The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire 1793-1812, vol 2

ALTHOUGH Great Britain and France had each, up to the last moment, hoped to retain peace upon its own terms, preparations for war had gone on rapidly ever since the king's message of March 8. Immediately upon issuing this, couriers were dispatched to the various sea-ports, with orders to impress seamen for the numerous ships hastily ordered into commission. Some details have come down giving a vivid presentment of that lawless proceeding known as a "hot press," at this period when it was on the point of disappearing. "About 7 P. M. yesterday," says the Plymouth report of March 10, "the town was alarmed with the marching of several bodies of Royal Marines in parties of twelve or fourteen each, with their officers and a naval officer, armed. So secret were the orders kept that they did not know the nature of the service on which they were going, until they boarded the tier of colliers at the new quay, and other gangs the ships at Catwater, the Pool and the gin-shops. A great number of prime seamen were taken out and sent on board the admiral's ship. In other parts of the town, and in all the receiving and gin-shops at Dock, several hundreds of seamen and landsmen were picked up. By returns this morning it appears that upwards of four hundred useful hands were pressed last night. One gang entered the Dock theatre and cleared the whole gallery except the women." Parties of seamen and marines were placed across all roads leading out of the towns, to intercept fugitives. In Portsmouth the colliers were stripped so clean of men that they could not put to sea; while frigates and smaller vessels swept the Channel and other sea-approaches to the kingdom, stopping all merchant ships, and taking from them a part of their crews. The whole flotilla of trawl-boats fishing off the Eddystone, forty in number, were searched, and two hands taken from each. Six East India ships, wind-bound off Plymouth on their outward voyage, were boarded by armed boats and robbed of three hundred seamen, till then unaware that a rupture with France was near. [90]

Bonaparte on his side had been no less active, although he sought by the secrecy of his movements to avert alarm and postpone, if possible, the war which for his aims was premature. Orders were given that re-enforcements for the colonies should go forward rapidly, ere peace was broken. No ships-of-the-line or frigates should henceforth go with them; and those already abroad were for the most part at once recalled. Troops were concentrated on the coasts of Holland and Flanders; and the flat-boats built in the last war with a view to invading England were assembled quietly in the Scheldt and the Channel ports. Plans were studied for the harassment of British commerce. On the 9th of April was commanded the armament of the shores, from the Scheldt westward to the Somme, a distance of one hundred and twenty miles, which afterwards became, to use Marmont's vivid expression, "a coast of iron and bronze." A few days later Elba and all the coasts and islands of France were ordered fortified; and the first consul's aides-de-camp sped north and east and west, to see and report the state of preparation in all quarters.

One affair of great importance still remained to arrange. The smaller French islands in the East and West Indies could be held in subjection by a moderate number of troops, who could also resist for a considerable time any attempt of the British, unless on a very large scale. This was not the case with Haïti or Louisiana. In the former the French, reduced by the fever, were now shut up in a few sea-ports; communication between which, being only by water, must cease when the maritime war broke out. Between the blacks within and the British without, the loss of the island was therefore certain. Louisiana had not yet been occupied. Whatever its unknown possibilities, the immediate value to France of this possession, so lately regained, was as a source of supplies to Haïti, dependent for many essentials upon the American continent. With the fall of the island the colony on the mainland became useless. Its cession by Spain to France had at once aroused the jealousy, with which, from colonial days, the people of the United States have viewed any political interference by European nations on the American continent, even when involving only a transfer from one power to another. In the dire straits of the Revolution, when the need of help from abroad was so great, they had been careful to insert in the Treaty of Alliance with France an express stipulation, that she would not acquire for herself any of the possessions of Great Britain on the mainland; having then in view Canada and the Floridas. This feeling was intensified when, as now, the change of ownership was from a weak and inert state like Spain to one so powerful as France, with the reputation for aggressiveness that was fast gathering around the name of Bonaparte.

The fear and anger of the American people increased with the reserve shown by the French government, in replying to the questions of their minister in Paris, who asked repeatedly, but in vain, for assurances as to the navigation of the Mississippi; and the excitement reached a climax when in November, 1802, news was received that the Spanish authorities in New Orleans had refused to American citizens the right of deposit, conceded by the treaty of 1795 with Spain. This was naturally attributed to Bonaparte's influence, and the inhabitants of the upper Mississippi valley were ready to resort to arms to enforce their rights.

Such was the threatening state of affairs in America, while war with Great Britain was fast drawing on. Bonaparte was not the man to recede before a mere menace of hostilities in the distant wilderness of Louisiana; but it was plain that, in case of rupture with Great Britain, any possessions of France on the Gulf of Mexico were sure to fall either to her or to the Americans, if he incurred the enmity of the latter. It was then believed in Washington that France had also acquired from Spain the Floridas, which contained naval ports essential to the defence of Louisiana. On the 12th of April, 1803, arrived in Paris Mr. Monroe, sent by Jefferson as envoy extraordinary, to treat, in conjunction with the regular minister to France, for the cession of the Floridas and of the island of New Orleans to the United States; the object of the latter being to secure the Mississippi down to its mouth as their western boundary. Monroe's arrival was most opportune. Lord Whitworth had five days before communicated the message of the British cabinet that, unless the French government was prepared to enter into the required explanations, relations of amity could not exist, and at the same time the London papers were discussing a proposition to raise fifty thousand men to take New Orleans. [91] Three days later, April 10, the first consul decided to sell Louisiana; [92] and Monroe upon his arrival had only to settle the terms of the bargain, which did not indeed realize the precise object of his mission, but which gave to his country control of the west bank of the Mississippi throughout its course, and of both banks from its mouth nearly to Baton Rouge, a distance of over two hundred miles. The treaty, signed April 30, 1803, gave to the United States "the whole of Louisiana as Spain had possessed it," for the sum of eighty million francs. Thus the fear of Great Britain's sea power was the determining factor [93] to sweep the vast region known as Louisiana, stretching from the Gulf toward Canada, and from the Mississippi toward Mexico, with ill-defined boundaries in either direction, into the hands of the United States, and started the latter on that course of expansion to the westward which has brought her to the shores of the Pacific.

Having thus relinquished a position he could not defend, and, as far as in him lay, secured the French possessions beyond the sea, Bonaparte could now give his whole attention to the plans for subjugating the British Islands which had long been ripening in his fertile brain.

It was from the first evident that Great Britain, having in the three kingdoms but fifteen million inhabitants, could not invade the territory of France with its population of over twenty-five millions. This was the more true because the demands of her navy, of her great mercantile shipping, and of a manufacturing and industrial system not only vast but complex, so that interference with parts would seriously derange the whole, left for recruiting the British armies a fraction, insignificant when compared with the resources in men of France; where capital and manufactures, commerce and shipping, had disappeared, leaving only an agricultural peasantry, upon which the conscription could freely draw without materially increasing the poverty of the country, or deranging a social system essentially simple.

This seeming inability to injure France gave rise to the sarcastic remark, that it was hardly worth while for a country to go to war in order to show that it could put itself in a good posture for defence. This, however, was a very superficial view of the matter. Great Britain's avowed reason for war was the necessity—forced upon a reluctant ministry and conceded by a bitter opposition—of resisting encroachments by a neighboring state. Of these, on the Continent, part had already occurred and were, for the time at least, irremediable; but there had also been clearly revealed the purpose of continuing similar encroachments, in regions whose tenure by an enemy would seriously compromise her colonial empire. To prevent this, Great Britain, by declaring war, regained her belligerent rights, and so resumed at once that control of the sea which needed only them to complete. She pushed her sway up to every point of her enemy's long coast-line; and following the strategy of the previous war, under the administration of the veteran seaman who had imparted to it such vigor, she prevented her enemy from combining any great operation, by which her world-wide dominion could be shaken or vital injury be inflicted at any point. The British squadrons, hugging the French coasts and blocking the French arsenals, were the first line of the defence, covering British interests from the Baltic to Egypt, the British colonies in the four quarters of the globe, and the British merchantmen which whitened every sea.

This was the defensive gain in a war whose motive was essentially defensive. Offensively Great Britain, by the suddenness with which she forced the issue, dealt a blow whose weight none understood better than Bonaparte. That he meant war eventually is most probable. His instructions to Decaen, Captain-General of the French East Indies, dated January 15, 1803, speak of the possibility of war by September, 1804; but how little the bravado of Sébastiani's report indicated a wish for an immediate rupture, is shown by the secret message sent to Andréossy in London, on the very day Whitworth left Paris. Despite the bluster about his willingness to see Great Britain on Montmartre rather than in Malta, he then wrote: "Direct General Andréossy that when he is assured the accompanying note has been communicated to the English government, he cause it to be understood through Citizen Schimmelpenninck or by any other indirect means, that if England absolutely rejects the proposition of giving Malta to one of the guaranteeing powers, we would not here be averse from accepting that England should retain Malta for ten years, and France should occupy the peninsula of Otranto. It is important, if this proposition has no chance of success, that no communication be made leaving any trace; and that we here may always be able to deny that this government could have adhered to this proposition." [94] Bonaparte understood perfectly that Great Britain, by forcing his hand, had struck down the French navy before it had begun to rise. "Peace," he said, "is necessary to restore a navy,—peace to fill our arsenals empty of material, and peace because then only the one drill-ground for fleets, the sea, is open." "Ships, colonies, commerce," the wants he avowed later at Ulm, were swept away by the same blow. How distressed the finances of France, how devoid of credit, none knew better than he, who then, as throughout his rule, was engaged in keeping up the quotations by government manipulation; and the chief of all sources of wealth, maritime commerce, was crushed by the sea power of Great Britain, which thenceforth coiled closely and with ever tightening compression round the coasts of France.

Bonaparte could not indeed realize the full extent of the injury that would be done. Impatient of obstacles, he refused to see that the construction of the flotilla to invade England would devour the scanty material for ship-building, occupy all the workmen, and so stop the growth of the real navy. Even when built, the ever-recurring demand for repairs drained the dockyards of mechanics. [95] Nor could he foresee how completely Great Britain, by reviving the Rule of 1756 in all its rigor, and by replying to each blow from the land by one yet heavier from the sea, would cut off the resources of France and destroy her as a fortress falls by blockade. Unsparing ridicule has been heaped upon Pitt for predicting the break-down of the French Revolution, in its aggressive military character, by financial distress; but in fact Pitt, though he underestimated the time necessary and did not look for the vast system of spoliation which supplied the lack of regular income, was a true prophet. The republic had already devoured an immense capital; [96] and when the conquering spirit it ever displayed reached its natural culmination in Bonaparte, the constantly recurring need of money drove him on from violence to violence till it ended in his ruin. This penury was caused directly by the maritime war, which shut France off from commerce beyond the seas; and indirectly by the general prostration of business in Europe and consequent poverty of consumers, due to their isolation from the sea, enforced by Bonaparte as the only means of wearing out Great Britain.

In 1798, when the Peace of Campo Formio had left France face to face with Great Britain alone, the question of invading the latter had naturally arisen; but Bonaparte easily convinced himself and the Directory that the attempt was impossible with any naval force that could at that time be raised. He then pointed out that there were two other principal ways of injuring the enemy: one by occupying Hanover and Hamburg, through which British trade entered the Continent; the other by seizing Egypt as a base of operations against India. These two were somewhat of the nature of a flank attack; and the former being in the then state of the Continent inexpedient,—for both Hamburg and Hanover were included in the North German neutrality under the guarantee of Prussia, while Austria was by no means so reduced as in 1803,—the expedition against Egypt was determined. Whatever personal motives may then have influenced Bonaparte, that undertaking, from the military point of view and in the then condition of the Mediterranean, was well conceived; and, while allowing for a large amount of good luck, the measure of success achieved must be ascribed to the completeness and secrecy of his preparations, as the final failure must to the sea power of Great Britain.

In 1803 Bonaparte found himself no longer a simple general, under a weak and jealous government upon whose co-operation he could not certainly depend, but an absolute ruler wielding all the resources of France. He resolved therefore to strike straight at the vital centre of the British power, by a direct invasion of the British Islands. The very greatness of the peril in crossing the Channel, and in leaving it between him and his base, was not without a certain charm for his adventurous temper; but, while willing to take many a risk for so great an end, he left to chance nothing for which he himself could provide. The plan for the invasion was marked by the comprehensiveness of view and the minute attention to detail which distinguished his campaigns; and the preparations were on a scale of entire adequacy, which he never failed to observe when the power to do so was in his hands.

For these in their grandeur, however, time was needed; but the first consul was ready to move at once, as far as was possible to land forces, upon the two flanks of the British position. On the 26th of May a corps under General Mortier entered Hanover; while a few days later another corps, under General St. Cyr, passed through the Papal States into the kingdom of Naples, and resumed possession of the peninsula of Otranto with the ports of Brindisi and Taranto. From the latter the Ionian islands, the Morea, and Egypt, were all threatened; and the position kept alive, as in the deep strategy of Napoleon it was meant to do, the anxiety of Nelson concerning those points and the Levant generally. Upon this distraction of the greatest British admiral, justified as it was by the enemy's undoubted purposes in the eastern Mediterranean, depended a decisive part of Bonaparte's combination against Great Britain.

In Hanover British trade was struck. This German electorate of George III. bordered on both the Elbe and the Weser, in the lower part of their course; by occupying it France controlled the two great rivers and excluded from them all British goods. The act was censured as infringing the neutrality of Germany. Bonaparte justified it by the hostile character of the elector as king of Great Britain; but no such plea could be advanced for the occupation of Cuxhaven, the port of Hamburg, which lay on the Elbe outside Hanover. Triple offence was given to Prussia. Her ambition to figure as the guardian of North German neutrality was affronted, her particular wish to control Hanover slighted, and her trade most injuriously affected. To the exclusion of British goods Great Britain replied by blockading the mouths of the rivers, suffering no ships to pass where her own were not allowed, and holding Germany responsible for permitting a breach of its neutrality injurious to herself. The commerce of Hamburg and Bremen was thus stopped; and as they were the brokers who received and distributed the manufactures of Prussia, the blow was felt throughout the kingdom. The distress among the workmen was so wide-spread that the king had to come to their relief, and many wealthy men lost half their incomes. In addition to the advantages of position obtained in Hanover and Naples, Napoleon threw on these two neutral states the charge of supporting the corps quartered on them, amounting to some thirty thousand men in Hanover and half that number in Naples. Holland, against which as the ally of France [97] Great Britain also declared war, had to maintain a somewhat larger force. By such expedients Bonaparte eased his own finances at the expense of neutral or dependent countries; but he was not therefore more beloved.

To invade Great Britain there had first to be concentrated round a chosen point the great armies required to insure success, and the very large number of vessels needed to transport them. Other corps, more or less numerous, destined to further the principal movement by diversions in different directions, distracting the enemy's attention, might embark at distant ports and sail independently of the main body; but for the latter it was necessary to start together and land simultaneously, in mass, at a given point of the English coast. To this principal effort Bonaparte destined one hundred and thirty thousand men; of whom one hundred thousand should form the first line and embark at the same hour from four different ports, which lay within a length of twenty miles on the Channel coast. The other thirty thousand constituted the reserve, and were to sail shortly after the first.

To carry any such force at once, in ordinary sea-going vessels of that day, was impracticable. The requisite number could not be had, and there was no French Channel port where they could safely lie. Even were these difficulties overcome, and the troops embarked together, the mere process of getting under way would entail endless delays, the vessels dependent upon sail could not keep together, and the only conditions of wind under which they could move at all would expose them to be scattered and destroyed by the British navy, which would have the same power of motion, and to which Bonaparte could oppose no equal force. The very gathering of so many helpless sailing transports would betray the place where the French navy must concentrate, and where therefore the hostile ships would assemble at the first indication of a combined movement. Finally, such transports must anchor at some distance from the British coast and the troops land from them in boats, an additional operation both troublesome and dangerous.

For these reasons the crossing must be made in vessels not dependent upon sail alone, but capable of being moved by oars. They must therefore be small and of very light draught, which would allow them to shelter in the shallow French harbors and be beached upon reaching the English coast, so that the troops could land directly from them. It was possible that a number of such vessels once started, and favored by fog or calm, might pass unseen, or even in defiance of the enemy's ships-of-war, lying helpless to attack through want of wind. It was upon this possibility that Bonaparte sought to fix the attention of the British government. As the occupation of Taranto and the movements in Italy were designed to divert Nelson's attention to the Levant, so the ostentatious preparation of the great flotilla to pass unsupported was meant to conceal the real purpose of supporting it. To concentrate the apprehensions of the British authorities upon the flotilla, to draw their eyes away from the naval ports in which lay the French squadrons, and then to unite the latter in the Channel, controlling it for a measurable time by a great fleet, was the grand combination by which Bonaparte hoped to insure the triumphant crossing of the army and the conquest of England. He kept it, however, in his own breast; a profound secret only gradually revealed to the very few men intrusted with its execution.

To create and organize the flotilla and the army of invasion was the first task. Preparations so extensive and rapid demanded all the resources of France. To build at the same time the thousand and more of boats, each of which should carry from sixty to a hundred soldiers, besides from two to four heavy cannon for its own defence, overpassed the powers of any single port. Far in the interior of France, on the banks of the numerous streams running toward the Channel and the Bay of Biscay, as well as in all the little coast harbors themselves, hosts of men were busily working. The North Sea and Holland were also required to furnish their quota. At the same time measures were taken to facilitate their passage in safety to the point of concentration, which was fixed at Boulogne, and to harbor them commodiously upon arrival. They could from their light draught run close along shore, and from their construction be beached without harm. Within easy gunshot of the coast, therefore, lay the road they followed in their passages, which were commonly made in bodies of thirty to sixty, and from port to port, till the journey's end. To support the movements, sea-coast batteries were established at short intervals; under which, if hard pressed, they could take refuge. In addition there were organized in each maritime district batteries of field artillery, which stood ready to drive at once to the scene of action in case the enemy attacked. "One field-gun to every league of coast is the least allowance," wrote Bonaparte. In the early months of the war great importance was attached by the British to harassing these voyages and impeding the concentration, but the attempt was soon abandoned. The boats, if endangered, anchored under the nearest guns, infantry and horse-artillery summoned by the coast-telegraph hurried to the scene, and the enemy's vessels soon found the combined resistance too strong. Ordinarily, indeed, the coastwise movement of a division of the flotilla was a concerted operation, in which all the arms, afloat and ashore, assisted. In extreme cases the vessels were beached, and British seamen fought hand to hand with French soldiers for possession; rarely, however, with success. "The cause of our flotilla not having succeeded in destroying the gun-vessels of the enemy," wrote Lord St. Vincent, "did not arise from their draught of water, but from the powerful batteries on the coast." The concentration, though accomplished less swiftly than Bonaparte's eagerness demanded, was little impeded by the British.

The port of Boulogne, near the eastern end of the English Channel, lies on a strip of coast which runs due south from the Straits of Dover to the mouth of the Somme, a distance of about fifty miles. It is a tidal harbor, the mouth of a little river called the Liane, on the north side of which the town is built. In it even boats of small draught then lay aground at low water; and its capacity at high water was limited. Extensive excavations were therefore ordered to be made by the soldiers encamped in the neighborhood, who received extra wages for the work. When finished, the port presented a double basin; the outer, oblong, bordering the river bed on either side of the channel, which was left clear; the inner of semi-circular form, dug out of the flats opposite the town and connected with the former by a narrow passage. Both were lined with quays, alongside which the vessels of the flotilla lay in tiers, sometimes nine deep; and in July, 1805, when the hour for the last and greatest of Napoleon's naval combinations was at hand, and Trafalgar itself in the near distance, Boulogne sheltered over a thousand gunboats and transports ready to carry forty thousand men to the shores of England. North and south, not only the neighborhood of the harbor but the whole coast bristled with cannon; and opposite the entrance rose a powerful work, built upon piles, to protect the vessels when going out and also when anchored outside. For here was one of the great difficulties of the undertaking. So many boats could not pass out through the narrow channel during one high water. Two tides at the least, that is, twenty-four hours, were needed, granting the most perfect organization and most accurate movement. Half of the flotilla therefore must lie outside for some hours; and it was not to be expected that the British cruisers would allow so critical a moment to pass unimproved, unless deterred by the protection which the foresight of Bonaparte had provided.

North of Boulogne and within five miles of it were two other much smaller harbors, likewise tidal, called Vimereux and Ambleteuse; and to the south, twelve miles distant, a third, named Étaples. Though insignificant, the impossibility of enlarging Boulogne to hold the whole flotilla compelled Bonaparte to develop these, and they together held some seven hundred more gun-vessels and transports. From the three, sixty-two thousand soldiers were to embark; and from each of the four ports a due proportion of field artillery, ammunition and other supplies were to go forward. Some six thousand horses were also to be transported; but the greater part of the cavalry took only their saddles and bridles, looking to find mounts in the enemy's country. In the North Sea ports, Calais, Dunkirk, and Ostend, the flotilla numbered four hundred, the troops twenty-seven thousand, the horses twenty-five hundred. These formed the reserve, to follow the main body closely, but apart from it. In the end they also were moved to the Boulogne coast; and their boats, after some sharp fighting with British cruisers, joined the main flotilla in the four Channel ports.

To handle such a mass of men upon the battle-field is a faculty to which few generals, after years of experience, attain. To effect the passage of a broad river with an army of that size, before a watchful enemy of equal force, is a delicate operation. To cross an arm of the sea nearly forty miles wide—for such was the distance separating Boulogne and its sister ports from the intended place of landing, between Dover and Hastings—in the face of a foe whose control of the sea was for the most part undisputed, was an undertaking so bold that men still doubt whether Napoleon meant it; but he assuredly did. For success he looked to the perfect organization and drill of the army and the flotilla, which by practice in embarking and moving should be able to seize, without an hour's delay, the favorable moment he hoped to provide by the great naval combination concealed in his brain. This combination, modified and expanded as the months rolled by, but remaining essentially the same, was the germ whence sprang the intricate and stirring events recorded in this and the following chapters,—events obscured to most men by the dazzling lustre of Trafalgar.

[Between the penning and the publishing of this very positive assertion of the author's convictions, he has met renewed expressions of doubts as to Napoleon's purpose, based upon his words to Metternich in 1810, [98] as well as upon the opinions of persons more or less closely connected with the emperor. As regards the incident recorded by Metternich—it is not merely an easy way of overcoming a difficulty, but the statement of a simple fact, to say that no reliance can be placed upon any avowal of Napoleon's as to his intentions, unless corroborated by circumstances. That the position at Boulogne was well chosen for turning his arms against Austria at a moment's notice, is very true; but it is likewise true that, barring the power of the British navy, it was equally favorable to an invasion of England. What then does this amount to, but that the great captain, as always in his career, met a strategic exigency arising from the existence of two dangers in divergent directions, by taking a central position, whence he could readily turn his arms against either before the other came up?

The considerations that to the author possess irresistible force are: (1) that Napoleon actually did undertake the almost equally hazardous expedition to Egypt; (2) that he saw, with his clear intuition, that, if he did not accept the risk of being destroyed with his army in crossing the Channel, Great Britain would in the end overwhelm him by her sea power, and that therefore, extreme as was the danger of destruction in one case, it was less than in the other alternative,—an argument further developed in the later portions of this work. (3) Inscrutable as are the real purposes of so subtle a spirit, the author holds with Thiers and Lanfrey, that it is impossible to rise from the perusal of Napoleon's correspondence during these thirty months, without the conviction that so sustained a deception as it would contain—on the supposition that the invasion was not intended—would be impossible even to him. It may also be remarked that the Memoirs of Marmont and Ney, who commanded corps in the Army of Invasion, betray no doubt of a purpose which the first explicitly asserts; nor does the life of Marshal Davout, another corps commander, record any such impression on his part. [99]]

Meanwhile that period of waiting from May, 1803, to August, 1805, when the tangled net of naval and military movements began to unravel, was a striking and wonderful pause in the world's history. On the heights above Boulogne, and along the narrow strip of beach from Étaples to Vimereux, were encamped one hundred and thirty thousand of the most brilliant soldiery of all time, the soldiers who had fought in Germany, Italy, and Egypt, soldiers who were yet to win, from Austria, Ulm and Austerlitz, and from Prussia, Auerstadt and Jena, to hold their own, though barely, at Eylau against the army of Russia, and to overthrow it also, a few months later, on the bloody field of Friedland. Growing daily more vigorous in the bracing sea air and the hardy life laid out for them, they could on fine days, as they practised the varied manœuvres which were to perfect the vast host in embarking and disembarking with order and rapidity, see the white cliffs fringing the only country that to the last defied their arms. Far away, Cornwallis off Brest, Collingwood off Rochefort, Pellew off Ferrol, were battling the wild gales of the Bay of Biscay, in that tremendous and sustained vigilance which reached its utmost tension in the years preceding Trafalgar, concerning which Collingwood wrote that admirals need to be made of iron, but which was forced upon them by the unquestionable and imminent danger of the country. Farther distant still, severed apparently from all connection with the busy scene at Boulogne, Nelson before Toulon was wearing away the last two years of his glorious but suffering life, fighting the fierce north-westers of the Gulf of Lyon and questioning, questioning continually with feverish anxiety, whether Napoleon's object was Egypt again or Great Britain really. They were dull, weary, eventless months, those months of watching and waiting of the big ships before the French arsenals. Purposeless they surely seemed to many, but they saved England. The world has never seen a more impressive demonstration of the influence of sea power upon its history. Those far distant, storm-beaten ships, upon which the Grand Army never looked, stood between it and the dominion of the world. Holding the interior positions they did, before—and therefore between—the chief dockyards and detachments of the French navy, the latter could unite only by a concurrence of successful evasions, of which the failure of any one nullified the result. Linked together as the various British fleets were by chains of smaller vessels, chance alone could secure Bonaparte's great combination, which depended upon the covert concentration of several detachments upon a point practically within the enemy's lines. Thus, while bodily present before Brest, Rochefort, and Toulon, strategically the British squadrons lay in the Straits of Dover barring the way against the Army of Invasion.

The Straits themselves, of course, were not without their own special protection. Both they and their approaches, in the broadest sense of the term, from the Texel to the Channel Islands, were patrolled by numerous frigates and smaller vessels, from one hundred to a hundred and fifty in all. These not only watched diligently all that happened in the hostile harbors and sought to impede the movements of the flat-boats, but also kept touch with and maintained communication between the detachments of ships-of-the-line. Of the latter, five off the Texel watched the Dutch navy, while others were anchored off points of the English coast with reference to probable movements of the enemy. Lord St. Vincent, whose ideas on naval strategy were clear and sound, though he did not use the technical terms of the art, discerned and provided against the very purpose entertained by Bonaparte, of a concentration before Boulogne by ships drawn from the Atlantic and Mediterranean. The best security, the most advantageous strategic positions, were doubtless those before the enemy's ports; and never in the history of blockades has there been excelled, if ever equalled, the close locking of Brest by Admiral Cornwallis, both winter and summer, between the outbreak of war and the battle of Trafalgar. It excited not only the admiration but the wonder of contemporaries. [100] In case, however, the French at Brest got out, so the prime minister of the day informed the speaker of the House, Cornwallis's rendezvous was off the Lizard (due north of Brest), so as to go for Ireland, or follow the French up Channel, if they took either direction. Should the French run for the Downs, the five sail-of-the-line at Spithead would also follow them; and Lord Keith (in the Downs) would in addition to his six, and six block ships, have also the North Sea fleet at his command. [101] Thus provision was made, in case of danger, for the outlying detachments to fall back on the strategic centre, gradually accumulating strength, till they formed a body of from twenty-five to thirty heavy and disciplined ships-of-the-line, sufficient to meet all probable contingencies.

Hence, neither the Admiralty nor British naval officers in general shared the fears of the country concerning the peril from the flotilla. "Our first defence," wrote Nelson in 1801, "is close to the enemy's ports; and the Admiralty have taken such precautions, by having such a respectable force under my orders, that I venture to express a well-grounded hope that the enemy would be annihilated before they get ten miles from their own shores." [102] "As to the possibility of the enemy being able in a narrow sea to pass through our blockading and protecting squadron," said Pellew, "with all the secrecy and dexterity and by those hidden means that some worthy people expect, I really, from anything I have seen in the course of my professional experience, am not much disposed to concur in it." [103] Napoleon also understood that his gunboats could not at sea contend against heavy ships with any founded hope of success. "A discussion was started in the camp," says Marmont, "as to the possibility of fighting ships of war with flat boats, armed with 24- and 36-pounders, and as to whether, with a flotilla of several thousands, a squadron might be attacked. It was sought to establish the belief in a possible success; ... but, notwithstanding the confidence with which Bonaparte supported this view, he never shared it for a moment." [104] He could not, without belying every military conviction he ever held. Lord St. Vincent therefore steadily refused to countenance the creation of a large force of similar vessels on the plea of meeting them upon their own terms. "Our great reliance," he wrote, "is on the vigilance and activity of our cruisers at sea, any reduction in the number of which, by applying them to guard our ports, inlets, and beaches, would in my judgment tend to our destruction." He knew also that gunboats, if built, could only be manned, as the French flotilla was, by crippling the crews of the cruising ships; for, extensive as were Great Britain's maritime resources, they were taxed beyond their power by the exhausting demands of her navy and merchant shipping.

It is true there existed an enrolled organization called the Sea Fencibles, composed of men whose pursuits were about the water on the coasts and rivers of the United Kingdom; men who in the last war had been exempted from impressment, because of the obligation they took to turn out for the protection of the country when threatened with invasion. When, however, invasion did threaten in 1801, not even the stirring appeals of Nelson, to whom was then entrusted the defence system, could bring them forward; although he assured them their services were absolutely required, at the moment, and on board the coast-defence vessels. Out of a total of 2600 in four districts immediately menaced, only 385 were willing to enter into training or go afloat. The others could not leave their occupations without loss, and prayed that they might be held excused. [105] When the French were actually on the sea, coming, they professed their readiness to fly on board; so, wrote Nelson, we must "trust to our ships being manned at the last moment by this (almost) scrambling manner." In the present war, therefore, St. Vincent resisted the re-establishment of the corps until the impress had manned the ships first commissioned, and even then yielded only to the pressure in the cabinet. "It was an item in the estimates," he said with rough humor, "of no other use than to calm the fears of the old ladies, both in and out." It was upon his former system of close watching the enemy's ports that he relied for the mastery of the Channel, without which Bonaparte's flotilla dared not leave the French coast. "This boat business," as Nelson had said, "may be a part of a great plan of invasion; it can never be the only one." [106] The event did not deceive them.

In one very important particular, however, St. Vincent had seriously imperilled the success of his general policy. Feeling deeply the corruption prevailing in the dockyard and contract systems of that day, as soon as he came to the head of the Admiralty he entered upon a struggle with them, in which he showed both the singleness of purpose and the harshness of his character. Peace, by reducing the dependence of the country upon its naval establishments, favored his designs of reform; and he was consequently unwilling to recognize the signs of renewing strife, or to postpone changes which, however desirable, must inevitably introduce friction and delay under the press of war. Hence, in the second year of this war, Great Britain had in commission ten fewer line-of-battle-ships than at the same period of the former. "Many old and useful officers and a vast number of artificers had been discharged from the king's dockyards; the customary supplies of timber and other important articles of naval stores had been omitted to be kept up; and some articles, including a large portion of hemp, had actually been sold out of the service. A deficiency of workmen and of materials produced, of course, a suspension in the routine of dockyard business. New ships could not be built; nor could old ones be repaired. Many of the ships in commission, too, having been merely patched up, were scarcely in a state to keep the sea." [107] On this point St. Vincent was vulnerable to the attack made upon his administration by Pitt in March, 1804; but as regarded Pitt's main criticism, the refusal to expend money and seamen upon gunboats, he was entirely right, and his view of the question was that of a statesman and of a man of correct military instincts. [108] Nor, after his experience with the Sea Fencibles, can he be blamed for not sharing Pitt's emotion over "a number of gallant and good old men, coming forward with the zeal and spirit of lads swearing allegiance to the king," &c. [109]

These ill-timed changes affected most injuriously that very station—the Mediterranean—upon which hinged Bonaparte's projected combination. Out of the insufficient numbers, the heaviest squadrons and most seaworthy ships were naturally and properly massed upon the Channel and Biscay coasts. "I know," said Sir Edward Pellew, speaking of his personal experience in command of a squadron of six of the line off Ferrol, "I know and can assert with confidence that our navy was never better found, that it was never better supplied and that our men were never better fed or better clothed;" [110] and the condition of the ships was proved not only by the tenacity with which Pellew and his chief, Cornwallis, kept their stations, but by the fact that in the furious winter gales little damage was received. But at the same time Nelson was complaining bitterly that his ships were not seaworthy, that they were shamefully equipped, and destitute of the most necessary stores; while St. Vincent was writing to him, "We can send you neither ships nor men, and with the resources of your mind, you will do without them very well." [111] "Bravo, my lord!" said Nelson, ironically; "but," he wrote a month later, "I do not believe Lord St. Vincent would have kept the sea with such ships;" [112] and again, naming seven out of the ten under his command, "These are certainly among the very finest ships in our service, the best commanded and the very best manned, yet I wish them safe in England and that I had ships not half so well manned in their room; for it is not a store-ship a week that would keep them in repair." [113]

Such weakness interfered seriously with the close watch of Toulon, in face of the furious weather for which the Gulf of Lyon is noted; yet, from the strategic conditions of the Mediterranean, in no station was it more important to get the earliest news of an enemy's sailing and to keep constant touch with him. With the Straits of Gibraltar at one end, involving in case of escape several different possibilities, and with Egypt fifteen hundred miles away at the other, the most sagacious admiral might be misled as to the destination of a French squadron, if once lost to sight. Upon this difficulty Bonaparte framed his combination. In his first purpose the Toulon fleet was to be raised to ten sail-of-the-line, and at the fitting moment was to sail with a north-west wind, steering a course which, if seen by any British lookout, would indicate an intention of going eastward. To strengthen this presumption, General St. Cyr at Taranto was ordered to raise batteries to shelter a fleet of ten sail, and to prepare half a million rations; while the Minister of War was instructed that an extraordinary operation in that direction was contemplated about the 20th of November. [114] Simultaneously, twenty ships-of-the-line carrying twenty thousand troops were to be ready in Brest for a descent upon Ireland, and to be maintained in a state of readiness for instant sailing. This would conduce to keep Cornwallis close to Brest and away from the approaches to the Channel. The Toulon fleet, after losing sight of the British, was to haul up for the Straits, be joined off Cadiz or Lisbon by a squadron from Rochefort, raising its force to fifteen or sixteen sail-of-the-line, and thence, passing midway between Ushant and the Scilly islands, come about the middle of February off Boulogne; were the first consul expected then to be ready for crossing with his one hundred and thirty thousand men.

For the Toulon fleet, as the pivot on which all turned, Bonaparte selected his boldest admiral, Latouche Tréville, and fixed the middle of January, 1804, as the time of sailing. All the French authorities were scrupulously deceived, except the admiral himself, the Minister of Marine, and the maritime prefect at Toulon, Ganteaume, who had divined the secret. [115] The orders to the latter, ostentatiously confidential to deceive the office clerks, announced Martinique as the real destination, but enjoined him to tell the general commanding the troops that the squadron was going to the Morea, touching at Taranto. At the same time staff-officers were sent to notify St. Cyr that re-enforcements, which would raise his force to thirty thousand men, were coming not only from Toulon but from other ports; and troops throughout northern Italy began to move toward the sea-board.

It is not wonderful that Nelson was misled by such an elaborate scheme of deception. To this day men doubt whether Bonaparte seriously meant to invade England, and naval men then realized too keenly the dangers of the undertaking not to suspect a feint in it. Under all the conditions of the problem, Egypt and the Straits were equally probable solutions, and Egypt was not the only possible objective east of Toulon. Sicily and Sardinia, the Ionian Islands and the Morea, were coveted by Bonaparte; both as forwarding his control of the Mediterranean and as measurable advances towards Egypt and the Levant, traditional objects of French ambition. Nelson also suspected a secret understanding between France and Russia to divide the Turkish Empire; [116] a suspicion justified in the past by Bonaparte's actions and to be vindicated in the future by the agreements of Tilsit. The perplexities of the British admiral were therefore simply the inevitable uncertainties of the defence, the part assumed perforce by the British Empire at large in this war. He had to provide against widely divergent contingencies; and the question is not how far he guessed [117] the inscrutable purposes of Bonaparte, but how well he took measures for meeting either fortune.

Let it, however, be remarked in passing, that the great merit of St. Vincent's strategy was that it minimized the evil resulting from a single admiral's mis-step. To the success of the French scheme it was necessary that, not only one but, all their detached efforts should succeed. The strength of the British strategy lay not in hermetically sealing any one port, but in effectually preventing a great combination from all the ports. It was essential to Bonaparte not merely that his scattered squadrons should, one at one time and another at another, escape to sea, but that they should do so at periods so ordered, and by routes so determined, as to insure a rapid concentration at a particular point. Against this the British provided by the old and sound usage of interior positions and lines. This advantage Bonaparte recognized, and sought to overthrow by inducing them to diverging operations—toward the Levant on one flank, toward Ireland on the other. Both diverted from Boulogne.

To return to Nelson. During the first six months of his command he believed that the Toulon fleet was bound out of the Mediterranean; [118] and indeed, despite Bonaparte's wiles and the opinions of most of his own friends, he continually reverted to that conviction up to the final escape of Villeneuve. He could not, however, on the ground of his own intuitions resist the facts reported to him. On December 12, 1803, he writes: "Who shall say where they are bound? My opinion is, certainly, out of the Mediterranean." [119] Again, January 16, 1804: "It is difficult to say what may be the destination of the Toulon fleet, Egypt or Ireland. I rather lean to the latter." [120] A week later, January 23, the effect of Bonaparte's feints begins to show: "Information just received leads me to believe the French fleet is about to put to sea bound to the eastward toward Naples and Sicily." [121] February 10: "The French have thirty thousand men ready to embark from Marseilles and Nice, and I am led to believe the Ferrol ships will push for the Mediterranean. Egypt is Bonaparte's object." [122]

Against either contingency his course is perfectly clear,—never to lose touch of the Toulon fleet. "My eyes are constantly fixed on Toulon," [123] he says. "I will not lose sight of the Toulon fleet." [124] "It is of the utmost importance," he writes to his lookout frigates, "that the enemy's squadron in Toulon should be most strictly watched, and that I should be made acquainted with their sailing and route with all dispatch." [125] But here the inadequacy of St. Vincent's navy told heavily; and to that, not to Nelson, must be attributed the mis-steps of the later campaign. "My crazy fleet," he writes. "If I am to watch the French I must be at sea, and if at sea must have bad weather; and if the ships are not fit to stand bad weather they are useless." [126] "I know no way of watching the enemy but to be at sea," he tells St. Vincent himself, "and therefore good ships are necessary." Under such conditions, with "terrible weather," in winter, not four fine days in six weeks, and even in summer having a hard gale every week, [127] it was impossible to keep his rickety ships close up against Toulon, as Cornwallis kept against Brest. "I make it a rule not to contend with the north-westers," he said. "Going off large or furling all sail we escape damage by the constant care of the captains;" and he not unjustly claimed equal credit with Cornwallis, in that with such a fleet, to which nothing was sent, he kept the sea ten consecutive months, "not a ship refitted in any way, except what was done at sea." [128]

Though desirable for the battle-ships themselves to be near Toulon, it would have been possible, in so narrow a sea, to dispense with that by taking a central position, and keeping touch with the enemy by numerous frigates; but here also the deficiencies of the navy interfered. Among the Maddalena Islands, at the north end of Sardinia, was found an admirable central anchorage, well sheltered, and having eastern and western exits by which it could be left at a moment's notice in all winds. Here the fleet could safely lie, ready for instant action, within striking distance of any route taken by the enemy, and sure to be found by lookout ships bringing tidings. Thither, therefore, as the direction most favorable for intercepting the French, [129] Nelson went in January, 1804, when informed they were about to sail; but he wrote: "I am kept in great distress for frigates and smaller vessels at this critical moment. I want ten more than I have, in order to watch that the French should not escape me." [130] This but summed up the constant worry of those anxious two years, [131] as it does also the results of recent experience in the annual manœuvres of European navies. Under such circumstances all depends upon the position taken by the main body and the number of scouts it can throw out. Properly, these should move in couples; one of which can carry information, while its consort keeps touch of the enemy till it meets another of the lookouts scattered on their different radii of action.

The situation of Nelson in the Mediterranean, the character of his anxieties, and the condition of his ships have been given in some detail, because upon the opposing Mediterranean fleets turns the chief strategic interest of the intended invasion of England and of the campaign which issued in Trafalgar. Lord St. Vincent left office with the Addington Ministry in May, 1804, and under the energetic rule of his successor, who threw his administrative system to the winds, the condition of Nelson's fleet was somewhat bettered; but the change came too late to remedy it altogether.

Various events meanwhile concurred to postpone the execution of Bonaparte's project and so to prolong the watch of the British admiral. The Boulogne flotilla itself was not as forward as had been expected; but the drain made by it upon the French arsenals, for workmen and materials, was a greater cause of delay, by retarding the equipment of the ships meant to cover the crossing. In December only seven of the line were ready in Toulon. [132] In the spring of 1804, the first consul's attention was absorbed by the royalist plot, which led to the arrest of Pichegru and Moreau, to the seizure of the Duc d'Enghien on German soil and to his execution at Vincennes in March. This last event had diplomatic consequences, in the attitude taken by Russia and Prussia, which still farther engrossed him; and the invasion of Great Britain was thus by successive delays put off to the summer of 1804. On May 25, Napoleon, who had assumed the imperial title on the 18th of that month, writes to Latouche [133] that on the ocean side all was prepared, that the project was only postponed, not abandoned, and asks if he will be ready by July. July 2 he writes again, [134] anticipating his sailing from Toulon by the first of August, instructs him to pick up at Cadiz one French ship-of-the-line which had taken refuge there, thence to go to Rochefort, and finally to reach Boulogne, according to the first plan, by passing through the Channel; or, if necessary, by going north of the British islands. In all passages from port to port he was to keep far out to sea to avoid detection. "Let us," he adds, "be masters of the Strait for six hours and we shall be masters of the world." On the 2d of August, however, Napoleon postpones the invasion for some weeks, because some divisions of the flotilla had not yet joined; and on the 20th of that month Latouche Tréville died.

This loss was serious, as there was not among the surviving French admirals any who had shown himself fit for so important a task, except perhaps Bruix. He, being already definitely associated with the flotilla, could not well be displaced; and his health, moreover, was very bad, so that he also died the following March. Of two others who might possibly prove equal to high command, Rosily and Villeneuve, Napoleon, after some hesitation and with much mistrust, chose the latter. "All naval expeditions undertaken since I have been at the head of the government," said he, "have always failed, because the admirals see double, and have learned—where, I do not know—that war can be made without running risks." [135] From this simple and undeniable standpoint no choice more unfortunate than Villeneuve could have been made. Accomplished, brave, and skilful, he saw the defects of the French navy with a clearness which absolutely sapped his power to take risks. Although capable of the utmost self-devotion, he was unable to devote his command as the forlorn hope upon which might follow a great achievement.

Doubting Villeneuve's resolution, Napoleon now changed the details of his combination; giving to the Toulon fleet the inferior rôle of a diversion, instead of the great part of covering the flotilla at the chief centre of strategic action. The Brest fleet, during the life of Latouche Tréville, had been destined to tie Cornwallis to the French coast by the passive service of a mere demonstration. It was now given the principal part. Its admiral, Ganteaume, had in 1801 been blamed for not relieving Egypt; but Napoleon still felt for him the partiality of close personal association, and knew him to be an able officer. In the new plan, therefore, the Irish expedition passed definitively from a demonstration to a resolve. To it were assigned eighteen thousand troops under Marshal Augereau. Embarking them, Ganteaume should sail with a fleet of twenty ships-of-the-line, pass far out into the Atlantic to baffle pursuit, and then head for the north of Ireland as though coming from Newfoundland. Having landed the soldiers, for which only thirty-six hours were allowed, the fleet should sail for the straits of Dover, either by the English Channel or by the north of Scotland, according to the winds. Arriving near its destination two courses were open, the choice between which would again depend on the wind. Either the Grand Army at Boulogne would cross at once to England, or a corps of twenty-five thousand assembled in Holland under General Marmont, would sail under Ganteaume's convoy for Ireland. "With only eighteen thousand men in Ireland," wrote Napoleon, "we would run great risks; but whether they be increased to forty thousand, or I myself be in England and eighteen thousand in Ireland, the gain of the war will be ours." [136]

The Toulon and Rochefort squadrons were to favor these operations by a powerful diversion. They were to sail separately for the West Indies, the former numbering twelve of the line and the latter five. Upon reaching the Atlantic two of the Toulon ships were to be directed against St. Helena, which they were to seize and then cruise in its neighborhood for three months against British commerce. The rest of the division, carrying four thousand troops, was to retake Dutch Guiana and re-enforce San Domingo, [137] if possible. The Rochefort division, lately commanded by Villeneuve, but now by Missiessy, was to seize the islands Santa Lucia and Dominica, re-enforce Martinique and Guadaloupe and then join Villeneuve. Thus combined, all would return to Europe, appear before Ferrol, releasing five French ships which were there blockaded, and finally anchor at Rochefort. "Thus attacked simultaneously in Asia, Africa, and America," wrote Napoleon, "the English, long accustomed not to suffer from the war, will by these successive shocks to their commerce feel the evidence of their weakness. I think that the sailing of these twenty ships-of-the-line will oblige them to dispatch over thirty in pursuit." [138] Villeneuve was to sail by October 12, and Missiessy before November 1. The Irish expedition should await the departure of the others, but it was hoped might get away before November 23.

This second combination was more vast, more complicated and therefore much more difficult than the first. It is interesting chiefly as indicating the transition in the emperor's mind, from the comparatively simple scheme laid down for Latouche Tréville to the grandiose conception which ended in Trafalgar and claimed Villeneuve as its victim. The course of events, mightier than the wills of sovereigns, now intervened to change again Napoleon's purpose and restore to the Toulon fleet the central part in the great drama. In December, 1804, formal war broke out between Great Britain and Spain.

Spain since 1796 had been in defensive and offensive alliance with France. By the treaty of San Ildefonso, then signed, she had bound herself to furnish, upon the simple demand of the French government, fifteen ships-of-the-line to re-enforce the French navy, as well as a specified body of troops. Holland also had entered into a similar covenant "forever" against Great Britain. At the outbreak of hostilities, therefore, Bonaparte found on either flank a maritime state formally obliged to aid him, whatever its present wish. Holland, a small flat country near at hand, was easily dominated by his army. It was rich, had a valid government and energetic people; and its position admirably seconded his schemes against Great Britain. It therefore suited him to have the Batavian republic join in the war. Spain, on the contrary, being extensive and rugged, was with difficulty controlled by an armed force, as Napoleon afterwards learned to his cost. It was remote from the centre of his power and from the intended operations; while effective military support could not be had from its government, feeble to disorganization, nor from its people, indolent and jealous of foreigners. One thing only was left to Spain of her former greatness,—the silver poured into her treasury from her colonies.

Bonaparte therefore decided to allow the neutrality of Spain, and to relinquish the stipulated aid in kind, upon condition of receiving an equivalent in money. This he fixed at six million francs per month, or about fourteen million dollars annually. Spain protested earnestly against the amount, but the first consul was inexorable. He required also that all levies of troops should cease, any land forces sent into the provinces adjoining France, since September, 1801, should be withdrawn, and the Spanish navy reorganized. Further, he demanded that five French ships-of-the-line then in Ferrol, where they had taken refuge from the British navy in July, 1803, when returning from Haïti, should be by Spain repaired and got ready for sea. "Spain," said Bonaparte, "has three alternatives: 1, she may declare war against England; 2, she may pay the specified subsidy; 3, war will be declared by France against Spain." [139]

When war began, the British minister at Madrid was instructed to ask if Spain intended to furnish France the ships promised by the treaty. If the answer was yes, he was to express no opinion, but say that any excess over the stipulations would be regarded as a declaration of war. Later, when it became known that Spain had signed a convention [140] stipulating the payment of subsidies to France, the ministry took the ground that this was a just cause of war, whenever Great Britain chose so to consider it; though for the time she might pass it over. "You will explain distinctly," ran the ambassador's instructions, dated November 24, 1803, "that his Majesty can only be induced to abstain from immediate hostilities in consequence of such a measure, upon the consideration that it is a temporary expedient, ... and that his Majesty must be at liberty to consider a perseverance in the system of furnishing succors to France as, at any future period, when circumstances may render it necessary, a just cause of war." [141] "I am expressly enjoined to declare," wrote the British ambassador, in making this communication, "that such payments are a war subsidy, a succor the most efficacious, the best adapted to the wants and situation of the enemy, the most prejudicial to the interests of his Britannic Majesty's subjects, and the most dangerous to his dominions; in fine, more than equivalent to every other species of aggression." [142] Repeated inquiries failed to draw from the Spanish government any official statement of the terms of its bargain, either as to the amount of the subsidy, the period during which it should continue, or other conditions of the agreement. [143] Such communication the French ambassador positively over-ruled. [144]

Warning was therefore early given [145] that a condition essential to postponement of action by Great Britain was the suspension of all further arming in Spanish ports. This was repeated in the most formal terms, and as an ultimatum, a few weeks later, on the 18th of February, 1804. "I am ordered to declare to you that the system of forbearance on the part of England absolutely depends on the cessation of every naval armament, and I am expressly forbidden to prolong my residence here, if unfortunately this condition should be rejected." [146] It was alleged and was incontrovertibly true, that, while Spain was so evidently under Bonaparte's influence, armaments in her ports as effectively necessitated watching, and so as greatly added to Great Britain's burdens, as if war actually existed. [147] Another complaint was that prizes made by French privateers were, by process of law, condemned and sold in Spanish ports. [148] The same was doubtless allowed to Great Britain; but in the strict blockade of the ports of France the latter here derived a great benefit, while upon her enemy was simply imposed an additional burden in scouring all the Spanish coast, as though actually at war, in order to recapture inward-bound prizes. Once condemned, the prize goods found their way to the French ports by Spanish coasters. Independent of the difficulty of identifying the property, the small size of these neutral carriers made seizure inexpedient; for the costs of condemnation were greater than the value of the prize. [149] The Spanish government claimed that the condemnation and sale of prize goods in their ports was simply an act of authorized commerce, free from all hostility. [150] Americans who recall the cruises of the Alabama and her fellows will be disposed to think that, whatever the technical accuracy of the plea, neutrality benevolent to an enemy's cruisers constitutes a just cause of war, whenever policy so advises.