Kitabı oku: «The Influence of sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire 1793-1812, vol I», sayfa 22

English Channel and North Sea.

CHAPTER XI

The Atlantic, 1796-1801.—The Brest Blockades.—The French Expeditions Against Ireland

THE decision taken by the French executive in the latter part of 1795,—after the disastrous partial encounters of Martin with Hotham in the Mediterranean and of Villaret Joyeuse with Bridport in the Bay of Biscay,—to discontinue sending large fleets to sea, and to rely upon commerce-destroying, by single cruisers or small squadrons, to reduce the strength of Great Britain, remained unchanged during the following years, and was adopted by Bonaparte when the Consular government, in 1799, succeeded that of the Directory. This policy was in strict accord with the general feeling of the French nation, as well naval officers as unprofessional men, by which the action of the navy was ever subordinated to other military considerations, to "ulterior objects," as the phrase commonly ran,—a feeling that could not fail to find favor and expression in the views of the great director of armies who ruled France during the first fourteen years of this century. It amounted, however, simply to abandoning all attempt to control the sea. Consequently, whenever any enterprise was undertaken which required this to be crossed, resort was necessarily had to evasion, more or less skilfully contrived; and success depended, not upon the reasonable certainty conferred by command of the water, by the skilful massing of forces, but upon a balance of chances, which might be more or less favorable in the particular instance, but could never be regarded as reaching the degree of security which is essential, even in the hazardous combinations of the game of war. This formal relegation of the navy to a wholly inferior place in the contest then raging, was followed, under the embarrassments of the treasury, by a neglect of the material of war, of the ships and their equipments, which left France still at Great Britain's mercy, even when in 1797 and 1798 her Continental enemies had been shaken off by the audacity and address of Bonaparte.

Thrice only, therefore, during the six years in question, ending with the Peace of Amiens in 1802, did large French fleets put to sea; and on each occasion their success was made to depend upon the absence of the British fleets, or upon baffling their vigilance. As in commerce-destroying, stealth and craft, not force, were the potent factors. Of the three efforts, two, Bonaparte's Egyptian expedition and Bruix's escape from Brest in 1799, have been already narrated under the head of the Mediterranean, to which they chiefly–the former wholly—belong. The third was the expedition against Ireland, under the command of Hoche, to convoy which seventeen ships-of-the-line and twenty smaller vessels sailed from Brest in the last days of 1796.

The operations in the Atlantic during this period were accordingly, with few exceptions, reduced to the destruction of commerce, to the harassment of the enemy's communications on the sea, and, on the part of the British, to an observation, more or less vigilant, of the proceedings in the enemy's naval ports, of which Brest was the most important. From the maritime conditions of the two chief belligerents, the character of their undertakings differed. British commerce covered every sea and drew upon all quarters of the world; consequently French cruisers could go in many directions upon the well known commercial routes, with good hope of taking prizes, if not themselves captured. British cruisers, on the other hand, could find French merchant vessels only on their own coast, for the foreign traffic of France in ships of her own was destroyed; but the coasting trade, carried on in vessels generally of from thirty to a hundred tons, was large, and in the maritime provinces took in great measure the place of land carriage. The neutrals who maintained such foreign trade as was left to the enemies of Great Britain, and who were often liable to detention from some infraction, conscious or unconscious, of the rules of international law, were naturally to be found in greatest numbers in the neighborhood of the coasts to which they were bound. Finally, the larger proportion of French privateers were small vessels, intended to remain but a short time at sea and to cruise in the Channel or among its approaches, where British shipping most abounded. For all these reasons the British provided for the safety of their distant commerce by concentrating it in large bodies called convoys, each under the protection of several ships of war; while their scattered cruisers were distributed most thickly near home,—in the English Channel, between the south coast of Ireland and Ushant, in the waters of the bay of Biscay, and along the coasts of Spain and Portugal. There they were constantly at hand to repress commerce-destroying, to protect or recapture their own merchantmen, and to reduce the coasting trade of the enemy, as well as the ability of his merchants to carry on, under a neutral flag, the operations no longer open to their own. The annals of the time are consequently filled, not with naval battles, but with notes of vessels taken and retaken; of convoys, stealing along the coast of France, chased, harassed and driven ashore, by the omnipresent cruisers of the enemy. Nor was it commerce alone that was thus injured. The supplying of the naval ports, even with French products, chiefly depended upon the coasting vessels; and embarrassment, amounting often to disability, was constantly entailed by the unflagging industry of the hostile ships, whose action resembled that which is told of the Spanish guerillas, upon the convoys and communications of the French armies in the Peninsular War. ³⁰⁷

The watch over the enemy's ports, and particularly over the great and difficult port of Brest, was not, during the earlier and longer part of this period, maintained with the diligence nor with the force becoming a great military undertaking, by which means alone such an effort can be made effective in checking the combinations of an active opponent. Some palliation for this slack service may perhaps be found in the knowledge possessed by the admiralty of the condition of the French fleet and of the purposes of the French government, some also in the well-known opinions of that once active officer, Lord Howe; but even these circumstances can hardly be considered more than a palliation for a system essentially bad. The difficulties were certainly great, the service unusually arduous, and it was doubtless true that the closest watch could not claim a perfect immunity from evasion; but from what human efforts can absolute certainty of results be predicted? and above all, in war? The essential feature of the military problem, by which Great Britain was confronted, was that the hostile fleets were divided, by the necessities of their administration, among several ports. To use these scattered divisions successfully against her mighty sea power, it was needed to combine two or more of them in one large body. To prevent such a combination was therefore the momentous duty of the British fleet; and in no manner could this be so thoroughly carried out as by a close and diligent watch before the hostile arsenals,—not in the vain hope that no squadron could ever, by any means, slip out, but with the reasonable probability that at no one period could so many escape as to form a combination threatening the Empire with a crushing disaster. Of these arsenals Brest, by its situation and development, was the most important, and contained usually the largest and most efficient of the masses into which the enemies' fleets were divided. The watch over it, therefore, was of supreme consequence; and in the most serious naval crisis of the Napoleonic wars the Brest "blockading" fleet, as it was loosely but inaccurately styled, by the firmness of its grip broke up completely one of the greatest of Napoleon's combinations. To it, and to its admiral, Cornwallis, was in large measure due that the vast schemes which should have culminated in the invasion of England, by one hundred and fifty thousand of the soldiers who fought at Austerlitz and Jena, terminated instead in the disaster of Trafalgar. Yet it may be said that had there prevailed in 1805 the system with which the names of Howe and Bridport are identified, and which was countenanced by the Admiralty until the stern Earl St. Vincent took command, the chances are the French Brest fleet would have taken its place in the great strategic plan of the Emperor.

This far-reaching combination, so tremendous in its risks and in its issues that men have doubted, and always will doubt, whether Napoleon seriously meant to carry it through, was but the supreme example of the dangers to which Great Britain was exposed, and from which her fleets had to shield her. It was aimed, with the true insight of genius, directly at her heart; and except from occasional assertions of the emperor, whose words can never be implicitly believed, there is really little cause for doubt that he was prepared to take many chances of ruin in order to execute an enterprise which, both in conception and details, was so clearly stamped with the characteristics of his intellect and temperament. But the widely scattered dominions of Great Britain offered many points, besides the British islands themselves, to the blows of an enemy; and her navy had to protect not merely the heart but the extremities, each and all of which were threatened, in proportion to their value and their means of resistance, when a hostile squadron was loose upon the sea. How, then, should this service be performed? By dividing the fleet among the points threatened, and establishing the line of defence close before the region to be defended? Not so should the true maxim, that the British navy was the first line of defence, have been interpreted. As in all military campaigns, the front of operations of a powerful fleet should be pushed as far towards the enemy as is consistent with the mutual support of the various detachments, and with secure communication with their base. By so doing, not only are the great national interests placed more remote from the alarms of war, but the use of the region behind the front of operations, in this case the sea, is secured to the power that can afford to maintain its fighting line close to the enemy's positions.

Not merely to check great combinations threatening great disasters, but to protect as far as possible minor but important interests, and for the security of commerce itself, the true station for the British fleets, superior in temper if not in numbers to the enemy, was before the hostile ports and as close to them as might be. There, though their function was defensive, as in the last analysis that of the British Empire also was, they were ever ready, did opportunity offer, to assume the offensive. "Every opportunity will be given to the Toulon squadron to put to sea," wrote Nelson, "for it is on the sea that we hope to realize the expectations of our country,"—a hope which it was given him to fulfil at Trafalgar, where the greater designs of Napoleon were forever crushed. This hope of Nelson's was, however, based upon a close watch of his port, to establish which by constant cruising before it he avowed his purpose; ³⁰⁸ and the enforced abandonment of this plan, from the crazy condition of several of his ships, was the first cause of the perplexities which pursued him through the campaign. Did an enemy's division escape, as from Toulon and at other times, the general policy was not invalidated by such occasional failure. The first line of defence had been pierced at a single point; there still remained the other lines, the fortified ports and the soldiers behind them, or, in a maritime region like the West Indies, a detachment of ships more or less adequate to contest the ground until re-enforced.

A wisely co-ordinated system of defence does not contemplate that every point is to hold out indefinitely, but only for such time as may be necessary for it to receive the support which the other parts of the whole are intended to supply. That the navy is the first line of defence, both in order and in importance, by no means implies that there is or should be no other. This forced and extravagant interpretation, for which naval officers have been largely responsible, of the true opinion that a navy is the best protection for a sea frontier, has very much to do with that faulty strategy which would tie the fleet, whatever its power, to the home ports, and disseminate it among them. Navies do not dispense with fortifications nor with armies; but when wisely handled, they may save their country the strain which comes when these have to be called into play,—when war, once remote, now thunders at the gates, and the sea, the mother of prosperity, is shut off. This kindly office did British seamen for Great Britain in the days of Napoleon, and mainly through those close blockades of which St. Vincent set the pattern before Toulon in the Mediterranean, ³⁰⁹ and afterwards before Brest, when he took command of the Channel fleet.

The port of Brest, regarded as the principal hostile arsenal round which must centre the operations of a great part of the British navy, has to be considered under two sets of conditions: 1st, as to its position, relatively to the British bases of operations and to points of British territory open to attack; 2d, as to its own immediate surroundings, how far they facilitated the action of the French navy, and what dispositions of the British fleet were necessary in order best to impede that action. The former question is strategic in its character, the latter tactical.

Brest and Its Approaches.

At the end of the peninsula which forms the north-western extremity of France, there is a deep recess in the land, between two capes which lie nearly in the same north and south line, and are called Pointe St. Mathieu and Pointe du Raz. The former is the more northerly, and the distance separating the two is seventeen miles. A promontory making out from the bottom of the recess divides it into two bays of unequal dimensions, of which the southern is known as the Bay of Douarnenez and the northern as that of Brest. The entrance to the former is five miles wide and unobstructed, so that only partial shelter is obtained; it gives, however, a safe though rough anchorage, even in westerly gales. The Bay of Brest, of smaller surface, is entered by a passage three miles long and only one wide, called the Goulet. With such an approach, and further favored by the configuration of the surrounding land, perfect security is found there, as well as facility for carrying on the work of a fleet, when it would be impossible at the more exposed anchorage of Douarnenez. From the Goulet to Pointe St. Mathieu the distance is seven miles; and immediately outside the former are two open roadsteads, Bertheaume to the north and Camaret to the south, frequently occupied by French ships prior to a final start on an expedition, or when waiting for a wind.

Had these features constituted the whole of the hydrographic surroundings of Brest Harbor, the task of a British admiral would have been simpler. A singular combination of dangers conspired to force him, even in favorable weather, to a station much further from the coast, and at the same time tended to facilitate the exit of the French. From both Pointe St. Mathieu and Pointe du Raz a strip of foul ground, comparatively narrow, extends for fifteen miles directly out to sea. That from St. Mathieu trends west-north-west and terminates in the island of Ushant; ³¹⁰ while from Pointe du Raz a succession of reefs, shoals, and low islands, the whole known as the Chaussée de Sein, stretches nearly due west to a point due south of Ushant and distant from it twenty-two miles. Between these two long, low barriers lay the principal approach to Brest, the Iroise Channel,—fifteen miles long and of a width varying from seventeen to twenty-two, nearly double that of the Straits of Gibraltar,—in which it was not possible to maintain a body of heavy vessels, particularly the three-decked ships, of ninety guns and over, which formed a large fraction of the Channel fleet and were singularly wanting in weatherly qualities. Their short, high hulls and heavy top-hamper caused them to drift rapidly in bad weather; and they needed plenty of open sea to leeward for this reason, and also that they might run before the wind, if too violent. To try to keep these formidable but unhandy vessels in the Iroise during the heavy westerly gales which prevail in the Bay of Biscay, ³¹¹ with no refuge from the sea save the enemy's port under their lee, was to court destruction.

To keep the English Channel open in case of very heavy weather was therefore essential to the British fleet. The Island of Ushant, as favoring this object and also as a conspicuous, easily recognized off-shore position, became the strategic centre around which the movements of the main body of the fleet revolved, and to which all dispositions made to ensure the watching of Brest must have regard, as to their natural point of reference.

Given the superiority of force which the British navy usually possessed, a superiority none too great to bear the tremendous strain imposed by the dangerous weather and coasts it had to encounter, the supreme strategic factor was the wind. Brest is farther west than any English Channel port except Falmouth, which is on the meridian of Ushant. Falmouth, however, did not stand well as a port in the general naval opinion of the day, though it had warm advocates; ³¹² and it was undoubtedly wanting in room for a number of heavy ships to anchor together. East of Falmouth there were available the anchorages of Plymouth, Torbay, and Spithead, distant from Ushant respectively 120, 135, and 210 miles, Falmouth being only 100; but with the exception of Spithead, they were not secure in all winds. Plymouth Sound was exposed to the point of danger in south-west gales. Torbay, though safe in westerly weather, was at times dangerous, as well as difficult to leave, in the south-easterly storms, which were, however, exceptional.

Spithead was secure, and was moreover the roadstead of a great naval arsenal, as was also Plymouth Sound; but its distance, a hundred miles east of Torbay, with the wind prevailing three-fourths of the time from the westward, should have been considered an insuperable strategic objection to sailing ships destined to watch Brest, and especially to fleets. A sailing ship of fair qualities, proceeding against a dead head wind, makes good only one third of the distance she actually sails. With such a wind a port one hundred miles distant is actually three hundred, and with fleets progress is even slower. To this was added at Spithead a difficulty seemingly trivial, yet so insuperable as to be humiliating. With a south-east wind, favorable to go down Channel, three-decked ships could not get from the anchorage to St. Helen's (the outer roads only three miles distant), whence they could sail with a fair wind.

The whole theory of the blockade of Brest rested on the fact that the French fleet could not sail in such westerly weather as forced the British to take refuge in port, ³¹³ and upon the expectation that the latter by diligence could regain their station with the first of the east wind, in time to prevent the enemy's escape. This expectation depended upon the greater rapidity of the British movements and consequently upon the distance of the point of refuge. For this reason Spithead was singularly unfit to be the rendezvous of the fleet; yet it was chosen and maintained by both Howe and Bridport during the seven years of their consecutive commands. To this they added the practice of keeping the main body of the fleet in port during the winter months. The Admiralty, doubtless, was ultimately responsible; but, even with the sharp lessons of the Irish expedition and Bruix's escape, it needed the advent of an admiral of St. Vincent's sagacity and temper to insure the adoption of a more rational and vigorous system. In his words to the second in command,—when the wild winter weather and his own declining years compelled him to withdraw from the flag-ship,—"You are on no account to authorize any ships to go to Spithead, unless you receive special orders from the Admiralty or from me," ³¹⁴ is summed up the simple, yet fundamental, difference between his policy and that of his predecessors. All his other careful arrangements to expedite the refitting of ships, and prolong their stay on the station, are but detailed instances of the same effort to save time, to keep his fleet concentrated at the decisive point, and in the largest mass possible.

After Howe finally retired from the command, Bridport established his headquarters at Spithead, where during the winter and early spring the main body of the fleet was commonly assembled. The commander-in-chief seems himself to have lived ashore, being in April, 1796, created general port-admiral with liberal appointments. Squadrons of seven or eight ships-of-the-line, about a fourth of the total force, cruised to the westward of Ushant, "in the soundings," during the winter, for periods of two or three months, returning to Spithead when relieved. Thus was practically realized Lord Howe's policy, to economize the ships and depend upon vessels kept in good order by staying in port to follow the French, when information of their sailing was received. This also was the general plan at the time of the French expedition against Ireland in the winter of 1796-1797.

The widespread discontent in Ireland, especially in the Protestant North, was well known to the Directory, with which, through the French minister at Hamburg, Irish agents had been in communication as early as April, 1796. Another, the somewhat celebrated Wolfe Tone, had in the first months of the year arrived in Paris from the United States with a similar mission. To their efforts was added the powerful influence of General Hoche, who had in other fields of action shown military ability of the highest order; and who, having established his claims upon the gratitude of his country by the pacification of La Vendée and Brittany, was now in command of the army in that quarter. In all directions circumstances seemed favorable. Bonaparte was in the midst of his great Italian successes; and the reverses inflicted upon Jourdan and Moreau in Germany by the Archduke Charles were neutralized, for the winter at least, by the necessity of drawing upon his troops to renew the Austrian armies in Italy. Spain had declared war against Great Britain; and there were hopes, destined to be frustrated by the lethargy of her movements and by the battle of Cape St. Vincent, that the Spanish fleet could be made to combine with the French for the purposed invasion. The mission of Lord Malmesbury, although the British government held its head high, seemed to indicate failing confidence; and the British navy, however successful in seizing the colonial possessions of its enemies in all parts of the world, had been unable, through the retirement of the French fleets from the sea, to win any of those brilliant victories which restore the courage of nations. St. Vincent, Camperdown, and the Nile were still in the future.

The proposed invasion was consequently resolved. It depended avowedly upon the co-operation of the disaffected inhabitants; but Hoche did not make the mistake of trusting to them for the most serious part of the work. No less than twenty thousand troops were to be embarked; and as the general recognized that the difficulties would by no means be over when Ireland was reached,—that the British navy, if successfully eluded by the expedition, would nevertheless seriously interfere with subsequent supplies,—he insisted upon carrying with him as much of these, and consequently as many ships, as could be had in Brest. Efforts were made to increase the force in that port. Five ships under Admiral Villeneuve were ordered round from Toulon; ³¹⁵ Richery's squadron was expected from North America, ³¹⁶ and the Spaniards were also called upon. These efforts, however, only caused delay, and contributed but two of Richery's ships to swell the expedition, the others being found too shaken to be sent at once to sea. Villeneuve did not arrive in time, and the Spaniards remained in the Mediterranean.

The number of seamen at the disposal of the government was limited, owing to many causes; among which the principal were discontent with the navy, and the superior attractions of privateering, which had led not merely to their choosing that service, but also to many being captured at sea and so lost to their country. This deficiency imposed a proportionate limit to the number of ships that could be fitted. There was a dearth likewise of good watch officers. Besides these controlling circumstances, there were also some manifest advantages in reducing to the smallest numbers the vessels composing an expedition, which was to avoid action, to make a short passage at the stormiest season of the year, and which it was all important should keep united and arrive together. For these reasons it was decided that the troops should be embarked on the ships-of-war to their fullest capacity. Each ship-of-the-line carried six hundred soldiers, making with her crew a ship's company of thirteen hundred souls. The frigates received about two hundred and fifty each. Although in this particular instance the arguments in favor of transporting the army in the ships-of-war outweighed those against, there is always a grave disadvantage to the handling and fighting of vessels encumbered by so many useless and generally sea-sick men.

Never, however, was a great expedition, destined to encounter extraordinary risks and to brave one of the stormiest of seas, more favored than this at the first was by the elements and by the mismanagement of its enemies. For nearly six weeks before it sailed the winds prevailed from the east; and during the passage, in mid-winter, fine weather with favorable winds lasted until the bulk of the fleet reached the Irish coast. Nor was an enemy's vessel met, to take advantage of the crowded and inefficient condition of the French ships. Like Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt, though from other causes, Hoche's ships passed to their destination unseen by any foe powerful enough to molest. To the enfeebled state of the French navy, to the decay of its material, to the want of seamen, to the disappearance of the trained officers, and to the consequent disinclination of the superiors to undertake the expedition, is to be attributed the failure of an attempt in which their sympathies had never been enlisted. Hoche, who had supreme command of both army and navy, ³¹⁷ found by bitter experience the delays which incompetent or ill-affected subordinates can impose, especially in a branch of service of which the commander-in-chief has not particular knowledge. Villaret Joyeuse, first appointed to command the fleet, being keenly aware of its defects, was averse from an enterprise which, in all reasonable probability, would lead to a meeting at once with the British and with excessively bad weather. He wished, as did also Truguet, the Minister of Marine, to take a heavy squadron of eight ships to India; whereby, if the first encounter with the enemy were evaded, a long passage with much good weather would permit the crews to be trained, while in the Indian seas they would be superior in force to their opponents. Truguet, however, harmonized this object with the proposed expedition by purposing to send the ships to India after their return from Ireland; while Villaret, who had spent in the ports the years which the minister had passed in Paris, and knew intimately the deplorable state of both men and ships, had little hope of the latter coming back in any state to undertake his favorite project.

The hardly concealed bias of the admiral, and the apathy of the naval officers generally, inspired Hoche with doubts of Villaret's faithfulness to his task; and upon his urgent remonstrance Morard de Galles, who fifteen years before had been like Villaret among the bravest captains of the great Suffren, succeeded to the command. The new admiral brought to his duty the submissive devotion of a military man, and had not, as Villaret had, any counter-project of his own; but the radical defects of an organization, vitiated by years of neglect and false standards, could not be overcome by a man already advanced in years in the few short days of hurried preparation. Such as the French navy had become, through the loss of its heads and the vagaries of the legislature, such it sailed on the expedition to Ireland. "God keep me from having anything to do with the navy!" wrote Hoche. "What an extravagant compound! A great body whose parts are disunited and incoherent; contradictions of all kinds, indiscipline organized in a military body. Add to that, haughty ignorance and foolish vanity, and you have the picture filled out. Poor Morard de Galles! he has already aged twenty years; how I pity him!" ³¹⁸

The administrative difficulties, caused by poverty of resources, conspired with the non-arrival of Richery and Villeneuve to delay the expedition. Fixed first for the early autumn and then for the first of November, it was not able to sail till the middle of December. Richery had reached the anchorage of Île d'Aix ³¹⁹ on the 5th of November with five ships-of-the-line; but not till the 8th of the following month could his vessels, racked by their long cruise, sail for Brest. On the 11th they entered the port, where upon examination two only of them were found fit for the Irish voyage; and the wait for these entailed a delay which had a singular effect upon the fortunes of the undertaking.