To mass the fleet before Brest,—to maintain it in a high state of efficiency, by the constant flow of supplies in transports and the constant exchange between worn and fresh ships,—and to fix a rendezvous which assured its hold upon the enemy,—such were the strategic measures adopted and enforced by St. Vincent. The disposition of the ships when before the port, with a view to prevent the evasion which was the height of French naval ambition, and to compel the enemy to battle if he came out, may be more properly called tactical. It may be given nearly in his own words. "A squadron of five ships-of-the-line is always anchored during an easterly wind between the Black Rocks and Porquette Shoal" (about ten miles from the entrance). "Inside, between them and the Goulet, cruise a squadron of frigates and cutters plying day and night in the opening of the Goulet; and outside, between the Black Rocks and Ushant, three sail-of-the-line cruise to support the five anchored." [350] A group of eight line-of-battle ships was thus always on the lookout,—a force too strong to be driven off without bringing on the general engagement which was the great object of the British, and so disposed that, if not the inner, at least the outer members could be signalled every day by the main body. The mutual support of all parts of the fleet was thus assured. "Unless this is done," wrote St. Vincent, "the ships appointed to that important service may not feel the confidence necessary to keep them in their post,—a failure in which has frequently happened before I was invested with this command." [351]

The seamanlike care with which, as a general officer, he studied his ground, is also evidenced by his remarks, some of which have already been quoted. "I never was on a station so readily, and with so little risk maintained as that off Ushant with an easterly wind" (with which alone the enemy could get out), "owing to the length and strength of flood-tide;" [352] and he adds, in another place, "If the flood flows strong, you will find much shelter between Ushant and the Black Rocks during the day." [353] The investment of Brest was completed by stationing detachments, amounting in all to from two to four ships-of-the-line with numerous frigates, to the southward of the Passage du Raz and thence to Quiberon Bay, forming a chain of lookouts to intercept vessels of all kinds, but especially the coasters upon which the port depended for supplies; while other cruisers were stationed all along the shores of the Bay of Biscay, from the mouth of the Loire to Cape Finisterre, and their captains specially incited and encouraged to approach and scour the coast. In the various "cutting out" expeditions engaged in by these, the numerous small vessels captured are usually stated to have been loaded with stores for the Brest fleet. By this means, if the enemy did not come out and fight to break up the blockade, he must soon be reduced to impotence by exhaustion of the commonest supplies. As there were in Brest, in 1800, forty-eight ships-of-the-line, French and Spanish, a combination resulting from Bruix's cruise of the year before, this end was soon obtained, as French accounts abundantly testify. [354]

The immediate adoption and enforcement of these measures, after St. Vincent succeeded to the command, illustrate clearly the inevitable dependence of the government upon the admiral of the Channel fleet, and its inability to conceive or enforce the system by which alone so necessary yet hazardous a service could be effectually performed. Only a thorough seaman, and of exceptional force of character, could both devise and execute a scheme demanding so much energy and involving so heavy a responsibility. It was hard to find a man of St. Vincent's temper to carry out his methods; and the government was further handicapped by a tradition requiring a certain rank for certain commands. So strong was the hold of this usage that even St. Vincent, in 1801, yielded to it, lamenting that Nelson, "of whom he felt quite sure, had not rank enough to take the chief command" of the vitally important expedition to Copenhagen; which was entrusted to Sir Hyde Parker, "of whom he could not feel so sure, because he had never been tried." [355] Later, when First Lord of the Admiralty, Earl St. Vincent was fortunate enough to find in Admiral Cornwallis a man who, whatever his intellectual grasp, possessed all the nerve and tenacity of his predecessor; but the necessary rank was too apt to bring with it a burden of years, accompanied by the physical weakness which, in lesser men, led to failing energy and shrinking from responsibility, and by actual prostration drove even St. Vincent ashore in the winter weather. His predecessor, Lord Bridport, had been well on in the seventies, and his first successor, Sir Hyde Parker, announced his intention "not to risk staying with the whole fleet off Brest at this season [winter], when it blows hard from west or west-south-west," [356]—a decision which may have been no more than prudent, but the open avowal of which, taken with Nelson's opinion of him, [357] seems to show that, though a brave and good officer, he was not equal to the stern work demanded.

Lord St. Vincent, though perfectly satisfied with his own arrangements, doubtless never cherished the vain hope that no evasion of them could ever be practised. On the contrary, he had at the very outset of his command, and in the comparatively genial month of May, the experience of a terrific hurricane, which drove his fleet headlong to Torbay, and rejoiced the hearts of the cavilling adherents of the old system. That the fleet must at times be blown off, he knew full well; and also that the escape of the enemy, in whole or in part, before its return, was possible, though it ought not to be probable. To provide against this contingency, he recommended the government to give to the officer commanding the inshore squadron, who would remain, special orders in a sealed packet to be opened only in case the enemy got out. [358] The failure to provide Colpoys with such specific directions had been charged by the Opposition, and most justly, as a grave fault of the government in 1796. [359] It is right and wise to leave great discretion to the officer in command on the spot,—minute instructions fetter rather than guide him; but a man in Colpoys's situation, bewildered as to the enemy's objects, aware only that the first line of defence is forced, but ignorant where the second will be assailed, is entitled to know precisely what the government considers the most important among the interests threatened. This decision is one for the statesman rather than the seaman. Not only, in 1796, was Ireland distinctly the most vulnerable point, but the ministers had information, almost to certainty, that there was the enemy's aim.

In 1800, as when Bruix escaped in 1799, circumstances were somewhat different. The disaffection, or at least the disloyalty, of the Irish had been shown to be a broken reed for the enemy to lean on; while in the Mediterranean the French had acquired, in Egypt and Malta, interests peculiarly dear to the First Consul. Those valuable possessions were in deadly straits, and the attempt to relieve them was more probable than another attack on Ireland. St. Vincent, therefore, wrote to the then head of the Admiralty, saying with perfect propriety that it became him, "in the situation I stand at this critical period, to suggest to your lordship any ideas for the good of the public service," and suggesting that Sir James Saumarez, commanding the inshore squadron, should have specific orders that, "if the combined fleets get out before I can return to the rendezvous, he should in that case push for Cadiz with the eight ships-of-the-line stationed between me and the Goulet; for I," he added, "shall have sufficient force to protect England and Ireland, without counting upon his eight sail." Such instructions completed the scheme; precise, but not detailed, they provided for the second line, in case the careful precautions for guarding the first were foiled.

The dispositions adopted by St. Vincent remained the standard to which subsequent arrangements for watching Brest were conformed. From Commander-in-Chief of the Channel fleet he became, in February, 1801, First Lord of the Admiralty. In this position he naturally maintained his own ideas; and, as has before been said, found in Cornwallis a man admirably adapted to carry them out. In May, 1804, the ministry with which he was connected resigned; but, although as an administrator he provoked grave criticism in many quarters, and probably lost reputation, his distinguished military capacity remained unquestioned, and the methods of the Brest blockade were too sound in principle and too firmly established to be largely modified. During the strenuous months from 1803 to 1805, when Great Britain and France stood alone, face to face, in a state more of watchful tension than of activity, the Channel fleet kept its grip firm on the great French arsenal. Nelson's justly lauded pursuit of Villeneuve would have been in vain, but for the less known tenacity of Cornwallis; which, by preventing the escape of Ganteaume, was one of the most potent factors in thwarting Napoleon's combinations. Wherever else the great naval battle which has immortalized the name of Trafalgar might have been fought, the campaign would have taken a different form but for the watch over Brest conducted on St. Vincent's lines.

The result of this strict blockade and of the constant harrying of the French coasts from Dunkirk on the North Sea to the Spanish border, was to paralyze Brest as a port of naval equipment and construction, as well as to render very doubtful the success of any combination in which the Brest fleet was a factor. This result has been, historically, somewhat obscured; for abortive attempts to get out obtained no notoriety, while an occasional success, being blazoned far and wide, made an impression disproportioned to its real importance. When Ganteaume, for instance, in January, 1801, ran out with seven ships-of-the-line,—the blockading fleet having lost its grip in a furious north-east gale,—more was thought of the escape than of the fact that, to make it, advantage had to be taken of weather such that six of the seven were so damaged they could not carry out their mission. Instead of going to Egypt, they went to Toulon. The journals of the day make passing mention of occasional sorties of divisions, which quickly returned to the anchorage; and Troude, in a few condensed sentences, under the years 1800 and 1801, [360] vividly shows the closeness of the watch and the penury of the port. Remote from the sources of naval supplies in the Baltic and the Mediterranean, with the sea approaches to both swarming with enemy's cruisers, and in a day when water carriage, always easier and ampler than that by land, was alone adequate to the transport in sufficient quantity of the bulky articles required for ship building and equipment, it became impossible to fill the storehouses of Brest.

Partly for this reason, yet more because his keen military perceptions—at fault only when confronted with the technical difficulties of the sea—discerned the danger to Great Britain from a hostile navy in the Scheldt, Napoleon decided to neglect Brest, and to concentrate upon Antwerp mainly his energies in creating a navy. In later years this prepossession may have partaken somewhat of the partiality of a parent for a child; and he himself has said that there was a moment, during his receding fortunes in 1814, when he could have accepted the terms of the allies had he been able to bring himself to give up Antwerp. In close proximity to the forests of Alsace, Lorraine, and Burgundy; able to draw from the countries bordering on the Rhine and its tributaries flax and hemp, and from the mines of Luxemburg, Namur and Liège iron, copper and coal,—the naval resources of Antwerp could be brought to her on the numerous streams intersecting those countries, and were wholly out of reach of the British. Many were the difficulties to be overcome,—docks to be excavated, ships to be built, seamen gathered and trained, a whole navy to be created from nothing; but the truth remained that the strategic position of Antwerp, over against the mouth of the Thames and flanking the communications of Great Britain with the Baltic, was unequalled by any other single port under the emperor's control.

The expedition against Ireland, thwarted by the elements in 1796, was never seriously renewed. It remained, to the end of his short life, the dream of Hoche. Transferred from the army of the Ocean to that of the Sambre and Meuse, his career there was cut short by the preliminaries of Leoben, by which Bonaparte extricated himself from the dangers of his advance into Carinthia. Sacrificed thus, as he felt, to the schemes of a rival, Hoche supported with all the weight of his interest an expedition of fifteen thousand men, who, under the pressure of the Directory, were gathered in the Texel in the summer of 1797 for an invasion of Ireland under convoy of the Dutch navy. Here again Wolfe Tone for two months fretted his heart out, waiting for the fleet to sail; but, though the period seemed most propitious, through the mutinies in the British fleet and the cessation of hostilities on the continent, a peculiar combination of wind and tide were wanting to cross the bar, and that combination did not come. In October the Dutch ships-of-war, numbering sixteen small ships-of-the-line, put to sea by themselves, and on the 11th met the fleet of Admiral Duncan, of equal numbers but distinctly superior in broadside force. The British, having the wind, bore down and attacked—passing when possible through the enemy's line, so as to cut off his retreat to the Dutch coast, then less than ten miles distant. The battle, known by the name of Camperdown, from a village on the adjoining shore, was fought with all the desperation that in every age has marked the meetings of the British and the Dutch. It closed with the defeat of the latter, who left nine ships-of-the-line and some frigates in their enemy's hands. This put an end to the Texel expedition. Hoche had died a few weeks before, on the 18th of September; and with him passed away the strongest personal interest in the invasion of Ireland, as well as the man most able to conduct it.

The following year, 1798, open rebellion existed in Ireland, and the Directory undertook to support it with troops and arms; but the equipment of Bonaparte's Egyptian expedition absorbed the energies of the Ministry of Marine, and there was no Hoche to give the enterprise the development and concert essential to a great success. A small division of four frigates sailed from Rochefort on the 6th of August, carrying twelve hundred troops under General Humbert, who had served in the expedition of 1796 and shared the shipwreck of the Droits de l'Homme. This squadron escaped observation, landed its detachment on the 21st of the month, and returned safely to France; but the small corps, unsupported by regular troops, again demonstrated the imprudence of trusting to the co-operation of insurgents. On the 8th of September Humbert was obliged to surrender with the bulk of his force.

A week later, before the news reached France, a ship-of-the-line, appropriately called the "Hoche," and eight frigates, under the command of Commodore Bompart, sailed from Brest, carrying a second division of three thousand troops. Though they escaped the eyes of Bridport's vessels, if there were any in the neighborhood, by running through the Passage du Raz, they were seen on September 17, the day after sailing, by three British frigates; one of which, after ascertaining that the French were really going to sea, went to England with the news, while the others continued to dog the enemy, sending word to Ireland of the approaching danger as opportunity offered. On the 4th of October, in a gale of wind, the enemies separated, and the French commodore then made the best of his way towards his destination, in Lough Swilly, at the north end of Ireland; but the news had reached Plymouth on the 23d of September, and when he drew near his port he found the way blocked by three British ships-of-the-line and five frigates, which had sailed at once for the insurgent district. An engagement followed, fought on the 12th of October, under circumstances even more disadvantageous than that of mere numbers, for the "Hoche" shortly before the action had lost some of her most important spars. Of the little squadron, she and three frigates were compelled to surrender that day, and three more were intercepted later by British vessels, so that only two of the expedition regained a French port. The enthusiastic and unfortunate Irishman, Wolfe Tone, was on board the "Hoche" and wounded in the action. He shortly afterwards committed suicide in prison. A third French division had sailed from Rochefort on the very day the "Hoche" was captured. It succeeded in reaching Ireland; but learning the fate of Bompart's squadron, returned without landing the troops. This was the last of the expeditions against Ireland that sailed from French ports. Other interests and other rulers combined with the pronounced naval ascendency of Great Britain to give a different direction to the efforts of the republic.

END OF VOL. I.