THE GENERAL POLITICAL AND STRATEGIC CONDITIONS, AND THE EVENTS OF 1793.
The declaration of war against Great Britain was followed, on the
part of the National Convention, by an equally formal pronouncement
against Spain, on the 7th of March, 1793. Thus was completed the chain
of enemies which, except on the mountain frontier of Switzerland,
surrounded the French republic by land and sea.
It is necessary to summarize the political and military condition, to
take account of the strategic situation at this moment when general
hostilities were opening, in order to follow intelligently the
historical narrative of their course, and to appreciate critically the
action of the nations engaged, both separately and, also,—in the case
of the allies,—regarded as a combined whole.
The enemies of France were organized governments, with constitutions of
varying strength and efficiency, but all, except that of Great Britain,
were part of an order of things that was decaying and ready to vanish
away. They belonged to, and throughout the Revolutionary and Napoleonic
wars were hampered by, a past whose traditions of government, of social
order, and of military administration, were violently antagonized by
the measures into which France had been led by pushing to extremes
the philosophical principles of the eighteenth century. But while
thus at one in abhorring, as rulers, a movement whose contagion they
feared, they were not otherwise in harmony. The two most powerful on
the continent, Austria and Prussia, had alternately, in a not remote
past, sided with France as her ally; each in turn had sustained open
and prolonged hostilities with the other, and they were still jealous
rivals for preponderance in Germany. They entered the present war as
formal allies; but were unable, from mutual distrust and their military
traditions, to act in concert, or to take advantage of the disorganized
condition into which France had fallen, and from which the despotism of
the Convention had not yet raised her. Divergent lines of operations
were imposed upon them, not by military expediency, but by the want of
any unifying motive which could overcome their divergent ambitions.
The smaller States of Germany followed the two great powers, seeking
each from day to day its own safety and its own advantage in the
troubled times through which Europe was passing. Several of them had
associations with France as a powerful neighbor, who in the past had
supported them against the overbearing pretensions of the great German
monarchies. With the Convention and its social levelling they could
have no sympathy, but when a settled government succeeded the throes of
the Revolution the old political bias asserted itself against the more
recent social prejudice, and these weaker bodies again fell naturally
under French control.
Spain under good government has, and at that crisis still more had,
a military situation singularly fitted to give her weight in the
councils of Europe. Compact and symmetrical in shape, with an extensive
seaboard not deficient in good harbors, her physical conformation and
remoteness from the rest of the Continent combined to indicate that her
true strength was to be found in a powerful navy, for which also her
vast colonial system imperiously called. Her maritime advantages were
indeed diminished by the jog which Portugal takes out of her territory
and coast line, and by the loss of Gibraltar. Lisbon, in the hands
of an enemy, interposes between the arsenals of Ferrol and Cadiz,
as Gibraltar does between the latter and Cartagena. But there was
great compensation in the extent of her territory, in her peninsular
formation, and in the difficult character of her only continental
frontier, the Pyrenees. Her position is defensively very strong;
and whenever events make France the centre of European interest, as
they did in 1793, and as the genius of that extraordinary country
continually tends to make her, the external action of Spain becomes
doubly interesting. So far as natural advantages go, her military
situation at the opening of the French revolution may be defined by
saying that she controlled the Mediterranean, and menaced the flank
and rear of France by land. Despite Gibraltar, her action was to
determine whether the British navy should or should not enter the
Mediterranean—whether the wheat of Barbary and Sicily should reach the
hungry people of southern France—whether the French fleet should leave
Toulon—whether the French army could advance against the Germans and
Piedmont, feeling secure as to the country behind it, then seething
with revolt. The political condition of Italy, divided like Germany
into many petty States, but unlike Germany in having no powerful
centres around which to gather, left to Spain, potentially, the control
of the Mediterranean. These advantages were all thrown away by bad
government and inefficient military institutions. The navy of Spain was
the laughing-stock of Europe; her finances depended upon the colonies,
and consequently upon control of the sea, which she had not; while,
between an embarrassed treasury and poor military administration,
her army, though at first under respectable leadership, made little
impression upon the yet unorganized levies of France, and an abject
peace soon closed an ignominious war.
The path of Great Britain, as soon as she had determined to enter the
war, was comparatively clear, being indicated alike by the character
of her military strength and by her history during the past century.
Since the days of Charles II. she had been at times the ally, at times
the enemy, of Austria, of Prussia, and of Holland; she had, in her
frequent wars, found Spain at times neutral, at times hostile, in
neither case a very powerful factor; but, under all circumstances,
France had been her enemy, sometimes secret, usually open. Steeped in
this traditional hostility, both the British government and nation
with single eye fastened upon France as the great danger, and were not
diverted from this attitude of concentrated purpose by any jealousy of
the more powerful among their allies. Spain alone might have been an
unwelcome rival, as well as a powerful support, upon the watery plain
which Great Britain claimed as her own dominion. Spanish ships of war
were numerous; but the admiralty soon saw that the Spanish navy, from
the poor quality of its officers and men, could not seriously menace
British preponderance upon the ocean, although at times it might be
an awkward embarrassment, and even more so as a suspicious ally than
as an open foe. The co-operation of the two navies, however, at the
opening of the war effectually secured for the time the control of the
Mediterranean and of the approaches to southern France.
Russia, although declaring openly against the French Revolution, took
no active part in the early military operations, except by a convention
made with Great Britain on the 25th of March, 1793, to interdict
the trade of France with the Baltic in grain and naval stores, as a
means of forcing her to peace. Russia was then busily engaged with
her projects against Poland, and a few days later, on the 9th of
April, 1793, an imperial ukase was issued incorporating parts of that
kingdom with the empire. This, with the Prussian decree of March 25,
consummated the second partition of Poland,—the result of a series
of aggressions by the two powers that had extended over the past two
years, and the intermediate step to the final partition in 1795.
The smaller European States trimmed their course as best they could in
the great convulsion which, far beyond most wars, left little room for
neutrality. Sweden and Denmark strove hard to keep out of the turmoil
and to retain the commercial advantages reaped by neutral flags in
maritime wars. Their distance from the scene of the earlier strifes,
and the peninsular position of Sweden, enabled them long to avoid
actual hostilities; but the concurrence of Russia with Great Britain,
in the latter's traditional unwillingness to concede neutral claims,
deprived the smaller Baltic powers of the force necessary to maintain
their contentions. Holland, as of old, was divided between French and
British parties; but the latter, under the headship of the House of
Orange, in 1793, held the reins of government and directed the policy
of the State in accordance with the treaty of defensive alliance made
with Great Britain in 1788. The ultimate policy of the United Provinces
depended upon the fortune of the war. As France or her enemies
triumphed, so would the party in the State favorable to the victor be
retained in, or restored to, power. Neutrality was impossible to an
open continental country, lying so near such a great conflagration;
but, not to speak of the immediate dangers threatened by the attitude
of the French Convention and its decrees of November 19 and December
15, Holland, with her vast colonial system, had more to fear from the
navy of Great Britain, which had no rival, than from the armies of
France which, in 1793, were confronted by the most powerful military
States in Europe. At this time the United Provinces held, besides Java
and other possessions in the far East, various colonies in the West
Indies and South America, the island of Ceylon and the Cape of Good
Hope. The last two alone Great Britain has finally retained; but all
of them, as years went by, passed by conquest into her hands after
Holland, in 1795, became the dependent of France.
Portugal retained her traditional alliance with Great Britain, and
so became a point of supreme importance when the secession of Spain
to France compelled the British navy to leave the Mediterranean. The
formal connection between the two countries was for a short time
severed by the genius and power of Napoleon; but, at the uprising of
Spain in 1808, the old sentiment, unbroken, resumed its sway, and
Portugal became the base of the British army, as in an earlier day she
had been the secure haven of the British fleet.
In northern Italy the extent of Piedmont and its contiguity to the
Austrian duchies of Milan and Mantua gave the means of forming a
powerful focus of resistance to their common enemy, the French
republic, around which the smaller Italian States might feel secure
to rally; but the sluggishness and jealousies of the two governments
prevented the vigorous, combined action which alone could cope with
the energy impressed by the Convention upon its men. In the centre
of the peninsula, the Pope inevitably threw his immense spiritual
influence, as well as such temporal power as he could exercise, against
the revolution; while, in the south, the Bourbon kingdom of the Two
Sicilies, with its capital at Naples, was chiefly controlled by the
queen, herself a sister of Marie Antoinette. The military strength
of this kingdom, like that of Spain, was rendered contemptible by
miserable administration, and was further neutralized by its remoteness
from the seats of actual war; but the bias of the monarchy was
undoubted. Like all weak and corrupt governments, it shuffled and
equivocated under pressure and was false when the pressure was removed;
but, so far as it could, it favored the allied cause and was a useful
base to the British fleet in the Mediterranean.
In the eastern Mediterranean, the Turkish empire was not then the
element of recognized critical hazard to the whole European system
which it has since become; but its territorial limits were far wider
than they now are. Extending on the north to the Save and the Danube,
Turkey held also beyond the river Wallachia and Moldavia to the banks
of the Dniester, and, on the south, the present kingdom of Greece. The
islands of the Archipelago, with Crete and Cyprus, also belonged to
her. Syria and Egypt likewise acknowledged the authority of the Porte,
but in both the submission yielded was only nominal; the former, under
Djezzar Pasha, and the latter, under the Mamelukes, were practically
independent countries. At the outbreak of the French Revolution Turkey
had sunk to the lowest pitch of disorganization and impotence; and her
rulers, keenly feeling her condition and her danger from Russia, sought
to avoid entanglement in the troubles of western Europe, from which
their great enemy kept itself free. In this they were successful until
Bonaparte, by his attack upon Egypt, forced them from their security
and aroused Great Britain and Europe to their common interest in the
East.
The islands of the western Mediterranean had not only the importance
common to all members of that geographical family in naval wars, nor
yet only that due to their intrinsic values. In so narrow a sheet of
water each possessed an added strategic weight due to its nearness,
either to some part of the mainland or to some one of the maritime
routes traversing the sea. The influence thus exerted would fall
naturally into the hands of the nation which, by controlling the water,
controlled the communications of the island; but this statement,
though generally true, is subject to limitations. The narrowness of
the belts of water, or, to use the military phrase, the shortness of
the communications from land to land, made evasion comparatively easy.
No navy, however powerful, can with certainty stop an intercourse
requiring only a night's run, and which, therefore, can be carried
on by very many small vessels, instead of having to be concentrated
into a few large ones; and this was doubly true in the days of sail,
when the smaller could have recourse to the oar while the larger lay
becalmed. Thus the British found it impossible to prevent French
partisans from passing into Corsica in 1796, when the victories of
Bonaparte had placed the French army in Leghorn; and at a later day
the emperor succeeded, though with infinite trouble, in sending
re-enforcements and supplies from southern Italy to his garrison in
Corfu, upon which his far-reaching genius hoped, in a distant future,
to base a yet further extension of power in the East. These instances,
however, were but the exception, and on the small scale demanded by the
other conditions; for the garrison of Corfu was few in number, and the
French found the Corsicans friendly. As the communications lengthened,
the influence of Sea-Power asserted itself. It was found impossible
to relieve Malta, or even to extricate the large vessels blockaded
there; and the French army in Egypt remained isolated until forced to
surrender, despite the efforts, the uncontrolled power, and the strong
personal interest of Bonaparte in the success of an occupation for
which he was primarily responsible. So also the narrow strip which
separates Sicily from Italy withstood the French arms; not because
it was impossible to send many detachments across, but because, to
support them in a hostile country, with such insecure communications,
was an undertaking more hazardous than was justified by the possible
advantages.
The political distribution in 1793 of the islands of the western
Mediterranean was as follows. The most eastern, known as the Ionian
islands, extending southward from the entrance of the Adriatic along
the coast of Greece, from Corfu to Cerigo, were in possession of
Venice. When the ancient republic fell before the policy of Bonaparte,
in 1797, the islands passed to France and began that circulation from
owner to owner which ended in 1863 with their union to Greece. Sicily
formed part of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. It became the refuge
of that monarchy from the arms of France, and, by its fertility and
the use of its ports, was a resource to Great Britain throughout the
Napoleonic period. Malta was still in the hands of the Knights of St.
John. Of immense military importance, from its geographical position
and intrinsic strength, its transfer, through the medium of France,
into the hands of the greatest of naval powers was due to Bonaparte.
It is, perhaps, the greatest of Mediterranean strategic positions,
Egypt being rather interoceanic than Mediterranean; but, being of scant
resources, its utility is measured by the power of the fleet which
it subserves. Its fate when in the hands of France, the history of
Port Mahon in the hands of Great Britain, nay, even the glorious and
successful resistance of Gibraltar, give warning that the fleet depends
less upon Malta than Malta upon the fleet.
Sardinia gave its name to the kingdom of which Piedmont, forming
the Italian frontier of France, was the actual seat, and Turin the
capital. Amid the convulsions of the period, the royal family, driven
from the mainland, found an obscure refuge in this large but backward
island. France could not touch it; Great Britain needed nothing but
the hospitality of its harbors. In Maddalena Bay, at its northern
extremity, Nelson found an anchorage strategically well-placed for
watching the Toulon fleet, and possessing that great desideratum for
a naval position, two exits, one or other of which was available
in any wind. The Balearic islands were in the hands of Spain. The
maritime importance of the other members of the group was dwarfed by
that of Minorca, which contained the harbor, exceptionally good for
the Mediterranean, of Port Mahon. Like Malta, though not to the same
extent, the fate of Port Mahon depends ultimately upon the sea. The
British took possession of the island in 1798, but restored it at the
peace of Amiens. In the later hostilities with Spain, from 1804 to
1808, they appear not to have coveted it. Maddalena Bay, though a less
agreeable and convenient anchorage than Mahon, is far better fitted for
prompt military movement, the prime requisite in the clear and sound
judgment of Nelson.
Of the greater islands there remains to give account only of Corsica.
This was a recent acquisition of France, received from Genoa in 1769,
somewhat contrary to the wish of the people, who would have preferred
independence. They were certainly not yet assimilated to the French,
and there existed among them a party traditionally well-inclined to
Great Britain. The preponderance of this or of the other national
preference would be decisive of the final political connection; for
if the British navy did control the surrounding sea, it was unable,
as before said, entirely to isolate the island and so to compel an
unwilling submission. On the other hand, France could not introduce
any considerable body of troops, in the face of the hostile ships; and
her standard, if raised, would depend for support upon the natives. In
1793, there was at the head of affairs the old leader of the struggle
for independence, Paoli, who had passed many years in exile in England
and had been recalled to the island by the National Assembly; but the
excesses of the later days had shaken his allegiance to France, and
the commissioners sent by the Convention into Corsica made themselves
obnoxious to him and to the people. Denounced by the republicans of
Toulon, Paoli was summoned to the bar of the Convention in April,
1793. The Revolutionary Tribunal had then been constituted, the Reign
of Terror was begun; and Paoli, instead of complying, summoned the
deputies from all the cities and communes of Corsica. These met in May
and sustained him in his opposition; the revolt spread through the
island, and the Commissioners with their handful of adherents were shut
up in a few of the coast towns.
Amid these surroundings stood, in the spring of 1793, the terrible and
awe-inspiring figure of the French Revolution. The Corsican revolt
against the Convention reflected but faintly the passions agitating
that body itself, and which were rapidly dividing all France into
hostile camps. The four months following the execution of the king were
one long strife between the party of the Gironde and the Jacobins;
but the revolutionary fury demanded an expression more vigorous and
more concentrated than could be had from a contest of parties in a
popular assembly. The Girondists, men of lofty sentiment rather than
of energetic action, steadily lost ground in the capital and in the
legislative body, though retaining the allegiance of the provinces,
with which they were identified. Embittered words and feelings took
material shape in acts as violent as themselves. On the 9th of March
was decreed the Revolutionary Tribunal, the great instrument of the
Terror, from whose decisions there was no appeal. On the 13th of the
same month, La Vendée rose for its long and bloody struggle in the
royal cause. On the 18th, the Army of the North, which only four weeks
before had invaded Holland, was signally defeated at Neerwinden, and
its general, Dumouriez, the victor of Valmy and Jemappes, the most
successful leader the war had yet produced, was forced to retreat
upon France. On the 30th, he evacuated the Austrian Netherlands,
the prize of the last campaign, and his army took positions within
the frontiers, upon which the enemy advanced. On the 1st of April,
Dumouriez, long since violently dissatisfied with the course of the
Convention, arrested the four commissioners and the minister of war
that had been sent to his headquarters. The next day he delivered them
to the Austrians; and on the 4th, finding that the blind attachment of
his army could no longer be depended upon, he completed his treason by
flying to the enemy.
While disorganization, treason, and fear were spreading throughout
France, from the capital to the frontiers, and seemed about to
culminate in universal anarchy, an important measure was adopted,
destined eventually to restore discipline and order, though at the
expense of much suffering. On the 6th of April the Committee of Public
Safety was reconstituted. Composed previously of twenty-five members
who met in open session, it was now reduced to nine, a more manageable
body, who sat in secret. To it was given authority over the ministers,
and it was empowered to take all measures necessary for the general
defence. The republic was thus provided with an efficient, though
despotic, executive power which it had before lacked. The creature of
the Convention, it was destined soon to become its master; being, as a
French historian has aptly termed it, "a dictatorship with nine heads."
Time was still needed for the new authority to make itself felt, and
the strife between the parties waxed more and more bitter. On the
15th of April the city of Lyon demanded permission to investigate the
conduct of the municipality appointed by the Jacobin commissioners. The
request, being denied, became the signal for civil war. On the 26th of
May the "sections" of the city rose against the mayor. At the same time
the scenes in Paris and in the Convention were becoming more and more
tumultuous, and on the 31st the sections of the capital also rose, but
against the Girondists. After two days of strife in the streets and in
the legislative halls, the Convention decreed the arrest, at their own
houses, of thirty-two members of the party. Thus, on the 2d of June,
1793, fell the Girondists, but their fall was followed by the revolt
of their partisans throughout France. Marseille, Toulon, Bordeaux and
Lyon all declared against the Convention; and movements in the same
direction were manifested in Normandy and Brittany. In the western
provinces, however, the attempts at resistance were chilled among the
republicans by the proximity of the royalist insurrection in La Vendée.
They were forced to reflect that armed opposition to the Convention,
even as mutilated by the events of June 2, was a virtual alliance with
royalism. In Bordeaux, likewise, the movement, though prolonged for
some weeks, did not take shape in vigorous action. Words, not arms,
were the weapons used; and the Girondist representatives were forced to
fly the very department from which they took their name.
In the east and south conditions were far more threatening. The rising
of the sections in Lyon had been followed by fighting in the streets
on the 29th of May, and the triumphant party, after the events of
June 2, refused to acknowledge the Convention. The latter sought to
gain over the city peaceably; but its overtures were rejected, a
departmental army was formed, and the leading member of the Jacobin
party formally tried and executed. The Lyonnese also stopped supplies
being carried to the Army of the Alps. On the 12th of July a decree
was issued to reduce the place by force. The troops of the Convention
appeared before it in the latter part of the month; but resistance was
firm and well organized, and the siege dragged, while at the same time
the departments of the south in general rejected the authority of the
central government. The two seaboard cities, Marseille and Toulon,
entered into correspondence with Lord Hood, commanding the British
fleet, who arrived off the coast of Provence in the middle of August,
1793. The party of the Convention, favored by that want of vigor which
characterized most of the measures of their opponents, got possession
of Marseille before the treason was consummated; but in Toulon, which
had long suffered from the violence of a Jacobin municipality, the
reaction swung to the opposite extreme. A movement, beginning in
honest disgust with the proceedings in Paris and with the conduct of
the dominant party in their own city, insensibly carried its promoters
further than they had intended; until a point was reached from which,
before the savage spirit of the capital, it became dangerous to recede.
Long identified with the royal navy, as one of the chief arsenals of
the kingdom, there could not but exist among a large class a feeling
of loyalty to the monarchy. Submissive to the course of events so long
as France had a show of government, now, in the dissolution of civil
order, it seemed allowable to choose their own path.
With such dispositions, a decree of the Convention declaring the
city outlawed enabled the royalists to guide the movement in the
direction they desired. The leading naval officers do not appear to
have co-operated willingly with the advances made to the British
admiral; but for years they had seen their authority undermined by
the course of the national legislature, and had become accustomed to
yield to the popular control of the moment. The news of the approach
of the Conventional army, accompanied by the rush into the place of
terror-stricken fugitives from Marseille, precipitated Toulon into the
arms of Great Britain. The sections declared that the city adopted
the monarchical government as organized by the Constituent Assembly
of 1789; proclaimed Louis XVII. king; ordered the disarmament of the
French fleet in the port, and placed in the hands of the British
admiral the works commanding the harbor. Lord Hood undertook that the
forts and ships should be restored unharmed to France, when peace was
made. On the 27th, the British and Spanish fleets anchored in the outer
harbor of Toulon, and the city ran up the white flag of the Bourbons.
There were in the port at the time of its delivery to the British
admiral thirty ships-of-the-line of seventy-four guns and upward, being
rather more than one third the line-of-battle force of the French navy.
Of these, seventeen were in the outer harbor ready for sea. There were,
besides, twenty-odd frigates or smaller vessels.
While one of the principal naval arsenals of France, and the only one
she possessed on the Mediterranean, was thus passing into the hands
of the enemy, disasters were accumulating on her eastern borders. On
the 12th of July, the fortified town of Condé, on the Belgian frontier,
surrendered. This was followed on the 28th by the capitulation of the
first-class fortress of Valenciennes in the same locality, after six
weeks of open trenches. These two prizes fell to the allied Austrians,
British and Dutch, and their submission was followed by an advance of
the combined armies and retreat of the French. Shortly before, on the
22d of July, Mayence, a position of the utmost importance on the Rhine,
had yielded to the Prussians; and here also the enemy advanced into
the Vosges mountains and toward the upper Rhine, the French receding
gradually before them. The great inland city of Lyon was at the same
time holding out against the central government with a firmness which
as yet needed not the support of despair. In its resistance, and in the
scarce smothered discontent of the southern provinces, lay the chief
significance and utility of the British hold on Toulon. As a point upon
which insurrection could repose, by which it could be supported from
without, Toulon was invaluable; but with rebellion put down, surrounded
by a hostile army and shut up to itself, the city would become a
useless burden, unbearable from the demands for men which its extended
lines would make. Had La Vendée rested upon a Toulon, the task of the
republic would have been well-nigh hopeless.
Among these multiplied disasters, with the Sardinians also operating
on the Alpine frontier and the Spaniards entering their country by
the eastern Pyrenees, France was confronted in every quarter by
disciplined armies to which she could as yet oppose only raw and ragged
levies. She found her safety in the stern energy of a legislature
which silenced faction by terror, in her central position, which of
itself separated from one another many of the centres of disturbance,
and in the military policy of the allies, which increased instead of
seeking to diminish the dissemination of force which was to some extent
unavoidable. The Spaniards could not combine with the Sardinians,
Toulon could not help Lyon, La Vendée had to stand apart from all the
others; but in the east it was possible for the Austrians, Prussians
and British to direct against the forces standing between them and
Paris a combination of effort which, in the then condition of the
French army, might have been irresistible. Instead of so doing, the
Austrians and British on the northeastern frontier decided, early in
August, to cease their advance and to separate; the Austrians sitting
down before Le Quesnoy, and the British undertaking to besiege the
seaport of Dunkirk. On the Rhine, the mutual jealousies of Austria
and Prussia, and the sluggish movements of routine generals, caused a
similar failure to support each other, and a similar dilatory action.
The opportunities thus lost by the allies, and the time conceded to the
French, were improved to the full by the Committee of Public Safety and
by the commissioners sent from the Convention to the headquarters of
every army. Men, for the most part, without pity as without fear, their
administration, stained as it was with blood, was effectual to the
salvation of France. From the minister in the cabinet to the general in
the field, and down to the raw recruit forced from his home, each man
felt his life to depend upon his submission and his activity. In the
imminent danger of the country and the hot haste of men who worked not
only under urgent pressure, but often with a zeal as blindly ignorant
as it was patriotic, many blunders and injustices were committed; but
they attained the desired end of impressing the resistless energy
of the Convention upon each unit of the masses it was wielding. If
ever, for good or ill, men had the single eye, it was to be found in
the French soldiers of 1793, as they starved and bled and died that
the country might live. Given time,—and the allies gave it,—units
animated by such a spirit, and driven forward by such an impetus as
the Committee knew how to impart, were soon knit into an overpowering
organism, as superior in temper as they were in numbers to the trained
machines before them.
Where there was conscious life to feel enthusiasm or fear, the
contagion of the rulers' temper caught; but the fiery spirit of the
Convention could not possess the stately ships of war that floated in
the ports of the republic, nor make them yield, to the yet unskilled
hands of the new officers, the docile obedience which their old masters
had commanded from those beautiful, delicately poised machines. It was
a vain hope to conjure victory at sea by harsh decrees,[67] pitched
in unison to the passions of the times, but addressed to men whose
abilities did not respond to their own courage nor to the calls thus
made upon them. To the inexperience of the officers was added the
further difficulty of the indiscipline of the crews, that had increased
to a ruinous extent during the four years' paralysis of the executive
government. With the triumph of the Jacobin party had now come a
unity which, however terrible, was efficient. In September, 1793,
in the mutiny of the Brest fleet in Quiberon Bay, the seamen again
prevailed over their officers, and even over the commissioner of the
Convention; but it was the last flagrant outburst. The past weakness
of other authorities had played into the hands of the Mountain; now
that the latter was supreme, it resolutely enjoined and soon obtained
submission. Years of insubordination and license had, however, sapped
the organization and drill of the crews; and the new officers were not
the men to restore them. The Convention and its commissioners therefore
lacked the proper instruments through which they could impart direction
as well as energy to the movement of the fleet. Ships were there and
guns, men also to handle the one and fight the other; but between
these and the government was needed an adequate official staff, which
no longer existed. The same administrative weakness that had allowed
discipline to perish, had also entailed upon the naval arsenals the
penury of resources that was felt everywhere in the land. From all
these circumstances arose an impotence which caused the year 1793 to be
barren of serious naval effort on the part of France.
Great Britain herself was in this first year of war unprepared to
take a vigorous initiative. In 1792 she had in commission at home
but twelve ships-of-the-line, and but sixteen thousand seamen were
allowed for the fleet. Not till December 20, six weeks only before
the declaration of war, did Parliament increase these to twenty-five
thousand, a number less than one fourth that employed in the last year
of the American war. In the Mediterranean and in the colonies there
was not then present a single ship-of-the-line, properly so called.
Fortunately, of the one hundred and thirteen actually borne on the roll
of the line-of-battle as cruising ships, at the beginning of 1793,
between eighty and ninety were reported in good condition, owing to
the two alarms of war in 1790 and 1791; and provident administration
had kept on hand in the British dockyards the necessary equipments,
which had disappeared from those of France. More difficulty was
experienced in manning than in equipping; but at the end of 1793, there
were eighty-five of the line actually in commission. From twenty to
twenty-five were allotted to the Channel fleet, cruising from thence
to Cape Finisterre, under the command of Lord Howe; a like number to
the Mediterranean under Lord Hood; and from ten to twelve to the West
Indies. A reserve of twenty-five ships remained in the Channel ports,
Portsmouth and Plymouth, ready for sea, and employed, as occasion
demanded, for convoys, to fill vacancies of disabled ships in the
cruising fleets, or to strengthen the latter in case of special need.
The mobilization of the fleet, though energetic when once begun,
was nevertheless tardy, and Great Britain had reason to be thankful
that years of civil commotion and executive impotence had so greatly
deteriorated the enemy's navy, and also, at a critical moment, had
thrown so large a portion of it into her hands at Toulon. With a widely
scattered empire, with numerous exposed and isolated points, with a
smaller population and an army comparatively insignificant in numbers,
war with France threw her—and must inevitably always throw her—at first
upon the defensive, unless she could at once lay her grasp firmly upon
some vital chord of the enemy's communications, and so force him to
fight there. She could not assume the offensive by landing on French
soil. No force she could send would be capable of resisting the numbers
brought against it, much less of injuring the enemy; nor should the
flattering hopes of such a force serving as a nucleus, round which to
crystallize French rebellion, have been suffered to delude her, after
the bitter deceptions of the recent American struggle. What hopes had
not Great Britain then based upon old loyalty, and upon discontent
with the new order of things! Yet, though such discontent undoubtedly
existed—and that among men of her own race recently her subjects—the
expeditions sent among them rallied no decisive following, kindled no
fire of resistance. The natives of the soil, among whom such a force
appears, either view it with jealous suspicion or expect it to do all
the work; not unfrequently are both jealous and inactive. It is well,
then, to give malcontents all the assistance they evidently require
in material of war, to keep alive as a diversion every such focus of
trouble, to secure wherever possible, as at Toulon, a fortified port
by which to maintain free entrance for supplies to the country of the
insurgents; but it is not safe to reckon on the hatred of the latter
for their own countrymen outweighing their dislike for the foreigner.
It is not good policy to send a force that, from its own numbers, is
incapable of successful independent action, relying upon the support
of the natives in a civil war. Such support can never relieve such
expeditions from the necessity, common to all military advances, of
guarding their communications while operating on their front; which
is only another way of saying again that such expeditions, to be
successful, must be capable of independent action adequate to the end
proposed. Risings, such as occurred in many quarters of France in 1793,
are useful diversions; but a diversion is only a subordinate part in
the drama of war. It is either a deceit, whose success depends rather
upon the incapacity of the opponent than upon its own merits; or it
is an indirect use of forces which, from their character or position,
cannot be made to conduce directly to the main effort of the enterprise
in hand. To enlarge such diversions by bodies of troops which might be
strengthening the armies on the central theatre of war is a mistake,
which increases in ever greater proportion as the forces so diverted
grow more numerous.[68]
Offensive action of this character was therefore forbidden to Great
Britain. To use small bodies for it was impolitic; and large bodies she
had not to send. To strike a direct blow at France, it was necessary
to force her to come out of her ports and fight, and this was to be
accomplished only by threatening some external interests of vital
importance to her. Such interests of her own, however, France had not.
Her merchant shipping, in peace, carried less than one third of her
trade, and was at once hurried into her ports when war began. Her West
India colonies had indeed been valuable, that of Haïti very much so;
but the anarchy of the past four years had annihilated its prosperity.
There remained only to strike at her communications, through neutrals,
with the outside world, and this was to be accomplished by the same
means as most surely conduced to the defence of all parts of the
British empire,—by taking up positions off the French coast, and
drawing the lines as closely as the exigencies of the sea and the law
of nations would permit. If possible, in order to stop commerce by
neutral vessels, a blockade of the French coast, similar to that of the
Southern Confederacy by the United States, would have been the most
suitable measure to adopt; but the conditions were very different. The
weather on the coast of the Southern States is much more moderate; the
heaviest gales blow along shore, whereas, in the Bay of Biscay, they
blow dead on shore; and there was almost everywhere good, sometimes
even sheltered, anchorage, which was not generally to be had on the
coast of France. Finally, while steam certainly helps both parties, the
inside and the out, the latter profits the more by it, for he can keep
in with the shore to a degree, and for a length of time, impossible
to the sailing ship; the necessity of gaining an offing _before_ a
gale comes on, and the helpless drifting during its continuance, not
existing for the steamer.
Despite, therefore, the decisions of the courts, that a blockade was
not technically removed when the ships maintaining it were driven
off by weather; a blockade of the whole French coast does not seem
to have been contemplated by the British ministry. Its offensive
measures against French commerce were consequently limited to the
capture of property belonging to French subjects, wherever found
afloat, even under neutral flags; and to the seizure of all contraband
goods destined to France, to whomsoever they belonged. Both these
were conceded to be within the rights of a belligerent by the United
States and Great Britain; but the latter now endeavored to stretch the
definition of contraband to a degree that would enable her to increase
the pressure upon France. She claimed that naval stores were included
in the category,—a position the more plausible at that time because,
the French merchant ships being unable to go to sea, the stores must
be for the navy,—and further, that provisions were so. Though these
arguments were hotly contested by neutrals, the British navy was strong
enough to override all remonstrances; and the dearth of provisions did
force the Brest fleet out in 1794, and so led directly to the first
great naval battle of the war.
It cannot be considered a satisfactory result, nor one evincing
adequate preparation, that the Channel fleet, to which belonged the
protection of the approaches to the Channel,—the great focus of British
trade,—to which also was assigned the duty of watching Brest, the chief
French arsenál on the Atlantic, did not get to sea till July 14, and
then only to the number of fifteen ships-of-the-line. A French fleet
of similar size had sailed from Brest six weeks before, on the 4th
of June, and taken a position in Quiberon Bay, off the coast of La
Vendée, to intercept assistance to the insurgents of that province.
The command of the Channel fleet was given to Lord Howe, an officer
of very high character for activity and enterprise in previous wars,
but now in his sixty-eighth year. Age had in no sense dulled his
courage, which was as steadfast and well-nigh as impassive as a rock,
nor impaired his mental efficiency; but it may be permitted to think
that time had exaggerated and hardened a certain formal, unbending
precision of action which distinguished him, and that rigid uniformity
of manœuvre had become exalted in his eyes from a means to an end. This
quality, however, joined to an intimate knowledge of naval tactics,
eminently fitted him for the hard and thankless task of forming into a
well-drilled whole the scattered units of the fleet, which came to him
unaccustomed, for the most part, to combined action.
Lord Howe brought also to his command a strong predisposition, closely
allied with the methodical tendency just noted, to economize his fleet,
by keeping it sparingly at sea and then chiefly for purposes of drill
and manœuvre. Its preservation in good condition was in his eyes a
consideration superior to taking up the best strategic position; and he
steadily resisted the policy of continuous cruising before the ports
whence the enemy must sail, alleging that the injury received in heavy
winter weather, while the French lay at anchor inside, would keep the
British force constantly inferior. The argument, though plausible and
based on undoubted facts, does not justify the choice of a position
clearly disadvantageous with reference to intercepting the enemy. War
presents constantly a choice of difficulties, and when questions of
material come in conflict with correct strategic disposition they must
give way. The place for the British fleet, as reflection shows and
experience proved, was before the hostile arsenals; or, allowably, if
such a position could be found, in a port flanking the route along
which the enemy must pass. For the Channel fleet no such port offered;
and in keeping it at Spithead, far in rear of the French point of
departure, Howe exposed himself to the embarrassment of their getting
away while he remained in ignorance of the fact until too late to
intercept, and with imperfect knowledge in what direction to follow.
The only solution of the difficulty that the British government should
have adopted was to maintain a reserve of ships, large enough to keep
the necessary numbers of efficient vessels cruising in the proper
station. The experience gained by such constant practice, moreover,
improved the quality of the men more than it injured the ships.
Historically, good men with poor ships are better than poor men with
good ships; over and over again the French Revolution taught this
lesson, which our own age, with its rage for the last new thing in
material improvement, has largely dropped out of memory.
The embarrassment arising from the British fleet being in a Channel
port received singular, perhaps even exceptional, illustration in
the French expedition against Ireland in 1796. It has been said that
that expedition would have succeeded in landing its force had it had
steam; it would be more just to say that it would never have come so
near succeeding had the British fleet been cruising in the station
which strategic considerations would prescribe.[69] There is also a
certain indefinable, but real, deterioration in the _morale_ of a fleet
habitually in port, compared with one habitually at sea; the habit
of being on the alert and the habit of being at rest color the whole
conduct of a military force. This was keenly realized by that great
commander, Lord St. Vincent, and concurred with his correct strategic
insight to fix his policy of close-watching the enemy's ports. "I will
not lie here," he wrote from Lisbon in December, 1796, "a moment longer
than is necessary to put us to rights; for you well know that inaction
in the Tagus must make us all cowards."[70] Doubtless this practice of
lying at anchor in the home ports contributed to the impunity with
which French cruisers swept the approaches to the Channel during much
of 1793 and 1794.
The policy of Lord Howe combined with the crippled state of the French
navy to render the year 1793 barren of striking maritime events
in the Atlantic. In the interior of France and on her frontiers,
amid many disasters and bloody tyranny, the saving energy of the
fierce revolutionary government was making steady headway against
the unparalleled difficulties surrounding it. After the ill-judged
separation of the British and Austrians in August, the latter had
succeeded in reducing Le Quesnoy, which capitulated on the 11th of
September; but there their successes ended. Carnot, recently made a
member of the Committee of Public Safety and specially charged with
the direction of the war, concerted an overwhelming attack upon the
British before Dunkirk, and raised the siege on the 9th of September;
then, by a similar concentration upon the Austrians, now engaged in
besieging Maubeuge, he caused their defeat at the battle of Wattignies,
October 16, and forced them to retreat from before the place. In the
north-east, both the allies and the French went into winter quarters
early in November; but the prestige of a resistance that grew every day
more efficient remained with the latter. On the eastern frontier also,
after protracted fighting, the year closed with substantial success for
them. The Prussians of the allied forces in that quarter retreated from
all their advanced positions into Mayence; the Austrians retired to the
east bank of the Rhine. Each of the allies blamed the other for the
unfortunate issue of the campaign; and the veteran Duke of Brunswick,
commanding the Prussians, sent in his resignation accompanied with
predictions of continued disaster. At the same time the king of Prussia
began to manifest the vacillating and shameless policy which made
his country the byword of Europe during the next twelve years, and
betrayed clearly his purpose of forsaking the coalition he had been
so forward in forming. On the Spanish frontiers, the fortune of war
was rather against the French, who were embarrassed by the necessity
of concentrating all the force possible upon the siege of Toulon;
the recovery of that port being urgently required for the national
honor, as well as for the maritime interests of the republic in the
Mediterranean.
It was, however, in restoring internal submission and asserting
the authority of the central government that the most substantial
results of 1793 were attained. The resistance of the Vendeans, long
successfully protracted through the blunders and lack of unity among
the republican leaders, began to yield, as more concentrated effort was
imparted by the reconstituted Committee of Public Safety. After the
battle of Cholet, October 16, the insurgents, routed and in despair,
determined to leave their own country, cross the Loire, and march
into Brittany. They traversed the latter province slowly, fighting
as they went, and on the 12th of November reached Granville on the
Channel coast, where they hoped to open communications with England.
Their assault on the town failed, and as the hoped-for ships did not
arrive, they started back for La Vendée; but as a coherent body they
never recrossed the Loire, and a pitched battle, fought December 22,
at Savenay, on the north bank, completed their dispersion. The embers
of the civil war continued to burn in La Vendée and north of the Loire
during the following year; but as a general insurrection, wielding
large bodies of fighting men, it had ceased to be formidable to the
nation and wrought its chief harm to the province which supported it.
The great stronghold of resistance in the east, Lyon, fell on the 9th
of October. Despite the disaffection which had existed in the south
and east, the commissioners of the government were able, without
opposition, to collect round the city a body of men sufficient,
first, to cut off its communications with the surrounding country,
and, finally, to carry the works commanding the place. A spirit of
discontent so feeble as to acquiesce tamely in the reduction of one of
its chief centres gave no hope of support to any efforts made through
Toulon by the allied forces; and the capitulation of Lyon showed that
the port was not worth the cost of keeping, and at the same time
released a large number of men to give activity to the siege. Toward
the end of November, over twenty-five thousand republican troops were
collected round the place. On the night of the 16th of December,
the forts on a promontory commanding the anchorage for fleets were
carried by assault. A council of war among the allies decided that
the ships could not remain, and that the garrison could not hold out
with its communications to the sea cut off. It therefore determined to
evacuate the place, and on the 19th the British and Spaniards departed.
Before sailing, an attempt was made to destroy both the dockyard and
all the French ships that could not be taken away; but the danger
threatening from the commanding positions that had now fallen to the
enemy was so great, the necessity for quick departure so urgent, and
so much had consequently to be done in a very limited time, that the
proposed destruction was but imperfectly effected. Of twenty-seven
French ships-of-the-line still in Toulon, nine were burned and three
accompanied the retreat. The remaining fifteen constituted the nucleus
of a powerful force, and most of them appear in the fleet which went
with Bonaparte to Egypt and was there destroyed by Nelson in 1798.[71]
The loss of Toulon, after the extravagant hopes excited by its
surrender, gave rise to much complaint in England. It is improbable,
however, that its retention, even if feasible, would have been
beneficial. The expenditure of men and money necessary to hold a
seaport surrounded by enemy's territory, and commanded by a long line
of heights which had to be occupied, would have been out of proportion
to any result likely to follow. The communications, being by sea only,
would ultimately depend upon Great Britain as the power best able to
insure them and most interested in a naval position; and the distance
to England was great. The utter lack of dependence to be placed
upon local discontent, as an element in the usefulness of Toulon to
the allied cause, had been shown by the failure to support Lyon and
by the tame submission made in the southern provinces to the petty
Conventional army sent against them. The country, moreover, was in 1793
wasted by dearth; and had there been in Toulon an allied force large
enough to advance, it would have had to depend absolutely upon immense
accumulations of food in the port. So great was the scarcity, that the
French at one time thought of abandoning the siege on that account. In
short, Toulon had, for the British, the disadvantage of great distance,
far greater than Gibraltar, without the latter's advantages of
strategic position and easy defence; and its occupation by them would
have caused jealousy among the Mediterranean powers and introduced more
discord into a coalition already mutually suspicious.
From Toulon Hood retired to Hyères Bay, a sheltered roadstead a few
miles east of Toulon, where the end of the year found him still lying.
Lord Howe took the Channel fleet into port in the middle of December,
and there remained until the following May. Thus ended the maritime
year 1793.
NOTE (to page 98). The Peninsular War, in its inception, was
justified, not because the odds were favorable, but because there
was a "fighting" chance of great results; just as there was at
Toulon, where the attempt failed. The distinguished historian of
that war claims that the British wrought the work of deliverance;
and, after making every allowance for national prejudice, which in
his case was certainly not undiscriminating, the general failure,
except where the British arms were felt, may be taken to establish
a fact which the disorganized state of Spain herself would alone
render probable. The course of war in the west of the peninsula,
where the British were, shows conclusively the limitations imposed
upon the military enterprises of a state having a relatively
small army with a great navy. Having landed in April, 1809,
Wellesley, notwithstanding his genius and brilliant successes,
notwithstanding the state of the peninsula, and notwithstanding,
also, the immense length and difficulty of the French lines of
communication, was still, in March, 1811, shut up within the
lines of Torres Vedras; that is, he was simply holding on at
Lisbon, unable to keep the country against the French. In external
appearance, the military situation was just the same as at the
beginning. The reasons for holding on were the same in character
as in 1809; but the chances of success had become distinctly
greater, owing to political and economical considerations, and
to the extreme care and foresight by which the British leader
had made his position round Lisbon inexpugnable. Nevertheless,
the retreat and ultimate disaster of the French were due to the
military difficulties of their enterprise, well understood and
carefully improved by Wellington, and to the unmeasured political
combinations of the emperor,—not to the power of the British army
in Portugal, which, though admirable in quality and leadership,
was very inferior in numbers. In the last analysis it was the
emperor's Continental System, directed against the Sea Power of
England, which gave to the army of England in the Peninsula the
opportunity by which alone the weaker force can profitably assume
the offensive. It is not a lessening, but a heightening, of the
merit of the great Englishman, to say that he had the genius to
foresee that the opportunity, though distant, must come, and the
courage to hold on till it came.
It is instructive to note the essential military resemblances
between the British invasion of the Peninsula, which was finally
crowned with success, and Napoleon's projected invasion of
England, which came to nought. In the one case, a navy supreme on
the ocean and a small military force; in the other, an unrivalled
army, and a navy very inferior because of its quality. In each,
the chances were largely against success. In each, the enterprise,
strictly offensive in character by the inferior force, hinged
upon the occurrence of the favorable opportunity, which it was
the part of the offence to contrive and of the defence to
prevent. That there was, in both cases, a long waiting of nearly
equal duration is a fortuitous coincidence; but the attitude of
unremitting watchfulness and constant readiness, in a skilfully
chosen position, is the distinctive characteristic imposed upon
the inferior force which hopes to escape from a mere defensive
posture, and, by striking a blow, to make itself felt in the
lists of war. The opportunity never came to Napoleon, because the
British leaders never took their eyes off his fleet, upon which
his profound combinations depended as an arch upon its keystone.
It came to Wellington because the emperor turned his attention
from the Peninsula, of whose troubles he was weary, and opposed
inadequate means and divided commands to a single alert enemy.