The Influence of sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire 1793-1812, vol I

But in the years after the Peace of Versailles this was a new question, upon which opinions were unformed. It was true that, to quote from a contemporary writer, "England had had full leisure to ruminate upon, and sufficient cause to reprobate, that absurd and blind policy, under the influence of which she had drawn an uncertain ally, and an ever-to-be-suspected friend, from the bottom of the Bothnic Gulf to establish a new naval empire in the Mediterranean and Archipelago." [6 - Annual Register, 1788, p. 59.] These meditations had not been fruitless, as was seen by the consistent attitude of Pitt's ministry at this time; but on the other hand, when it was proposed in 1791 to increase the naval force in commission, in order "to add weight to the representations" [7 - King's Message, March 29, 1781.] being made by the allies to the belligerents,—in order, in other words, to support Turkey by an armed demonstration,—Fox, the leader of the Whigs, said that "an alliance with Russia appeared to him the most natural and advantageous that we could possibly form;" [8 - Fox's Speeches (London, 1815), vol. iv. p. 178.] while Burke, than whom no man had a juster reputation for political wisdom, observed that "the considering the Turkish Empire as any part of the balance of power in Europe was new. The principles of alliance and the doctrines drawn from thence were entirely new. Russia was our natural ally and the most useful ally we had in a commercial sense." [9 - Parl. Hist., vol. xxix. pp. 75-79.] That these distinguished members of the opposition represented the feelings of many supporters of the ministry was shown by a diminished majority, 93, in the vote that followed. The opposition, thus encouraged, then introduced a series of resolutions, the gist of which lay in these words: "The interests of Great Britain are not likely to be affected by the progress of the Russian arms on the borders of the Black Sea." [10 - Annual Register, 1791, p. 102.] In the vote on this, the minister's majority again fell to eighty, despite the arguments of those who asserted that "the possession of Oczakow by the empress would facilitate not only the acquisition of Constantinople, but of all lower Egypt and Alexandria; which would give to Russia the supremacy in the Mediterranean, and render her a formidable rival to us both as a maritime and commercial power." After making every allowance for party spirit, it is evident that British feeling was only slowly turning into the channels in which it has since run so strongly.

France, under the pressure of her inward troubles, was debarred from taking part with her old allies in the East, and withdrew more and more from all outward action. On the 8th of August, 1788, the king fixed the 1st of May, 1789, as the day for the meeting of the States General; and in November the Notables met for the second time, to consider the constitution and mode of procedure in that body, the representation in it of the Third Estate, and the vote by orders. They were adjourned after a month's session; and the court, contrary to the judgment of the majority among them, proclaimed on the 27th of December, 1788, that the representatives of the Third Estate should equal in number those of the two others combined. No decision was given as to whether the votes should be individual, or by orders.

Oczakow was taken by the Russians on the 17th of December, 1788, and during the following year the Eastern war raged violently both in the Baltic and in southeastern Europe. Turkey was everywhere worsted. Belgrade was taken on the 8th of October by the Austrians, who afterwards occupied Bucharest and advanced as far as Orsova. The Russians reduced Galatz, Bender, and other places. Besides losing territory, the Turks were defeated in several pitched battles. The conduct of the war on their part was much affected by the death of the reigning sultan.

The Swedish war was in its results unimportant, except as a diversion in favor of Turkey. To keep it up as such, subsidies were sent from Constantinople to Stockholm. Great Britain and Prussia were obliged again to threaten Denmark, in 1789, to keep her from aiding Russia. The British minister, speaking for both States, expressed their fixed determination to maintain the balance of power in the North. A defensive alliance was then formed between Russia and Austria on the one hand, and France and Spain on the other. The Bourbon kingdoms pledged themselves to a strict neutrality in the Eastern War as it then existed; but if Russia or Austria were attacked by any other State, they were to be helped,—Austria, by an army of sixty thousand men; Russia, by a fleet of sixteen ships-of-the-line and twelve frigates. The latter provision shows both the kind of attack feared by Russia and the direction of her ambition.

On the 4th of May of this year, 1789, the States General met at Versailles, and the French Revolution thenceforth went on apace. The Bastille was stormed July 14th. In October the royal family were brought forcibly from Versailles to Paris by the mob. The earlier events of the Revolution will hereafter be summarily related by themselves, before going on with the war to which they led. It will here be enough to say that the voice of France was now silent outside her own borders.

In 1790 the Eastern War was practically brought to an end. On the 31st of January a very close treaty of alliance was made between Prussia and the Porte,—the king binding himself to declare war at a set time against both Russia and Austria. The emperor died in February, and was succeeded by his brother Leopold, who was disposed to peace. A convention was soon after held, at which sat ministers of Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, and the United Provinces; the two latter acting as mediators because Prussia had taken such a pronounced attitude of hostility to Austria. A treaty was signed July 27, by which the emperor renounced his alliance with Russia. On September 20, he agreed to an armistice with Turkey; which, after long negotiation, was followed by a definitive peace, concluded August 4, 1791.

The Russian conflict with Turkey languished during the summer of 1790. Active operations began in October, and continued during a season whose severities the Russian could bear better than the Turk. The final blow of the campaign and of the war was the taking of Ismail by Suwarrow, a deed of arms so tremendous and full of horrors that a brief account of its circumstances is allowable even to our subject.

The town, which was looked on as the key of the lower Danube, was surrounded by three lines of wall, each with its proper ditch, and contained a garrison of thirteen thousand. Its population, besides the troops, was about thirty thousand. Owing to the season, December, Suwarrow determined not to attempt a regular siege, but to carry the place by assault, at any cost of life. Batteries were consequently put up in every available place, and as rapidly as possible, in order to prepare for and cover the attack. At five o'clock Christmas morning they all opened together, and, after a furious cannonade of two hours, the Russians moved forward in eight columns. After a three hours struggle the assailants were forced back; but Suwarrow, whose influence over his soldiers was unbounded, ran to the front, and, planting a Russian flag on one of the enemy's works, asked his men if they would leave it behind them. Through his efforts and those of the officers, the troops returned to the charge. The conflict, which must have resolved itself into a multitude of hand-to-hand encounters, lasted till midnight, when, after an eighteen hours fight, the third line of defence was carried and resistance ceased, though bloodshed continued through the night. It was computed at the time that thirty thousand Turks, including women and children, and some twenty thousand Russian soldiers died violent deaths during that Christmas day of 1790. Warlike operations continued during the spring, but preliminaries of peace between Russia and Turkey were signed at Galatz on the 11th of August, 1791.

This put an end to hostilities throughout the East, peace having been made between Russia and Sweden a year before, on August 11, 1790. The time of attack had been well chosen by the Swedish king, and had public opinion in Great Britain approached unanimity, a powerful lever would have been put in her hands to break down the Russian attack on Turkey by supporting the diversion in the North. The Russian and Swedish fleets were so evenly balanced that a small British division would have turned the scale, controlled the Baltic, and kept open the Swedish communications from Finland to their own coast. So far, however, was the nation from being of one mind that, as we have seen, the minister's majority steadily fell, and he probably knew that among those who voted straight, many were far from hearty in his support. Prussia also did not back Sweden as she should have done, after definitely embracing that policy, though she was both disconcerted and angered at the peace for which she had not looked. This irresolution on the part of the allied States limited their action to interposing between Sweden and Denmark, and prevented the results which might reasonably have been expected in the north, and yet more in the east of Europe; but it does not take from the significance of their attitude, nor hide the revolution in British statesmanship which marks the ten years now being treated.

The tendency thus indicated was suddenly, though only temporarily, checked by the Revolution in France. The troubles that had been so long fomenting in that country had, after a short and delusive period of seeming repose, begun again at nearly the very moment that the Eastern War was ending. This will be seen by bringing together the dates at which were happening these weighty events in the East and West.

It was on the 6th of October, 1789, that the king and royal family were brought from Versailles to Paris, unwilling but constrained. After this outbreak of popular feeling, comparative quiet continued through the last months of 1789 and all of 1790, during which were fought in the East the most important battles of the war, both in the Baltic and on the Danube, including the bloody assault of Ismail. During this time, however, Louis XVI. underwent many bitter mortifications, either intended as such, or else unavoidably humiliating to his sense of position. In June, 1791, he fled with his family from Paris to put himself in the care of part of the army stationed in eastern France under the Marquis de Bouillé and believed to be thoroughly trustworthy. Before reaching his destination he was recognized, and brought back to Paris a prisoner. The greeting of the royal family was significant of the change that had passed over the people within a few years, and which their unsuccessful flight had intensified. They were met by perfect silence, while some distance ahead of them rode an officer commanding the bystanders not to uncover. Despite the distrust it felt, the Constituent Assembly went on with the work of framing a constitution in which the king still had a recognized position, and which he formally accepted on the 14th of September, 1791. During that summer, peace was signed between Russia and Turkey, and a meeting was had at Pilnitz between the emperor and the king of Prussia, after which they put out their joint declaration that the situation in which the king of France found himself was an object of common concern to all the rulers of Europe; that "they hoped this common concern would lead them to employ, in conjunction with the two declaring sovereigns, the most efficacious means, relative to their forces, in order to enable the king of France to consolidate in the most perfect liberty, the basis of a monarchical government equally suitable to the rights of sovereigns and the welfare of the French nation." The two princes ended by stating their own readiness to join in such united action with the force necessary to obtain the common end proposed, and that they would, meanwhile, give orders to their troops to be ready to put themselves in a state of activity.

The close coincidence in date of the Declaration of Pilnitz, August 27, 1791, with the Peace of Galatz, signed August 11, is curious enough for passing remark; the one formally opening the new channel of European interest and action, while the other marked the close of the old. The Declaration, however, was in the same line of effort that the new emperor had for some time been following. It met with a somewhat hesitating response. Russia and Sweden agreed to raise an army, which Spain was to subsidize; but Great Britain, under Pitt, declined to meddle in the internal affairs of another state.

The first National or, as it is conveniently called, Constituent Assembly, dissolved after framing a Constitution; and the following day, October 1, 1791, the second Assembly, known as the Legislative, came together. The Declaration of Pilnitz had strongly moved the French people and increased, perhaps unjustly, their distrust of the king. This change of temper was reflected in the Assembly. Strong representations and arguments were exchanged between the ministers of foreign affairs in Austria and France, through the ambassadors at either court; but in truth there was no common ground of opinion on which the new republic and the old empires could meet. The movements on either side were viewed with studied suspicion, and war was finally declared by France against Austria, April 20, 1792. The first unimportant encounters were unfavorable to the French; but more serious danger than that which threatened from without was arising within France itself. The king and the Assembly came into collision through the use by the former of his constitutional power of Veto. The agitation spread to the streets. On the 20th of June a deputation from the mob of Paris appeared before the Assembly, and asked permission for the citizens outside to defile before it, as a demonstration of their support. The extraordinary request was granted; and an immense crowd pressed forward, of people of all ages, armed with weapons of every kind, among which appeared a pike carrying the heart of a bull labelled an "Aristocrat's heart." From the Assembly the crowd went to the Louvre, and thence forced their way through the palace gates into the king's presence. The unhappy Louis bore himself with calm courage, to which perhaps he, at the moment, owed his life; but he submitted to put on the symbolic red cap, and to drink to the nation from a bottle handed him by a drunken rioter.

Little was left in life for a king thus humbled, and his final humiliation was close at hand. Prussia had not long delayed to act in concert with the emperor, after France declared war. On July 26, a month after the strange scene in the Tuileries, was issued an exposition of her reasons for taking arms; and at the same time the Duke of Brunswick, commander-in-chief of the allied armies, put forth a proclamation to the French framed in such violent terms as to stir to the utmost the angry passions of a frantic and excitable race. On the 10th of August the Paris mob again stormed the Tuileries, the king and royal family fled for safety to the hall of the Legislature, the Swiss Guards were killed and the palace gutted. The Assembly then decreed the suspension of the king; and on the 13th of August the royal family was removed to the Temple, the last home on earth for several of them.

On the 2d of September occurred the butcheries known as the September Massacres. To this date and this act is to be referred the great change in British feeling toward the Revolution. On the 20th the battle of Valmy, by some thought decisive of the fate of the Revolution, was won by the French. Though being otherwise far from a battle of the first importance, it led to the retreat of the allied forces and destroyed for a time the hopes of the royalists. Two days after Valmy met the third Assembly, the National Convention of terrible memory. Its first act was to decree the abolition of royalty in France; but the power that swayed the country was passing more and more to the mob of Paris, expressing itself through the clubs of which the Jacobin is the best known. The violence and fanaticism of the extreme republicans and of the most brutal elements of the populace found ever louder voice. On the 19th of November the Convention passed a decree declaring, "in the name of the French nation, that they will grant fraternity and assistance to all people who wish to recover their liberty; and they charge the executive power to send the necessary orders to the generals to give assistance to such people, and to defend those citizens who have suffered, or may suffer, in the cause of liberty." It was denied by the French diplomatists that there was any intention of favoring insurrections or exciting disturbances in any friendly country; but such intention is nevertheless fairly deducible from the words, and when a motion was made to explain that they were not so meant, the Convention refused to consider it. Mr. Fox, the ardent champion of the Revolution in Parliament, spoke of this edict as an insult to the British people.

Meantime the battle of Valmy had been followed by that of Jemappes, fought November 6. On the 14th the French army entered Brussels, and the Austrian Netherlands were rapidly occupied. This was instantly succeeded by a decree, dated November 16, opening the Scheldt, upon the express ground of natural right; the boisterous young republic cutting at one blow the knot which had refused to be untied by the weak hands of Joseph II. Decided action followed, a French squadron entering the river from the sea and forcing its way up, despite the protests of the Dutch officers, in order to take part in the siege of Antwerp. This was a new offence to the British Sea Power, which was yet further angered by a decree of December 15, extending the French system to all countries occupied by their armies. The words of this proclamation were so sweeping that they could scarcely but seem, to those untouched with the fiery passion of the Revolution, to threaten the destruction of all existing social order. The British ministry on the last day of the year 1792 declared that "this government will never see with indifference that France shall make herself, directly or indirectly, sovereign of the Low Countries, or general arbitress of the rights and liberties of Europe." [11 - Annual Register, 1793; State Papers, p. 118.[12] (#x11_x_11_i60)[66] (#x13_x_13_i10)]

While the Revolution was thus justifying the fears and accusations of those who foretold that it could not confine itself to the overturn of domestic institutions, but would seek to thrust its beliefs and principles forcibly upon other nations, the leaders were hurrying on the destruction of the king. Arraigned on the 11th of December, 1792, Louis XVI. was brought to trial on the 26th, sentenced to death January 16, and executed January 21, 1793. This deed brought to a decided issue the relations between France and Great Britain, which, from an uncertain and unsatisfactory condition, had become more and more embittered by the course of events ever since the November decree of fraternity. As far back as August 10, when the king was suspended, the British government had recalled its ambassador, who was not replaced; and had persisted in attributing to the French minister in London an ambiguous character, recognizing him only as accredited by the king who had actually ceased to reign—by a government which in fact no longer existed. Points of form were raised with exasperating, yet civil, insolence, as to the position which M. Chauvelin, the minister in question, actually occupied; and his office was not made more pleasant by the failure of his own government to send him new credentials. Papers written by him were returned by Lord Grenville, the foreign minister, because his claim to represent the French republic was not recognized; or, if accepted, they were only received as unofficial.

The letters thus exchanged, under forms so unsatisfactory, were filled with mutual accusations, and arguments marked by the brisk vivacity of the one nation and the cool aggressiveness of the other; but starting as they did from the differing bases of natural rights on the one hand, and established institutions on the other, no agreement was approached. The questions of the Scheldt, of the decree of fraternity, and of that extending the French system to countries occupied by their armies, were thus disputed back and forth; and to them were added the complaints of France against an Alien Act, passed by Parliament, January 4, 1793, laying vexatious restrictions upon the movements of foreigners arriving in Great Britain, or wishing to change their abode if already resident. This act M. Chauvelin rightly believed to be specially aimed at Frenchmen. It sprang from the growing apprehension and change of feeling in England; a change emphasized by a break in the Parliamentary Opposition, a large number of whom, in this same month of January, 1793, definitively took the step in which their great associate, Edmund Burke, had preceded them, broke their party ties, and passed over to the support of Pitt. The latter would seem to have become convinced that war was inevitable; that the question was no longer whether a nation should exercise a right of changing its institutions, but whether a plague should be stamped out before it had passed its borders and infected yet healthy peoples.

Things had come to this state when news reached London of the death sentence of the French king. M. Chauvelin had just received and presented credentials from the republican government. On January 20, the minister informed him that the king, under present circumstances, did not think fit to receive them, adding the irritating words: "As minister of the Most Christian King, you would have enjoyed all the exemptions which the law grants to public ministers, recognized as such; but as a private person you cannot but return to the general mass of foreigners resident in England."[12 - Annual Register, 1793; State Papers, pp. 127, 128.] On the 24th of January, the execution of Louis XVI. being now known, Lord Grenville wrote to him: "The King can no longer, after such an event, permit your residence here. His Majesty has thought fit to order that you should retire from the kingdom within the space of eight days, and I herewith transmit to you a copy of the order which His Majesty has given me to that effect."[13 - Annual Register, 1793; State Papers, pp. 127, 128.]

On the 1st of February, 1793, the French republic declared war against Great Britain and Holland. It was already at war with Austria, Prussia and Sardinia; while Russia and Sweden were avowedly unfriendly, and Spain almost openly hostile.

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." [14 - Chevalier, Mar. Fran. sous la République, p. 49.] "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. " [15 - Nap. to Decrès, Aug. 29, 1805.] 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." [16 - Troude, Batailles Nav., vol. iii. p. 370.]

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." [17 - Moniteur, Jan. 19, 1790, p. 82.] 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." [18 - Chevalier, Mar. Fran. sous la République, p. 11.] 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." [19 - Ibid., p. 12.] "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." [20 - Guérin, Histoire de la Marine, vol. iii. p. 156 (1st ed.).]

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." [21 - Troude, Batailles Nav. de la France, vol. ii. p. 201.]

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." [22 - Guérin, Hist. Mar., vol. iii. p. 195 (1st ed.).] 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 [23 - Troude, Bat. Nav., vol. 2, p. 320.] 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." [24 - Guérin, vol. iii. p. 213.] 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. [25 - Guérin, vol. iii. p. 153.] 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. [26 - See Chevalier, Mar. Fran. sous la République, pp. 20-23.]

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. [27 - The decree of April 22 is in the Moniteur of the 23d. That of the 28th is not; but it will be found in the "Collection Générale des Décrets rendus par l'Ass. Nat." for April, 1791.] 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 [28 - The word entretenu, here rendered "paid," is difficult to translate. The dictionary of the French Academy explains it to mean an officer kept on pay, without necessarily being employed. Littré says that an officer "non entretenu" is one not having a commission. The word carries the idea of permanence. By the decree of April 28, "enseignes non entretenus" had no pay nor military authority, except when on military service; nor could they wear the uniform, except when so employed.] 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.