparison,

of the line-of-battle in the two navies was 88,957 pounds against

73,957,—a preponderance of one sixth in favor of Great Britain.[58]

This statement is explicitly accepted by the French admiral, La

Gravière,[59] and does not differ materially from other French accounts

of the numerical strength of that navy at the fall of the monarchy.

The navy of Spain then contained seventy-six ships-of-the-line, of

which fifty-six were in good condition.[60] Particular and detailed

accounts are wanting, but it may safely be inferred from many

indications scattered along the paths of naval records that the valid

strength fell very, very far below this imposing array of ships. The

officers as a body were inexpert and ignorant; the administration of

the dockyards partook of the general shiftlessness of the decaying

kingdom; the crews contained few good seamen and were largely swept

out of the streets, if not out of the jails. "The Spaniards at this

time," says La Gravière, "were no longer substantial enemies. At the

battle of St. Vincent there were scarcely sixty to eighty seamen in

each ship-of-the-line. The rest of the crews were made up of men wholly

new to the sea, picked up a few months before in the country or in the

jails, and who, by the acknowledgment of even English historians, when

ordered to go aloft, fell on their knees, crying that they would rather

be killed on the spot than meet certain death in trying so perilous a

service."[61]

"The Dons," wrote Nelson in 1793, after a visit to Cadiz, "may make

fine ships,—they cannot, however, make men. They have four first-rates

in commission at Cadiz, and very fine ships, but shockingly manned. I

am certain if our six barges' crews, who are picked men, had got on

board of one of them, they would have taken her." "If the twenty-one

ships-of-the-line which we are to join off Barcelona are no better

manned than those at Cadiz, much service cannot be expected of them,

although, as to ships, I never saw finer men-of-war."[62] A few weeks

later he fell in with the twenty-one. "The Dons did not, after several

hours' trial, form anything that could be called a line-of-battle

ahead. However, the Spanish admiral sent down two frigates, acquainting

Lord Hood that, as his fleet was sickly nineteen hundred men, he was

going to Cartagena. The captain of the frigate said 'it was no wonder

they were sickly _for they had been sixty days at sea_.' This speech

appeared to us ridiculous, for, from the circumstance of our having

been longer than that time at sea do we attribute our getting healthy.

It has stamped with me the measure of their nautical abilities; long

may they remain in their present state."[63] In 1795, when Spain had

made peace with France, he wrote, "I know the French long since offered

Spain peace for fourteen ships-of-the-line fully stored. I take for

granted not manned, as that would be the readiest way to lose them

again." "Their fleet is ill-manned and worse officered, I believe; and

besides they are slow." "From the event of Spain making peace much may

be looked for,—perhaps a war with that country; if so, their fleet (if

no better than when our allies) will be soon done for."[64]

Captain Jahleel Brenton, a distinguished British officer of that day,

being in Cadiz on duty before the war, sought and obtained permission

to return to England in a Spanish ship-of-the-line, the "St. Elmo,"

with the express object of seeing the system of their service. He says,

"This ship had been selected as one in the best state of discipline

in the Spanish navy to be sent to England. She was commanded by Don

Lorenzo Goycochea, a gallant seaman who had commanded one of the junto

ships destroyed before Gibraltar in 1782. I had, during this voyage, an

opportunity of appreciating Spanish management at sea. When the ship

was brought under double-reefed topsails, it was considered superfluous

to lay the cloth for dinner; I was told by the captain that not one

officer would be able to sit at table, all being sea-sick, but that he

had ordered dinner to be got ready in his own cabin for himself and me.

It was the custom in the Spanish navy for the captain and officers to

mess together in the ward-room. We had thenceforth a very comfortable

meal together whenever the weather prevented a general meeting. As the

safe arrival of this ship was deemed of great importance (she carried

the Nootka Sound indemnity money), she had on board an English pilot to

enable her to approach the coast of England in safety. A few nights

before our arrival at Falmouth, the ship, having whole sails and

topping sails, was taken aback in a heavy squall from the north-east,

and I was awoke by the English pilot knocking at my cabin door, calling

out,'Mr. Brenton! Mr. Brenton! rouse out, sir; here is the ship

running away with these Spaniards!' When I got on deck I found this

literally the case. She was 'running away' at the rate of twelve knots,

and everything in confusion; she was indeed, to use the ludicrous

expression of a naval captain 'all adrift, like a French post-chaise.'

It required some hours to get things to rights."[65]

Napoleon, in 1805, ordered Admiral Villeneuve to count two Spanish

ships as equal to one French; and the latter certainly were not equal,

ship for ship, to the British. It is only fair to add that he said of

the Spanish crews, speaking of Calder's action, that they fought like

lions.

Holland, first the ally and afterwards the enemy of Great Britain in

the war, had forty-nine ships-of-the-line, but, owing to the shoalness

of her waters, they were mostly of light burden; many would not have

found a place in a British line-of-battle. The frigates were also of

small force. The condition of the ships being, besides, bad, the Dutch

navy was not an important factor on either side.[66]

Portugal and Naples had, the one six, the other four,

ships-of-the-line, which, during the early years of the war, offered

a respectable support to the British Mediterranean fleet;[66] but the

advance of the French under Bonaparte into the two peninsulas reduced

these States to neutrality before the end of the century.

The fleets of the Baltic powers and of Turkey played no part in the war

which would, at this time, require a particular consideration of their

strength.