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.

At the outbreak of the war Great Britain was taken unawares in India, as everywhere; and, as the operations in Europe and in the West Indies called for the first care of the government, the Indian seas were practically abandoned to the enemy for over a year. After the fall of Pondicherry, in September, 1793, Admiral Cornwallis returned to Europe with all his small squadron, leaving but a single sloop-of-war to protect the vast expanse of ocean covered by the commerce of the East India Company. [259] Not till the month of October, 1794, did his successor reach the station. Under these circumstances the losses were inevitably severe, and would have been yet more heavy had not the company itself fitted out several ships to cruise for the protection of trade. [260] An animated warfare, directed solely toward the destruction and protection of commerce, now ensued for several years, and was marked by some exceedingly desperate and well-contested frigate actions; as well as by many brilliant exploits of French privateersmen, among whom the name of Robert Surcouf has attained a lasting celebrity. Depending at first upon the islands of France and Bourbon as their base of operations, the distance of these from the peninsula of Hindoostan, combined with the size of the East India ships, compelled the employment of relatively large vessels, able to keep the sea for long periods and to carry crews which would admit of many detachments to man prizes without unduly weakening the fighting capacity. When, in 1795, the conquest of Holland and flight of the Orange government turned the Dutch from enemies into allies of France, their colonies and ports became accessories of great importance to the cruisers, owing to their nearness to the scene of action and especially to the great trade route between China and Europe. On the other hand the British, long debarred from rewards for their efforts, other than recaptures of their own merchant ships, now found the whole of the Dutch trade thrown open to them, and the returns bear witness both to its numbers and to their activity.

Notwithstanding, however, the unprotected state of British commerce in the early years of the war, and the distinguished activity of the French cruisers, the insurance premiums at no time rose to the sums demanded in 1782, when a concentrated effort to control the sea by a fleet, under Admiral Suffren, was made by France. [261] At that time the premiums were fifteen per cent; between 1798 and 1805 they fluctuated between eight and twelve per cent. In 1805 the chief command in the Indian seas was given to Rear-Admiral Sir Edward Pellew, afterwards Lord Exmouth, and by his skilful arrangements such security was afforded to the trade from Bombay to China, one of the most exposed parts of the Eastern commercial routes, that the premium fell to eight per cent, with a return of three per cent, if sailing with convoy. Under this systematic care the losses by capture amounted to but one per cent on the property insured, being less than those by the dangers of the sea. [262] But during the very period that these happy results were obtained by wisely applying the principle of concentration of effort to the protection of commerce, disaster was overtaking the trade of Calcutta; which lost nineteen vessels in two months through the neglect of its merchants to accept the convoys of the admiral. [263] In fact, as the small proportionate loss inflicted by scattered cruisers appears to indicate the inconclusiveness of that mode of warfare, so the result of the convoy system, in this and other instances, warrants the inference that, when properly systematized and applied, it will have more success as a defensive measure than hunting for individual marauders,—a process which, even when most thoroughly planned, still resembles looking for a needle in a haystack.

Soon after this time the British government reverted most properly to the policy of Pitt, by directing expeditions against the enemies' colonies, the foreign bases of their Sea Power, and, in the absence of great fleets, the only possible support upon which commerce-destroying can depend; with whose fall it must also fall. The islands of Bourbon and of France capitulated in 1810, the same year that saw the surrender of Guadaloupe, the last survivor of the French West India Islands. This was followed in 1811 by the reduction of the Dutch colony of Java. Thus "an end was put to the predatory warfare which had been successfully carried on against the British trade in India for a number of years." [264]

While the scattered cruisers of France were thus worrying, by a petty and inconclusive warfare, the commerce of Great Britain and its neutral carriers, the great British fleets, being left in quiet possession of the seas by the avowed purpose of the Directory to limit its efforts to the guerre de course, swept from the ocean every merchant ship wearing a hostile flag, and imposed upon the neutral trade with France the extreme limitations of maritime international law, as held by the British courts. Toward the end of the war, indeed, those principles were given an extension, which the government itself admitted was beyond anything before claimed as reconcilable with recognized law. The precise amount of the injury done, the exact number of the vessels detained, sent in, and finally condemned, in all parts of the world will perhaps never be known; it is certainly not within the power of the present writer to determine them. The frequent, though not complete, returns of British admirals give some idea of the prevailing activity, which will also appear from the occasional details that must be cited in the latter part of this chapter. Into the single port of Plymouth, in the eight years and a half ending September 29, 1801, there were sent 948 vessels of all nations; [265] of which 447 were enemy's property, 156 recaptured British, and the remainder neutrals, belonging mostly to America, Denmark, and Sweden, the three chief neutral maritime states. From Jamaica, the British commander-in-chief reports that, between March 1 and August 3, 1800,—that is, in five months,—203 vessels have been captured, detained, or destroyed.[1] This was in but one part of the West Indian Seas. The admiral at the Leeward Islands reports that in two months of the same year 62 vessels had been sent in.[1] In five months, ending September 3, 1800, Lord Keith reports from the Mediterranean 180 captures. [266] How far these instances may be accepted as a fair example of the usual results of British cruising, it is impossible to say; but it may be remarked that they all occur at a period when the war had been raging for seven years, and that captures are more numerous at the beginning than at the latter end of long hostilities. In war, as in all states of life, people learn to accommodate themselves to their conditions, to minimize risks; and even prize lists become subject to the uniformity of results observed in other statistics.

Whatever the particulars of French losses, however, they are all summed up in the unprecedented admission of the Directory, in 1799, that "not a single merchant ship is on the sea carrying the French flag." This was by no means a figure of speech, to express forcibly an extreme depression. It was the statement of a literal fact. "The former sources of our prosperity," wrote M. Arnould, Chef du Bureau du Commerce, as early as 1797, "are either lost or dried up. Our agricultural, manufacturing, and industrial power is almost extinct." And again he says, "The total number of registers issued to French ships from September, 1793, to September, 1796, amounts only to 6028." Of these, 3351 were undecked and of less than thirty tons burden. "The maritime war paralyzes our distant navigation and even diminishes considerably that on our coasts; so that a great number of French ships remain inactive, and perhaps decaying, in our ports. This remark applies principally to ships of over two hundred tons, the number of which, according to the subjoined table, [267] amounts only to 248. Before the revolution the navigation of the seas of Europe and to the French colonies employed more than 2,000 ships."

In the year ending September 20, 1800, according to a report submitted to the consuls, [268] France received directly from Asia, Africa, and America, all together, less than $300,000 worth of goods; while her exports to those three quarters of the world amounted to only $56,000. Whether these small amounts were carried in French or neutral bottoms is immaterial; the annihilation of French shipping is proved by them. The same report shows that the average size of the vessels, which, by hugging closely the coast, avoided British cruisers and maintained the water traffic between France and her neighbors, Holland, Spain, and Italy, was but thirty-six tons. Intercourse by water is always easier and, for a great bulk, quicker than by land; but in those days of wagon carriage and often poor roads it was especially so. In certain districts of France great distress for food was frequently felt in those wars, although grain abounded in other parts; because the surplus could not be distributed rapidly by land, nor freely by water. For the latter conveyance it was necessary to depend upon very small vessels, unfit for distant voyages, but which could take refuge from pursuers in the smallest port, or be readily beached; and which, if captured, would not singly be a serious loss.

Towards the end of 1795, a contemporary British authority states that over three thousand British ships had been captured, and about eight hundred French. [269] This was, however, confessedly only an estimate, and probably, so far as concerns the British losses, a large exaggeration. Ten years later a member of the House of Commons, speaking with a view rather to disparage the earlier administration, gave the British losses for the same years as 1,395. [270] Lloyd's lists give the whole number of British captured, for the years 1793-1800, both inclusive, as 4,344, of which 705 were recaptured; leaving a total loss of 3,639. [271] Assuming, what is only for this purpose admissible, that the average loss each year was nearly the same, these figures would give for the three years, 1793-1795, 1,365 as the number of captures made by hostile cruisers. In the tables appended to Norman's "Corsairs of France" the losses for the same period are given as 1,636. [272]

Finally, the number of prizes brought into French ports up to September 16, 1798, was stated by M. Arnould, in the Conseil des Anciens, as being 2,658. The table from which his figures were taken he called "an authentic list, just printed, drawn up in the office of the French Ministry of Marine, of all prizes made since the outbreak of the war." [273] It included vessels of all nationalities, during a period when France had not only been at war with several states, but had made large seizures of neutral vessels upon various pretexts. Of the entire number M. Arnould considered that not more than 2,000 were British. If we accept his estimate, only 900 British ships would have been taken in three years. It is to be observed, however, as tending to reconcile the discrepancy between this and the English accounts, that the tables used by him probably did not give, or at most gave very imperfectly, the French captures made in the East and West Indies; and, furthermore, the aggregate British losses, as given by Lloyd's lists, and by Norman's tables, include captures made by the Dutch and Spaniards as well as by the French. [274]

The British reports of their own losses are thus seen largely to exceed those made by the French. According equal confidence to the statements of Sir William Curtis, of Norman, and of Lloyd's list, we should reach an annual loss by capture of 488 British ships; which would give a total, in the twenty-one years of war, from 1793-1814, [275] of 10,248. Norman's grand total of 10,871 considerably exceeds this amount; but it will be safer, in considering a subject of so great importance as the absolute injury done, and effect produced, by war upon commerce, to accept the larger figure, or to say, in round numbers, that eleven thousand British vessels were captured by the enemy during the protracted and desperate wars caused by the French Revolution. It is the great and conspicuous instance of commerce-destroying, carried on over a long series of years, with a vigor and thoroughness never surpassed, and supported, moreover, by an unparalleled closure of the continental markets of Great Britain. The Directory first, and Napoleon afterwards, abandoned all attempts to contest the control of the sea, and threw themselves, as Louis XIV. had done before them, wholly upon a cruising war against commerce. It will be well in this day, when the same tendency so extensively prevails, to examine somewhat carefully what this accepted loss really meant, how it was felt by the British people at the time, and what expectation can reasonably be deduced from it that, by abandoning military control of the sea, and depending exclusively upon scattered cruisers, a country dependent as Great Britain is upon external commerce can be brought to terms.

Evidently, a mere statement of numbers, such as the above, without any particulars as to size, or the value of cargoes, affords but a poor indication of the absolute or relative loss sustained by British commerce. It may, however, be used as a basis, both for comparison with the actual number of vessels entering and clearing annually from British ports, and also for an estimate as to the probable tonnage captured. The annual average of capture, deduced from 11,000 ships in twenty-one years is 524. In the three years 1793-1795, the average annual number of British vessels entering and clearing from ports of Great Britain was 21,560. [276] Dividing by 524, it is found that one fortieth, or two and a half per cent of British shipping, reckoning by numbers, was taken by the enemy. In the three years 1798-1800, 1801 being the year of broken hostilities, the average annual entries and departures were 21,369,[1] which again gives two and a half as the percentage of the captures. It must be noted, also, that only the commerce of England and Scotland with foreign countries, with the colonies, with Ireland and the Channel Islands, and with British India enters into these lists of arrivals and departures. The returns of that day did not take account of British coasters, nor of the local trade of the colonies, nor again of the direct intercourse between Ireland and ports other than those of Great Britain. Yet all these contributed victims to swell the list of prizes, [277] and so to increase very materially the apparent proportion of the latter to a commerce of which the returns cited present only a fraction. Unfortunately, the amount of the coasting trade cannot now be ascertained, [278] and the consequent deduction from the calculated two and a half per cent of loss can only be conjectured.

To obtain the tonnage loss there appears to the writer no fairer means than to determine the average tonnage of the vessels entering and departing as above, at different periods of the war. In the three years 1793-1795, the average size of each ship entering or sailing from the ports of Great Britain, including the Irish trade, was 121 tons. In the year 1800 the average is 126 tons. In 1809 it has fallen again to 121, and in 1812 to 115 tons. We cannot then go far wrong in allowing 125 tons as the average size of British vessels employed in carrying on the foreign and the coasting trade of Great Britain itself during the war. [279] On this allowance the aggregate tonnage lost in the 11,000 British prizes, would be 1,375,000 in twenty-one years. In these years the aggregate British tonnage entering and leaving the ports of Great Britain, exclusive of the great neutral tonnage employed in carrying for the same trade, amounted to over 55,000,000; [280] so that the loss is again somewhat less than one fortieth, or 2½ per cent.

Another slight indication of the amount of loss, curious from its coincidence with the above deductions, is derived from the report of prize goods received into France in the year ending September, 1800, which amounted to 29,201,676 francs. At the then current value of the franc this was equivalent to £1,216,000. The real value of British exports for 1800 was £56,000,000, the prize goods again being rather less than one fortieth of the amount. The imports, however, being also nearly £56,000,000, the loss on the entire amount falls to one eightieth. It is true that many of these prize goods were probably taken in neutrals, but on the other hand the report does not take into account French capture in the colonies and East Indies; nor those made by Holland and Spain, the allies of France.

If the total number of vessels belonging to Great Britain and all her dependencies be taken, as the standard by which to judge her loss by captures, it will be found that in 1795 they amounted to 16,728; [281] in 1800, 17,885; [281] in 1805, 22,051; [282] in 1810, 23,703. [282] Using again 524 as the annual number of captures, the annual proportion of loss is seen gradually to fall from a very little over 3 per cent, in the first year, to somewhat less than 2½ per cent, in the last.

Finally, it may be added that the Lloyd's list before quoted gives the total number of losses by sea risks, 1793-1800, as 2,967; which, being contrasted with the losses by capture, 3,639, shows that the danger from enemy's cruisers very little exceeded those of the ocean. To offset, though only partially, her own losses, Great Britain received prize goods, during the same years, to the amount of over £5,000,000. [283] There were also engaged in carrying on her commerce, in 1801, under the British flag, 2,779 vessels, measuring 369,563 tons, that had been brought into her ports as prizes; which numbers had increased in 1811 to 4,023 ships and 536,240 tons. [284]

Taking everything together, it seems reasonable to conclude that the direct loss to the nation, by the operation of hostile cruisers, did not exceed 2½ per cent of the commerce of the Empire; and that this loss was partially made good by the prize ships and merchandise taken by its own naval vessels and privateers. A partial, if not a complete, compensation for her remaining loss is also to be found in the great expansion of her mercantile operations carried on under neutral flags; for, although this too was undoubtedly harassed by the enemy, yet to it almost entirely was due the increasing volume of trade that poured through Great Britain to and from the continent of Europe, every ton of which left a part of its value to swell the bulk of British wealth. The writings of the period show that the injuries due to captured shipping passed unremarked amid the common incidents and misfortunes of life; neither their size nor their effects were great enough to attract public notice, amid the steady increase of national wealth and the activities concerned in amassing it. "During all the operations of war and finance," says one writer, "the gains of our enterprising people were beyond all calculation, however the unproductive classes may have suffered from the depreciation of money and the inequalities of taxation. Our commerce has become more than double its greatest extent during the happiest years of peace." [285] There were, indeed, darker shades to the picture, for war means suffering as well as effort; but with regard to the subject-matter of this chapter, Commerce, and its fate in this war, there was for many years but one voice, for but one was possible. The minister, essentially a master of trade and finance, delighted year by year to enlarge upon the swelling volume of business and the growing returns of the revenue. Not only did the new taxes bring in liberally, but the older ones were increasingly productive. These signs of prosperity were not seen all at once. The first plunge into the war was followed, as it always is, by a shrinking of the system and a contraction of the muscles; but as the enemy more and more surrendered the control of the sea, as the naval victories of the years 1797 and 1798 emphasized more and more the absolute dominion of Great Britain over it, and as the new channels of enterprise became familiar, the energies of the people expanded to meet the new opportunities.

The share borne by neutral shipping in the extension and maintenance of this extraordinary fabric of prosperity, thus existing in the midst of all the sorrow, suffering, and waste of war, must next be considered; for it was the cause of the remarkable measures taken by both belligerents against neutral trade, which imparted so singular and desolating a character to the closing years of the struggle and affected deeply the commerce of the whole world. At the very beginning of the war Great Britain proceeded to avail herself of the services of neutrals, by a remission of that part of the Navigation Act which required three fourths of the crews of British merchantmen to be British subjects. On the 30th of April, 1793, this was so modified as to permit three fourths to be foreigners, to replace the large body taken for the fleets. This was followed, from time to time, as the number of enemies multiplied through the extending conquests and alliances of France, by a series of orders and proclamations, infringing more and more upon the spirit of the Act, with the direct and obvious purpose of employing neutral vessels to carry on operations hitherto limited to the British flag. The demands of the navy for seamen, the risks of capture, the delays of convoy, entirely arrested, and even slightly set back, the development of the British carrying trade; while at the same time the important position of Great Britain as the great manufacturing nation, coinciding with a diminution in the productions of the Continent, consequent upon the war, and a steadily growing demand for manufactured goods on the part of the United States, called imperiously for more carriers. The material of British traffic was increasing with quickened steps, at the very time that her own shipping was becoming less able to bear it. Thus in 1797, when the British navy was forced to leave the Mediterranean, all the Levant trade, previously confined to British ships, was thrown open to every neutral. In 1798, being then at war with Spain, the great raw material, Spanish wool, essential to the cloth manufactures, was allowed to enter in vessels of any neutral country. The produce even of hostile colonies could be imported by British subjects in neutral bottoms, though not for consumption in England, but for re-exportation; a process by which it paid a toll to Great Britain, without directly affecting the reserved market of the British colonist. The effect of these various conditions and measures can best be shown by a few figures, which indicate at once the expansion of British commerce, the arrest of British carrying trade, and the consequent growth of the neutral shipping. In 1792, the last year of peace, the total British exports and imports amounted to £44,565,000; in 1796 to £53,706,000; in 1800, the last unbroken year of war, to £73,723,000. [286] For the same years the carrying of this trade was done, in 1792, by 3,151,389 tons of British, and 479,630 tons of foreign shipping; in 1796, by 2,629,575 British, and 998,427 foreign; in 1800, by 2,825,078 British and 1,448,287 foreign. Thus, while there was so great an increase in the commerce of the kingdom, and it employed nearly 650,000 more tons of shipping in 1800 than in 1792, the amount carried in British ships had fallen off; and the proportion of neutral bottoms had risen from thirteen to nearly thirty-four per cent.

The significance of these facts could not escape the French government, nor yet the jealousies of certain classes connected with the carrying trade in Great Britain herself; but in the first war the latter were not joined by the other powerful and suffering interests, which gradually impelled the ministry into a series of acts deeply injurious to all neutrals, but chiefly to the United States. In France, the early effusiveness of the revolutionists toward England, based upon the hope that she too would be swept into the torrent of their movement, had been quickly chilled and turned to bitterness, greater even than that which had so long divided the two nations. Victorious everywhere upon the Continent, the government saw before it only one unconquerable enemy, the Power of the Sea; it knew that she, by her subsidies and her exhortations, maintained the continental states in their recurring hostilities, and it saw her alone, amid the general confusion and impoverishment, preserve quiet and increase a wealth which was not only brilliant, but solid. The Directory therefore reached the conclusion, which Napoleon made the basis of his policy and which he never wearied of proclaiming, that Great Britain maintained the war and promoted the discord of nations for the simple purpose of founding her own prosperity upon the ruin of all other commerce, her power upon the ruin of all other navies. [287] At the same time the French government held tenaciously to that profound delusion, the bequest to it from past generations of naval officers and statesmen, that a war directed against the commerce of Great Britain was a sure means of destroying her. It knew that hosts of privateers were employed, and that very many British prizes were brought in; yet, withal, the great Sea Power moved steadily on, evidently greater and stronger as the years went by. It knew also that her manufactures were increasing, that their products filled the Continent; that the produce of the East and of the West, of the Baltic and of the Mediterranean, centred in Great Britain; and that through her, not the Continent only, but France herself, drew most of her tropical articles of consumption. There was but one solution for this persistent escape from apparently sure destruction; and that was to be found in the support of the neutral carrier and the pockets of the neutral consumer. From this premise the fatal logic of the French Revolution was irresistibly drawn to the conclusion that, as every neutral ship engaged in the British carrying trade was a help to England, it was consequently an enemy to France and liable to capture. [288] Napoleon but amplified this precedent when he declared that there were no more neutrals, and placed before Sweden, longing only for quiet, the option "war with France or cannon-balls for English vessels approaching your ports."

The exceptionally intense spirit which animated the parties to this war trenched with unusual severity upon the interests of neutral powers, always more or less in conflict with the aims of belligerents. These questions also received new importance, because now appeared for the first time a neutral maritime state, of great extent and rapidly growing, whose interests and ambitions at that time pointed to shipping and carrying trade as forms of enterprise for which it had received from nature peculiar facilities. In all previous wars the Americans had acted as the colonists of Great Britain, either loyal or in revolt. In 1793 they had for four years been a nation in the real sense of the word, and Washington's first term closed. In the very first Congress measures were taken for developing American shipping, by differential duties upon native and foreign ships. [289] From the impulse thus given, combined with the opening offered by the increase of British trade and the diminished employment of British shipping, the ship-builders and merchants extended their operations rapidly. By the report of a committee of the House, January 10, 1803, it appears that the merchant tonnage of the United States was then inferior to that of no other country, except Great Britain. [290] In 1790 there had entered her ports from abroad, 355,000 tons of her own shipping and 251,000 foreign, of which 217,000 were British. [291] In the year 1801 there entered 799,304 tons of native shipping, [292] and of foreign but 138,000. [293] The amount of British among the latter is not stated; but in the year 1800 there cleared from Great Britain under her own flag, for the United States, but 14,381 tons. [294] Figures like these give but a comparative and partial view of the activity of American shipping, leaving out of account all the carrying done by it outside the ken of the home authorities; but it is safe to say that the United States contributed annually at least six hundred thousand tons to maintain the traffic of the world, which, during those eventful years, centred in Great Britain and ministered to her power. Among the forms of gain thus opened to American traders there was one to which allusion only will here be made, because at a later period it became the source of very great trouble, leading step by step to the war of 1812. This was the carriage of the productions of French and other colonies, enemies of Great Britain, to the United States, and thence re-exporting them to Europe.

Besides the new state in the Western Hemisphere, there were three others whose isolated position had hitherto given them the character of neutrals in the maritime wars of the eighteenth century. These were the Baltic countries, Russia, Denmark, and Sweden, which had combined in 1780 to defend their neutral rights, if need were, by force of arms. The power of this confederacy to assume the same attitude in 1793 was broken by the policy of Russia. By whatever motives swayed, the Empress Catharine took decided ground against the French Revolution. On the 25th of March, 1793, a convention between her and the British government was signed, by which both parties agreed, not only to close their own ports against France and not to permit the exportation of food to that country, but also "to unite all their efforts to prevent other powers, not implicated in the war, from giving, on this occasion of common concern to every civilized state, any protection whatever, directly or indirectly in consequence of their neutrality, to the commerce or property of the French on the sea." [295] How the empress understood this engagement was shown by her notification, during the same summer, to the courts of Sweden and Denmark, that she would station a fleet in the North Sea to prevent neutrals bound to France from proceeding. [296] Great Britain had already—June 8, 1793—directed the commanders of cruisers to detain all vessels loaded with flour or grain, bound to French ports, and to send them to England, where the cargo would be purchased and freight paid by the British government. [297] These instructions were duly communicated to the government of the neutral states, which protested with more or less vigor and tenacity, but found themselves helpless to resist force with force. Singularly enough, the French government had preceded the British on this occasion, having issued orders to the same effect on the 9th of the previous May; but the fact appears to have escaped the ministry, for, in justifying their action to the United States, they do not allude to it. Their course is defended on the broad ground that, from the character of the war and the situation of France, there was a fair prospect of starving her into submission, [298] and that under such circumstances provisions, always a questionable article, became contraband of war. The answer was not satisfactory to the neutral, deprived of part of his expected gains, but the argument was one of those that admit of no appeal except to arms. A further justification of the order was found by the British ministry in the undoubted fact that "the French government itself was the sole legal importer of grain in France" at that time; and therefore "the trade was no longer to be regarded as a mercantile speculation of individuals, but as an immediate operation of the very persons who have declared war, and are now carrying it on, against Great Britain." The American minister to France, Monroe, confirms this, in his letter of October 16, 1794: "The whole commerce of France, to the absolute exclusion of individuals, is carried on by the government itself." [299]

Soon after, on the 6th of November, 1793, another order was issued by the British ministry, directing the seizure of "all ships laden with goods the produce of any colony belonging to France, or carrying provisions or other supplies for the use of any such colony." This order was based upon the Rule of 1756, so called from the war in which it first came conspicuously into notice, and the principle of which, as stated by British authorities, was that a trade forbidden to neutrals by the laws of a country, during peace, could not be lawfully carried on by them in time of war, for the convenience of the belligerent; because, by such employment, their ships "were in effect incorporated in the enemy's navigation, having adopted his commerce and character and identified themselves with his interests and purposes." [300] At that time the colonial trade was generally reserved to the mother country; and against it particularly, together with the coasting trade, similarly restricted, was this ruling of the British courts and government directed. Neutrals replied, "Because the parent country monopolizes in peace the whole commerce of its colonies, does it follow that in war it should have no right to regulate it at all?" [301] "We deny that municipal regulations, established in peace, can in any wise limit the public rights of neutrals in time of war." [302] It is evident that these two lines of argument do not fairly meet each other; they resemble rather opposite and equal weights in a balance, which will quickly be overturned when passion or interest, combined with power, is thrown in upon either side. Starting from such fundamentally different premises, interested parties might argue on indefinitely in parallel lines, without ever approaching a point of contact.

The chief present interest in this question, referring as it does to an obsolete colonial policy, is as illustrative of one of those dead-locks, which, occurring at a critical moment, when passion or interest is aroused, offer no solution but by war. It was useless to point out that Great Britain relaxed in every direction her own peace regulations, for the advantage of British commerce in the present contest. The reply was perfectly apt, that she did not dispute the right of her enemy to avail himself of any help the neutral could give; she only asserted the determination not to permit the neutral to extend it with impunity. There was no doubt, in the mind of any considerable body of Englishmen, as to the perfect soundness of the English doctrine. Lord Howick, who, as Mr. Grey, had embarrassed his party in 1792 by the exuberance of his liberalism, [303] as foreign minister in 1807 wrote: "Neutrality, properly considered, does not consist in taking advantage of every situation between belligerent states by which emolument may accrue to the neutral, whatever may be the consequences to either belligerent party; but in observing a strict and honest impartiality, so as not to afford advantage in the war to either; and, particularly, in so far restraining its trade to the accustomed course which it held in time of peace, as not to render assistance to one belligerent in escaping the effects of the other's hostilities." [304] An agreement among any number of the subjects of the interested nation proves nothing as to the right of the question, but the irreconcilable divergence of views at this time shows most clearly the necessity, under which every country lies, to be ready to support its own sense of its rights and honor by force, if necessary.