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CHAPTER XVII

The Warfare against Commerce during the French Revolution and Empire, to the Berlin Decree. 1793-1806

THE Warfare against Commerce during the French Revolution, alike under the Republic and under Napoleon, was marked by the same passionate vehemence, the same extreme and far-reaching conceptions, the same obstinate resolve utterly to overthrow and extirpate every opposing force, that characterized the political and military enterprises of the period. In the effort to bring under the yoke of their own policy the commerce of the whole world, the two chief contestants, France and Great Britain, swayed back and forth in deadly grapple over the vast arena, trampling under foot the rights and interests of the weaker parties; who, whether as neutrals, or as subjects of friendly or allied powers, looked helplessly on, and found that in this great struggle for self-preservation, neither outcries, nor threats, nor despairing submission, availed to lessen the pressure that was gradually crushing out both hope and life. The question between Napoleon and the British people became simply one of endurance, as was tersely and powerfully shown by the emperor himself. Both were expending their capital, and drawing freely drafts upon the future, the one in money, the other in men, to sustain their present strength. Like two infuriated dogs, they had locked jaws over Commerce, as the decisive element in the contest. Neither would let go his grip until failing vitality should loose it, or until some bystander should deal one a wound through which the powers of life should drain away. All now know that in the latter way the end came. The commercial policy of the great monarch, who, from the confines of Europe, had watched the tussle with all the eagerness of self-interest, angered Napoleon. To enforce his will, he made new and offensive annexations of territory. The czar replied by a commercial edict, sharp and decisive, and war was determined. "It is all a scene in the Opera," wrote Napoleon, ²⁴⁷ "and the English are the scene shifters." Words failed the men of that day to represent the grandeur and apparent solidity of the Empire in 1811, when Napoleon's heir was born. In December, 1812, it was shattered from turret to foundation stone; wrecked in the attempt "to conquer the sea by the land." The scene was shifted indeed.

Great Britain remained victorious on the field, but she had touched the verge of ruin. Confronted with the fixed resolution of her enemy to break down her commerce by an absolute exclusion from the continent of Europe, and as far as possible from the rest of the world, she met the challenge by a measure equally extreme, forbidding all neutral vessels to enter ports hostile to her, unless they had first touched at one of her own. Shut out herself from the Continent, she announced that while this exclusion lasted she would shut the Continent off from all external intercourse. "No trade except through England," was the formula under which her leaders expressed their purpose. The entrance of Russia into this strife, under the provocations of Napoleon, prevented the problem, which of these two policies would overthrow the other, from reaching a natural solution; and the final result of the measures which it is one object of this and the following chapter to narrate must remain for ever uncertain. It is, however, evident that a commercial and manufacturing country like Great Britain must, in a strife the essence of which was the restriction of trade, suffer more than one depending, as France did, mainly upon her internal resources. The question, as before stated, was whether she could endure the greater drain by her greater wealth. Upon the whole, the indications were, and to the end continued to be, that she could do so; that Napoleon, in entering upon this particular struggle, miscalculated his enemy's strength.

But besides this, here, as in every contest where the opponents are closely matched, where power and discipline and leadership are nearly equal, there was a further question: which of the two would make the first and greatest mistakes, and how ready the other party was to profit by his errors. In so even a balance, the wisest prophet cannot foresee how the scale will turn. The result will depend not merely upon the skill of the swordsman in handling his weapons, but also upon the wariness of his fence and the quickness of his returns; much, too, upon his temper. Here also Napoleon was worsted. Scarcely was the battle over commerce joined, when the uprising of Spain was precipitated by over-confidence; Great Britain hastened at once to place herself by the side of the insurgents. Four years later, when the British people were groaning in a protracted financial crisis,—when, if ever, there was a hope that the expected convulsion and ruin were at hand,—Napoleon, instead of waiting for his already rigorous blockade to finish the work he attributed to it, strove to draw it yet closer, by demands which were unnecessary and to which the czar could not yield. Again Great Britain seized her opportunity, received her late enemy's fleet, and filled his treasury. Admit the difficulties of Napoleon; allow as we may for the intricacy of the problem before him; the fact remains that he wholly misunderstood the temper of the Spanish people, the dangers of the Spanish enterprise, the resolution of Alexander. On the other hand, looking upon the principal charge against the policy of the British government, that it alienated the United States, it is still true that there was no miscalculation as to the long-suffering of the latter under the guidance of Jefferson, with his passion for peace. The submission of the United States lasted until Napoleon was committed to his final blunder, thus justifying the risk taken by Great Britain and awarding to her the strategic triumph.

The Continental System of Napoleon, here briefly alluded to, and to be described more fully further on, was, however, only the continuation, in its spirit and aims, of a policy outlined and initiated by the Republic under the Directory; which in turn but carried into its efforts against commerce the savage thoroughness which the Convention had sought to impress upon the general war. The principal measures of the emperor found antitypes in the decrees of the Directory; the only important difference being, that the execution of the latter reflected the feeble planning and intermittent energy of the government which issued them; whereas Napoleon, as always, impressed upon his system a vigor, and employed for its fulfilment means, proportioned to the arduousness of the task and the greatness of the expected results. The one series being therefore but the successor and fulfilment of the other, it has been thought best to present them in the same close connection in which they stand in the order of events, so as to show more clearly the unity of design running throughout the whole history,—a unity due to the inexorable logic of facts, to the existence of an external compulsion, which could in no other way be removed or resisted. Both in common owed their origin to the inability of France seriously to embarrass, by the ordinary operations of war, the great commerce of her rival, though she launched her national cruisers and privateers by dozens on every sea. The Sea Power of England held its way so steadily, preserved its trade in the main so successfully, and was withal so evidently the principal enemy, the key of the hostile effort against France, that it drove not only the weak Directors, but the great soldier and statesman who followed them, into the course which led straight to destruction.

The declarations of war were followed by the customary instructions to commanders of ships-of-war and privateers to seize and bring into port the merchant vessels of the enemy, as well as neutrals found violating the generally acknowledged principles of international law. So far there was nothing in the course of either belligerent that differed from the usual and expected acts of States at war. At once the sea swarmed with hastily equipped cruisers; and, as always happens on an unexpected, or even sudden, outbreak of hostilities, many valuable prizes were made by ships of either nation. The victims were taken unawares, and the offence on each side was more active and efficient than the defence. This first surprise, however, soon passed, and was succeeded by the more regular course of maritime war. The great British fleets gradually established a distinct preponderance over the masses of the enemy, and the latter was quickly reduced to the ordinary operations of commerce-destroying, in the sense usually given to that word,—a policy, moreover, to which the national tradition and the opinion of many eminent naval officers particularly inclined.

To these raids upon their shipping, by numerous scattered cruisers, the British opposed a twofold system. By the one, their merchant vessels bound to different quarters of the globe were gathered in specified ports, and when assembled sailed together under the care of a body of ships of war, charged to conduct them to their voyage's end. This was the convoy system, the essence of which was to concentrate the exposed wealth of the country, under the protection of a force adequate to meet and drive away any probable enemy. Immense numbers of ships thus sailed together; from two to three hundred was not an unusual gathering; and five hundred, or even a thousand, ²⁴⁸ were at times seen together in localities like the Chops of the Channel or the entrance to the Baltic, where the especial danger necessitated a stronger guard and a more careful acceptance of protection by the trader,—thus emphasizing and enlarging the peculiar features of the practice. It is scarcely necessary to remark that much time was lost in collecting such huge bodies, and that the common rate of sailing was far below the powers of many of their members; while the simultaneous arrival of great quantities of the same goods tended to lower prices. Consequently, many owners, relying upon the speed of their vessels and upon good luck, sailed without convoy upon completing their cargoes,—willing, after the manner of merchants, to take great risks for the sake of great returns, by being first in the market. To protect these, and others, which, by misfortune or bad management parted from their convoy, as well as to maintain their general command of the sea, the British resorted to another system, which may be called that of patrol. Fast frigates and sloops-of-war, with a host of smaller vessels, were disseminated over the ocean, upon the tracks which commerce follows and to which the hostile cruisers were therefore constrained. To each was assigned his cruising ground, the distribution being regulated by the comparative dangers, and by the necessary accumulation of merchant shipping in particular localities, as the North Sea, the approach to the English Channel, and, generally, the centres to which the routes of commerce converge. The forces thus especially assigned to patrol duty, the ships "on a cruise," to use the technical expression, were casually increased by the large number of vessels going backward and forward between England and their respective stations, dispatch-boats, ships going in for repairs or returning from them, so that the seas about Europe were alive with British cruisers; each one of which was wide-awake for prizes. To these again were added the many privateers, whose cruising ground was not indeed assigned by the government, but which were constrained in their choice by the same conditions that dictated at once the course of the trader and the lair of the commerce-destroyer.

Through this cloud of friends and foes the unprotected merchantman had to run the gantlet, trusting to his heels. If he were taken, all indeed was not lost, for there remained the chance of recapture by a friendly cruiser; but in that case the salvage made a large deduction from the profits of the voyage. The dangers thus run were not, however, solely at the risk of the owner; for, not to speak of the embarrassment caused to others by the failure of one merchant, the crews of the ships, the sailors, constituted a great potential element of the combatant force of the nation. A good seaman, especially in those days of simple weapons, was more than half ready to become at once a fighting man. In this he differed from an untrained landsman, and the customs of war therefore kept him, whenever taken afloat, a prisoner till exchanged. Every merchant ship captured thus diminished the fighting power of Great Britain, and the losses were so numerous that an act, known as the Convoy Act, was passed in 1798, compelling the taking of convoy and the payment of a certain sum for the protection. In the first year of its imposition this tax brought in £1,292,000 to the Treasury, while resulting in a yet greater saving of insurance to owners; and the diminished number of prizes taken by the French was thought to be a serious inconvenience to them, at a time when, by the admission of the Directory, foreign commerce under their own flag was annihilated. This remarkable confession, and the experience which dictated the Convoy Act, may together be taken as an indication that, in the defence and attack of commerce, as in other operations of war, concentration of effort will as a rule be found a sounder policy than dissemination. In 1795 the French formally abandoned the policy of keeping great fleets together, as they had before done in their history, and took to the guerre de course. Within three years, ending in December, 1798, "privateers alone put more than twenty thousand individuals in the balance of exchanges favorable to England," and "not a single merchant vessel sailed under the French flag." ²⁴⁹ "The fate of almost all mere cruisers (bâtimens armés en course) is to fall, a little sooner or later, into the hands of the enemy," and in consequence, "out of a maritime conscription of eighty thousand seamen, to-day but half remain" with which to man the fleet. British contemporary authority gives 743 as the number of privateers taken from France alone, between the outbreak of war in 1793 and the 31st of December, 1800,—not to speak of 273 ships of war of the cruiser classes. ²⁵⁰ The absolute loss inflicted by the efforts of these vessels and their more fortunate comrades cannot be given with precision; but as the result of an inquiry, the details of which will be presented further on, the author is convinced that it did not exceed two and a half per cent, and probably fell below two per cent of the total volume of British trade. This loss may be looked upon as a war tax, onerous indeed, but by no means insupportable; and which it would be folly to think could, by itself alone, exercise any decisive influence upon the policy of a wealthy and resolute nation. Yet no country is so favorably situated as France then was for operations against British commerce, whether in the home waters or in the West Indies, at that time the source of at least a fourth part of the trade of the Empire.

The indecisiveness of the results obtained by the French in their war against British shipping was not due to want of effort on their part. On the contrary, the activity displayed by their corsairs, though somewhat intermittent, was at times phenomenal; and this fact, as well as the extraordinarily favorable position of France, must be kept in view in estimating the probable advantages to be obtained from this mode of warfare. At the period in question London carried on more than half the commerce of Great Britain; in addition to its foreign trade it was the great distributing centre of a domestic traffic, carried on principally by the coasters which clustered by hundreds in the Thames. The annual trade of export and import to the metropolis was over £60,000,000, and the entries and departures of vessels averaged between thirteen and fourteen thousand. Of this great going and coming of ships and wealth, nearly two thirds had to pass through the English Channel, nowhere more than eighty miles wide and narrowing to twenty at the Straits of Dover; while the remaining third, comprising the trade from Holland, Germany, and the Baltic, as well as the coasting trade to North Britain, was easily accessible from the ports of Boulogne, Dunkirk, and Calais, and was still further exposed after the French, in 1794 and 1795, obtained complete control of Belgium and Holland. From St. Malo to the Texel, a distance of over three hundred miles, the whole coast became a nest of privateers of all kinds and sizes,—from row-boats armed only with musketry and manned by a dozen men, or even less, up to vessels carrying from ten to twenty guns and having crews of one hundred and fifty. In the principal Channel ports of France alone, independent of Belgium and Holland, there were at one time in the winter of 1800 eighty-seven privateers, mounting from fourteen to twenty-eight guns, besides numerous row-boats. These were actually employed in commerce-destroying, and the fishing-boats of the coast were capable upon short notice of being fitted for that service, in which they often engaged.

The nearness of the prey, the character of the seas, and the ease of making shelter either on the French or English shore in case of bad weather, modified very greatly the necessity for size and perfect sea-worthiness in the vessels thus used; and also, from the shortness of the run necessary to reach the cruising ground, each one placed on this line of coast was easily equal to ten starting for the same object from a more remote base of operations. Privateers sailing at sundown with a fair wind from St. Malo, or Dieppe, or Dunkirk to cruise in the Channel, would reach their cruising ground before morning of the long winter nights of that latitude. The length of stay would be determined by their good fortune in making prizes, if unmolested by a British cruiser. They ventured over close to the English side; they were seen at times from the shore seizing their prizes. ²⁵¹ At Dover, in the latter part of 1810, "signals were out almost every day, on account of enemy's privateers appearing in sight." ²⁵² Innocent-looking fishing-boats, showing only their half-dozen men busy at their work, lay at anchor upon, or within, the lines joining headland to headland of the enemy's coast, watching the character and appearance of passing vessels. When night or other favorable opportunity offered, they pulled quickly alongside the unsuspecting merchantman, which, under-manned and unwatchful, from the scarcity of seamen, was often first awakened to the danger by a volley of musketry, followed by the clambering of the enemy to the decks. The crews, few in number, poor in quality, and not paid for fighting, offered usually but slight resistance to the overpowering assault. Boarding was the corsair's game, because he carried many men.

It seems extraordinary that even the comparative impunity enjoyed by the privateers—for that it was only comparative is shown by the fact that an average of fifty were yearly captured—should have been attained in the face of the immense navy of Great Britain, and the large number of cruisers assigned to the protection of the coasts and the Channel. There were, however, many reasons for it. The privateering spirit is essentially that of the gambler and the lottery, and at no time was that spirit more widely diffused in France than in the period before us. The odds are not only great, but they are not easy to calculate. The element of chance enters very unduly, and when, as in the present case, the gain may be very great, while the immediate risk to the owner, who does not accompany his ship, is comparatively small, the disposition to push venture after venture becomes irresistible. The seaman, who risks his liberty, is readily tempted by high wages and the same hope of sudden profits that moves the owner; and this was more especially true at a time when the laying up of the fleets, and the disappearance of the merchant shipping, threw seafaring men wholly upon the coasting trade or privateering. The number of ships and men so engaged is thus accounted for; but among them and among the owners there was a certain proportion who pursued the occupation with a thoughtfulness and method which would distinguish a more regular business, and which, while diminishing the risk of this, very much increased the returns. Vessels were selected, or built, with special reference to speed and handiness; captains were chosen in whom seamanlike qualities were joined to particular knowledge of the British coast and the routes of British trade; the conditions of wind and weather were studied; the long winter nights were preferred because of the cover they afforded; they knew and reckoned upon the habits of the enemy's ships-of-war; account was kept of the times of sailing and arrival of the large convoys. ²⁵³ On the British side, a considerable deduction must be made from the efficiency indicated by the mere number of the coast cruisers. Many of them were poor sailers, quite unable to overtake the better and more dangerous class of privateers. The inducements to exertion were not great; for the privateer meant little money at best, and the abuses that gathered round the proceedings of the Admiralty Courts often swallowed up that little in costs. The command of the small vessels thus employed fell largely into the hands of men who had dropped hopelessly out of the race of life, while their more fortunate competitors were scattered on distant seas, and in better ships. To such, the slight chance of a bootless prize was but a poor inducement to exposure and activity, on the blustering nights and in the dangerous spots where the nimble privateer, looking for rich plunder, was wont to be found. It was worth more money to recapture a British merchantman than to take a French cruiser.

Privateering from the Atlantic, or Biscay, coast of France was necessarily carried on in vessels of a very different class from those which frequented the Channel. There was no inducement for the merchant ships of Great Britain to pass within the line from Ushant to Cape Finisterre; while, on the other hand, her ships-of-war abounded there, for the double purpose of watching the French fleets in the ports, and intercepting both the enemy's cruisers and their prizes, as they attempted to enter. For these reasons, privateers leaving Bordeaux, Bayonne, or Nantes, needed to be large and seaworthy, provisioned and equipped for distant voyages and for a long stay at sea. Their greatest danger was met near their home ports, either going or returning; and their hopes were set, not upon the small and often unprofitable coaster, but upon the richly laden trader from the East or West Indies or the Mediterranean. Out, therefore, beyond the line of the enemy's blockade, upon the deep sea and on one of the great commercial highways converging toward the Channel, was their post; there to remain as long as possible, and not lightly to encounter again the perils of the Bay of Biscay. Moreover, being larger and more valuable, the owner had to think upon their defence; they could not, like the cheap Channel gropers, be thrown away in case of any hostile meeting. While they could not cope with the big frigates of the enemy, there were still his smaller cruisers, and the hosts of his privateers, that might be met; and many a stout battle was fought by those French corsairs. One of these, the "Bordelais," taken in 1799, was said then to be the largest of her kind sailing out of France. She had the keel of a 38-gun frigate, carried twenty-four 12-pounder guns, and a crew of two hundred and twenty men. In four years this ship had captured one hundred and sixty prizes, and was said to have cleared to her owners in Bordeaux a million sterling. ²⁵⁴

A third most important and lucrative field for the enterprise of French privateers was found in the West Indies. The islands of Guadaloupe and Martinique served as excellent bases of operations. The latter indeed was for many years in British possession, but the former remained, practically without interruption, in the hands of France until its capture in 1810. During the many years of close alliance, from 1796 to 1808, between France and Spain, the West Indian ports of the latter served not only to maintain her own privateers, but to give a wide extension to the efforts of her more active partner. The geographical and climatic conditions of this region tended also to modify the character both of the cruisers and of their methods. Along with a very large European trade, carried on by ships of an average burden of two hundred and fifty tons, there was also a considerable traffic from island to island by much smaller vessels. This local trade was not only between the possessions of the same nation or of friendly States, but existed also, by means of neutrals or contraband, between those of powers at war; and through these and her system of free ports, together with liberal modifications of her commercial code wherever an advantage could thereby be gained, Great Britain succeeded in drawing into her own currents, in war as well as in peace, the course of much of the export and import of the whole Caribbean Sea and Spanish Main. From these two kinds of trade—combined with the general good weather prevailing, with the contiguity of the islands to each other, and with the numerous ports and inlets scattered throughout their extent—there arose two kinds of privateering enterprise. The one, carried on mainly by large and fast-sailing schooners or brigs, was found generally suitable for undertakings directed against ships bound to or from Europe; while for the other the various islands abounded with small row-boats or other petty craft, each with its group of plunderers, which lay in wait and usually in profound concealment to issue out upon the passing trader. ²⁵⁵ The uncertain character of the wind in some parts of the day particularly favored an attack, by two or three heavily manned rowing boats, upon a vessel large enough to take them all on board bodily, but fettered by calm and with a small crew. On one occasion a United States sloop-of-war, lying thus motionless with her ports closed, was taken for a merchantman and assailed by several of these marauders, who then paid dearly for the mistake into which they had been led by her seemingly unarmed and helpless condition.

The remoteness of this region from Europe covered very great irregularities, both by the privateers and in the courts. This evil became greater in the French and Spanish islands, when, by the progress of the war, the Sea Power of Great Britain more and more broke off correspondence between them and the mother countries; and when Napoleon's aggression drove the Spaniards into revolution and anarchy, the control of Spain, always inert, became merely nominal. These circumstances, coinciding with the presence of a very large neutral shipping, mainly belonging to the United States, whose geographical nearness made her one of the chief sources of supplies to these colonies, caused the privateering of the Latin and mixed races to degenerate rapidly into piracy, towards which that mode of warfare naturally tends. As early as 1805, an American insurance company complained to the Secretary of State that "property plundered by real or pretended French privateers was uniformly taken into the ports of Cuba, and there, with the connivance of the Spanish government, was sold and distributed, without any form of trial, or pretence for legal condemnation."[1] And the United States consul at Santiago de Cuba reported officially that more than a thousand American seamen had been landed in that port, most of them without clothes or any means of support; and that "the scene of robbery, destruction, evasion, perjury, cruelty, and insult, to which the Americans captured by French pirates, and brought into this and adjacent ports, have been subjected, has perhaps not been equalled in a century past." ²⁵⁶ This lawlessness ended, as is generally known, in an actual prevalence of piracy on an extensive scale, about the south side of Cuba and other unfrequented parts of the archipelago, for some years after the war. From the character of the ground and the slow communications of the day, these desperadoes were finally put down only by the systematic and long continued efforts of the various governments concerned.

The Eastern trade of Great Britain was in the hands of the East India Company; and its ships, which carried on the intercourse between India and Europe, were of a size altogether exceptional in those days. At a time when a small ship-of-the-line measured from fourteen to sixteen hundred tons, and the traders between America and Europe averaged under three hundred, a large proportion of the East Indiamen were of twelve hundred tons burden, exceeding considerably the dimensions of a first-class frigate. ²⁵⁷ Being pierced for numerous guns and carrying many men, both crew and passengers, among whom often figured considerable detachments of troops, they presented a very formidable appearance, and were more than once mistaken for ships of war by French cruisers; so much so that in the year 1804 a body of them in the China seas, by their firm bearing and compact order, imposed upon a hostile squadron of respectable size, commanded by an admiral of cautious temper though of proved courage, making him for a brief period the laughing stock of both hemispheres, and bringing down on his head a scathing letter from the emperor. Their armament, however, was actually feeble, especially in the earlier part of the French Revolution. About the year 1801, it was determined to increase it so that the larger ships should carry thirty-eight 18-pounders; ²⁵⁸ but the change seems to have been but imperfectly effected, and upon the occasion in question the ships which thus "bluffed" Admiral Linois were none of them a match for a medium frigate. It is, indeed, manifestly impossible to combine within the same space the stowage of a rich and bulky cargo and the fighting efficiency of a ship of war of the same tonnage. Still, the batteries, though proportionately weak, were too powerful for ordinary privateers to encounter, unless by a fortunate surprise; and, as the French entertained great, if not exaggerated, ideas of the dependence of Great Britain upon her Indian possessions, considerable efforts were made to carry on commerce-destroying in the Eastern seas by squadrons of heavy frigates, re-enforced occasionally by ships-of-the-line. These were the backbone of the guerre de course, but their efforts were supplemented by those of numerous privateers of less size, that preyed upon the coasting trade and the smaller ships, which, from China to the Red Sea, and throughout the Indian Ocean, whether under British or neutral flags, were carrying goods of British origin.