The victory of the 1st of June was followed by an interval of more than two years marked by no great naval conflict. The French Navy was at once too completely disorganised and too ill-directed to act with effect. It was indeed driven to exertions injurious only to itself by the Jacobin rulers in Paris, who were themselves driven on by such passions as the “beastly froth of rage” which caused them to issue their decree of the 24th May 1794—the decree forbidding their armies and fleets to give quarter to Hanoverians or Englishmen. It was repealed on the 30th December, five months after the fall of the Terrorists on the 27th of July, and when experience had shown the French that not they but their enemies were to have the more frequent opportunities to refuse quarter. The English fleet had no substantial opponent at sea at whom to strike, and was, moreover, but poorly led for the most part.

In the Channel, Howe, who continued to hold the command though his health never recovered from the strain of the campaign of 1794, cruised from September till the end of the year.[2] But he continued to prefer his own system of watching the French from an English channel port by means of a lookout maintained by frigates. His infirmities and age were in fact disqualifying him for active service. He would willingly have retired, and indeed was never at sea after the spring of 1795, though he was compelled, by the unwillingness of the Government to allow him to resign, to retain the nominal command. Lord Bridport, brother of Lord Hood, who first acted for him at sea and then succeeded him in the Channel command, held the same views as to the best way of using the fleet, and applied them with far less energy and faculty.

The Admiralty did not as yet impose a more vigorous line of action on its admirals. Between the growing weakness of Howe, the natural want of energy of Bridport, and the lack of intelligent direction from Whitehall, the movements of the Channel fleet went somewhat by fits and starts. In November, the Canada, 74, Captain Hamilton, came into Torbay, where Howe was at anchor, with the news that he had barely escaped from a French squadron which had taken his colleague, the Alexander, 74, commanded by Captain R. R. Bligh, a different man from the officer whose name is for ever associated with the mutiny of the Bounty. Howe went at once to cruise off Ushant, believing that the main French fleet was at sea. But it was only a small squadron commanded by Nielly, which had taken the Alexander as she and the Canada came back from convoy duty. Howe’s fleet, which included four Portuguese liners, was much blown about and damaged by rough weather.

If the English ships, and to a greater extent our Portuguese friends, suffered from the rough weather of the Channel in autumn and winter, the French fleet at Brest was all but finally ruined. Villaret-Joyeuse was hounded out to sea on the 24th December with thirty-five sail of the line. Six of these were to form a detached squadron under Renaudin, who had been promoted to Rear-Admiral for his gallant defence of the Vengeur. He was to take his command round to Toulon. So great was the distress of all France, and particularly of its poorest province (Brittany) for food, that it had not been found possible to provision any of these thirty-five ships except the six of Renaudin’s command for more than three weeks. The hostility of all Europe and the penury of their Government combined to deprive the French of naval stores. Their ships were patched up by makeshift devices and with inferior material. Half a century after 1795, the Prince de Joinville noted that as the French maritime population was very poor and ill fed, the men drawn from it for service in the fleet were inferior in size and strength to the seamen of the north of Europe—including, of course, Great Britain. He found that these men did not gain strength till they had been well fed and well looked after in the navy for some months. In 1795 the French seacoast population was even poorer than about 1840, and the men drawn from it were not sufficiently clad, and were fed on almost starvation rations in the fleet. We must remember that our successes were gained against overstrained and patched-up ships, with inferior spars fished with bad material and sails of poor cloth; manned by crews not only raw from want of practice, but weak from downright want of food, and depressed by a sense of inferiority in knowledge and force. Our ancestors rejoiced in looking at caricatures of the starving French reduced to mere scarecrows by hunger, and in comparing them with the typical Englishman, a mass of fat and brawn. The French had made themselves hateful by their aggressions and plunderings, and we resented their arrogant claim to impose regeneration and freedom on their neighbours while they were themselves in a squalid welter of bloodstained anarchy. Yet they were gallant men who faced storm and battle in such destitution—and we shall not again have to meet enemies enfeebled as they were.

Villaret-Joyeuse had to face a December gale with such a fleet when he obeyed his orders on the 24th of December in 1794. It drove the Républicain on the rocks, and his fleet had to anchor in Camaret Bay. He sailed on the 30th, only to suffer a month of misery. The Neuf Thermidor (the Jacobin of the 1st of June renamed), the Scipion, and the Superbe sank. The Neptune was driven on shore. By the 2nd February the weakened fleet was back at Brest. The news that the French were at sea brought Howe out for his last cruise, to intercept them if possible, and to cover the trade. The stormy weather disposed of Villaret-Joyeuse, who, however, captured a hundred of our merchant-ships, and the Daphne, a 20-gun ship, and Howe returned to Spithead after looking into Brest to be sure that the French fleet was not at sea. If he had been outside Brest on the 24th of December, the French might have been spared a disaster. Yet the weakness of his method of watching from afar off and starting to pursue from a distance was clearly demonstrated immediately after his return to Spithead. Renaudin sailed with his six line-of-battle ships on the 22nd of February, and reached Toulon unmolested by us, on the 2nd April, but having suffered much from the weather, and with a long sick list.

The French took advantage of the absence of a blockading fleet off Brest to send out squadrons to protect their own coast trade and attack our commerce. In May an English watching squadron of five sail of the line under Cornwallis was off Ushant. It saw and pursued a French force of three liners under Rear-Admiral Vence, then engaged on convoy duty. Vence fled to the Penmarchs, pursued by Cornwallis, who took part of his convoy on the 8th and 9th of June. The danger of Vence brought Villaret-Joyeuse out from Brest with nine sail. Cornwallis was pursued and overtaken on the 16th, but so poor was the gunnery of the French that though they attacked his rearmost ships on both sides, they did little harm, and suffered not a little themselves. Cornwallis got safe to Plymouth with his prizes, and his retreat was highly praised for its steadiness and good management. Bad weather forced the French back to Belleisle, and when they turned again to Brest on the 19th June they fell in with another and a stronger opponent.

The Vendéens were still fighting for the royal cause in France, and were calling for help to the Royalist exiles and for the presence of a prince to lead them. An expedition had been prepared in England, which was to have been commanded by the Count d’Artois—in after times King Charles X. It included 200 exiled officers of the old French Navy, and sailed on the 11th June from Spithead under the protection of Sir John Borlase Warren, who had his flag in a frigate, but had three line-of-battle ships and fifty transports. Lord Bridport accompanied the expedition with fourteen sail of the line to protect it from the Brest fleet. Warren’s mission was to land the Royalists at Quiberon. On the 19th June Bridport dispatched him to Quiberon, and steered himself for Brest. Immediately after Warren had parted from Bridport on his way south-east to Quiberon, he sighted Villaret-Joyeuse on his way back from Belleisle to Brest. He retreated, warned Bridport, and the two rejoined on the 20th. Bridport took the three liners of Warren’s squadron, and pursued Villaret-Joyeuse. On the 23rd June there was a confused encounter about the island of Groix, which lies north-west of Belleisle. The French admiral was ill obeyed by his overtaxed subordinates, who disregarded signals, and fled to L’Orient, on the mainland opposite Groix. Three of his ships were overtaken and captured after a gallant resistance. The dangers of the coast and a fog added to the disorders of the fight. The French admiral complained bitterly of the conduct of his captains. Bridport, who had three prizes to show, the Alexandre (the English Alexander taken by Nielly on the 7th November of the previous year through her bad sailing, and now retaken for the same reason), the Tigre, and the Formidable, renamed by us the Belleisle, was praised for his victory. But the opinion of his fleet and the verdict of history was adequately expressed by Codrington, then captain of the Babet frigate in his fleet. “It is greatly to be regretted that His Lordship called the ships out of action, as they could of course go where the large French three-decker did. He might have captured or destroyed all the ships of the enemy.” Warren remained on the coast till September a helpless eye-witness of the dreadful fate of the French Royalists at Quiberon. Nearly all the 200 naval officers among them perished in the water, in action, or before the Republican firing parties. Frenchmen who were prepared to assert that Perfidious Albion had contrived the whole disaster in order to secure the destruction of the dreaded royal corps, have not been wanting. The French ships at L’Orient remained till the close of the year, unmanned partly by desertion, partly by the disbanding of crews which could not be fed. During the last days of 1795 and the first of 1796 they were remanned after a fashion, and slipped away to Brest and Rochefort.

In the meantime the French armies had overrun Holland at the close of 1794, had driven out the army of the Duke of York, and had set up a subject republic. Our ally became our enemy, and a squadron had to be told off to watch the Texel under Duncan, in company with a dozen very ill-found Russian warships. But from the date of Lord Bridport’s victory till the close of 1796 there was little for the fleet to do in the Channel and North Sea but to watch. Want of funds compelled the Republican Government to follow the example given by Louis XIV. after 1693—to lay up its main fleets and take to commerce destroying.

The operations in the Mediterranean from December 1793, when Hood was forced to retreat from Toulon, till Jervis evacuated the Mediterranean in December of 1796, correspond with the campaigns in the Channel—with the exception that they include no 1st of June.

When he had withdrawn his ships filled with French refugees from Toulon, Hood paused for a time at Hyères. The refugees had to be provided for at Leghorn, from whence most of them returned home after the fall of the Terrorists. The remnant of the French fleet at Toulon could not move for months. An opportunity for dealing a severe blow to France was presented by the state of the island of Corsica. The Corsicans had not wholly renounced the hope of achieving independence of the French, who had conquered them some thirty years earlier. One party among them was deeply offended by the irreligion of the French Republicans. It had for chief the famous Pasqual Paoli, who had fought against the French conquest, and had for years been a pensioner in England. He had returned to Corsica by favour of the Revolution, and was now in the possession of great influence over his countrymen. Paoli, who hoped to secure the independence of Corsica under English protection,—which meant to govern the country himself with our support,—offered his co-operation. Hood sailed from Hyères on the 24th of January 1794, bringing with him the British troops under Sir David Dundas. A storm forced the fleet to Elba and caused delay. But the occupation of the island with the help of Paoli was an easy undertaking. The few French troops took refuge in the coast towns of Bastia and Calvi. Dundas declined to co-operate at Bastia on the ground that he had no adequate force. But Bastia was taken between the 4th of April and the 21st of May by the seamen, the marines, and the soldiers appointed to serve as marines, who were under Hood’s orders. Calvi was besieged on the 19th June, and surrendered on the 10th of August. The fact that Nelson, the only one of our admirals whose personality has stamped itself on the memory and imagination of the English people, was concerned in these sieges and lost his right eye at Calvi, has given them an undeserved prominence. The garrisons were cut off from supplies by sea and land, and must have surrendered when they did, if no shot had been fired against them. On the 14th June Corsica was declared a kingdom, with George III. for its sovereign, and coins were struck in his name. But our hold on the island was weak. It depended in reality on the continued support of Paoli and on his retention of influence over his countrymen. Sir Gilbert Elliot, our Commissioner first at Toulon and then in Corsica, ruined the whole foundation of our position. Sir Gilbert was a high-minded and able man, a conspicuous member of that portion of the Whig Opposition which was shocked by the French Revolution into allying itself with Pitt. He would not consent to govern by the advice of Paoli, and would endeavour to introduce clean-handed methods of administration, impartial justice, and the British jury among a people divided by irreconcilable family feuds. With the best intentions in the world, he mortally offended our only possible friends, the Paolists, who hoped for a self-governing Corsica administered by them, and he entirely failed to placate our enemies. The calm and perfectly right-minded manifestation of the innate and comprehensive superiority of Englishmen on the part of our officers, did not fail to produce its unfailing effect. It exasperated the Corsicans beyond endurance. We were soon universally hated, and our tenure of Corsica was certain to end whenever a serious attack could be made on us from outside. A very few months of English virtue converted the population into partisans of the French. A far larger army than we could spare, frequently reinforced, would have been required to hold the island.

The attack came by the end of 1796. Until then we were employed in beating back successive feeble sorties of the French from Toulon, and in co-operating with the Austrian armies in Northern Italy. The efforts of the French to maintain their hold on Corsica by expeditions from a ruined dockyard were begun with a promptitude highly honourable to their energy. As early as the 5th June, just over six months after the expulsion of the allies, Admiral Martin sailed with seven ships of the line. He met with a slight measure of success, for he retook the Alceste, a frigate carried away in December, and assigned to Sardinia as her share of the prizes. But when Hood, warned by his frigates, took up the pursuit of the French squadron, it could but retire and seek refuge in the Golfe Juan, commonly called by English sailors Gourjean. Hood, who had an old experience of attacks on fleets at anchor, laid a plan to fall on the French two upon one. But it was delayed by unfavourable weather till Martin had fortified his ships by batteries on shore. A scheme for using fireships was given up as impracticable. Martin was blockaded by a combined English and Spanish squadron under Hotham till a storm drove the watchers off, and he escaped to Toulon on the 2nd of November. It would seem that the allies might as well have been off Toulon in May. But the method of watching from afar, which in the Mediterranean meant from San Fiorenzo or Leghorn, was as much a favourite with Hood as with Howe. In November, Hood went home on leave, and on the understanding that he was to return. But he could not agree with ministers, and did not go to sea again.

Hotham, his successor, an easy-going gentleman, was not the man to change a method of conducting war which gave him much time at anchor at San Fiorenzo or Leghorn. He had gone to Leghorn to cover convoys which could have been much better covered by a close blockade of Toulon, when Martin put to sea again, on the 2nd March, with fifteen sail of the line. The 12,000 men required to make up the crews of these vessels had been found only by drafting 7500 soldiers into them. Martin had only 2300 sailors in addition to officers and petty officers. A gleam of good fortune was again allowed him. On the 7th March he took the Berwick, 74. Her masts had been rolled out of her by the carelessness of her officers, and she was following Hotham to Leghorn under jury rig. But this small advantage was all Martin could gain. Hotham, who sailed from Leghorn on the 9th, was informed of the whereabouts of the French by his frigates on the 10th. He pursued in baffling breezes and calms. On the 13th and 14th an encounter took place between them which has some resemblance to Bridport’s action near Groix. The French straggled, and the French admiral was ill obeyed. Two French vessels, the Ça Ira, 80, and the Censeur, 74, were taken after a stout resistance. Some vague cannonading on opposite tacks took place between the fleets. It is to the credit of the French that they inflicted a loss of 74 killed and 284 wounded on the English vessels most exposed to their fire. The Illustrious, 74, Captain Frederick, lost 90 of the total. Hotham had with him a Neapolitan 74, the Tancredi, commanded by a man whose name is associated closely with the Royal Navy for another reason, the unhappy Carracciolo. When the fragmentary battle was over, Hotham excited the wrath of his subordinate Nelson by placidly putting aside advice to pursue with vigour on the ground that two vessels had been taken and they had done very well.

An admiral of this kidney was not the man either to intercept Renaudin, who joined Martin at Hyères on the 4th April, or to keep the French confined to Toulon. They were almost ruined there by a mutiny of starving, unpaid men, but got over the difficulty, and were at sea again on the 7th June. The second sortie was even feebler than the first. Martin chased Nelson, who had been detached to Genoa, back on Hotham, at San Fiorenzo. Though reinforced by Renaudin, he was weaker than the English admiral, who had been joined by Admiral Mann with nine sail of the line on the 14th June. There was nothing for it but another retreat, another ineffectual distant cannonade—the final retreat of Martin to Toulon, and the return of Hotham to San Fiorenzo.

As the English admiral moved periodically from San Fiorenzo to Leghorn and from Leghorn back to San Fiorenzo, there was obviously nothing to prevent Richery from leaving Toulon on the 24th September with six of the line and three frigates on a cruise to America. He did so, passed the Rock of Gibraltar, and on the 7th October fell in with an English convoy of thirty-one merchant-ships under the protection of two 74’s and the French prize Censeur armed en flûte. Richery retook the Censeur and captured nearly all the merchant-ships. Spain having made peace with France in July, Richery was able to take his prizes into Cadiz, where he was promptly blockaded by Rear-Admiral Mann with six ships, and so remained for months. Hotham, again, was not the man to prevent Honoré Ganteaume from leaving Toulon for a cruise in the Levant on the 10th October. He did sail with one of the line and five frigates, released some scattered French vessels watched by us, did considerable damage to Russian and English trade, escaped the pursuit of Troubridge, and was back at Toulon on the 5th February 1796. Hotham, worn out by his exertions, resigned his command to Sir Hyde Parker on the 1st November 1795, and sailed for home, to be rewarded by an Irish peerage. Sir Hyde Parker was superseded by Sir John Jervis on the 30th of the month.

During 1796 the new admiral could do little, for the French fleet was paralysed by penury in the Mediterranean as in the Channel. He had to look on almost helplessly while Napoleon, who took command of the army of Italy in March, was conducting the first and perhaps the greatest of his campaigns. It was at least a campaign which showed what genius and enthusiasm, even if it be only enthusiasm for a full belly and plenty of plunder, can do against professional pedantry and routine. By June his victories had cowed Naples into deserting the coalition, and her help, such as it was, was lost. On the 28th June he seized Leghorn, and a source of supply to the fleet was lost, an opening for British trade was closed. The loss of Corsica was seen to be at hand, and on the 10th July Elba was seized as an alternative storehouse. Jervis’ fleet hampered the French coast trade, and captured a battering-train on its way to the siege of Mantua. But Spain, whirled about by every folly under the rule of Godoy, was seen to be coming into the war. On the 25th August, Jervis received orders from home to evacuate Corsica. Nelson was appointed to superintend the evacuation on the 26th September, and when he withdrew from before Leghorn to execute the order, a French expedition under General Gentili crossed to the island on the 19th October, on the very day we retired somewhat harassed by the partisans of France.

While we were withdrawing from Corsica, the movements of the fleets seemed to be leading to a clash of battle. On the 29th of July, Jervis wisely desirous to concentrate his forces, had recalled Mann from before Cadiz. He came, but without stores, and Leghorn being now shut to us and Corsica unfriendly, he had to be sent down to Gibraltar to fill up. While he was absent, Richery had sailed on a plundering expedition to Newfoundland, escorted by Don Juan de Lángara with a Spanish fleet on the 7th August. Spain did not declare war till the 5th October, but the declaration was then as always a mere formality. After seeing Richery on his way, Lángara returned, and on the 29th September left for Toulon with nineteen sail. On the 1st October he met Mann, and chased him into Gibraltar. Then he went on towards Toulon, picking up seven more ships of the line, which raised his force to twenty-six sail. Mann, moved by reasons which pass all understanding, called a council of war, which as usual agreed with the commanding officer, and sailed for England. His withdrawal weakened Jervis vitally. In after days the admiral said that if Mann had rejoined him, the battle which was to be fought off Cape St. Vincent on the following 14th February would have been fought in the Mediterranean. Yet it is to be observed that Jervis fought at St. Vincent with fifteen ships against twenty-seven. Now, when Lángara was seen off Cape Corso on the 5th October with twenty-six sail, Jervis was near at hand in Mortella Bay with fourteen. He had many responsibilities on him—the troops to be withdrawn from Corsica, the garrison at Elba, and the French not far off at Toulon. On the 14th February of next year he was free to make play with his admirable squadron. Yet it can hardly be doubted that if he had struck on the 15th October, as he did on the 14th February, the absence of Mann would not have prevented him from gaining a victory which would have dashed the Franco-Spanish naval coalition to pieces. He judged the risk too great, and sailed for Gibraltar on the 2nd November. From Gibraltar he went by order of the Government to Lisbon. We had left the Mediterranean, which was not to see an English fleet again till the summer of 1798. Lángara, much troubled by gales, formidable to his unseamanlike fleet, reached Toulon on the 26th October. He left it again on the 1st December with a French squadron of six sail under the command of Villeneuve. Lángara put in to Carthagena, but the Frenchman went on to Brest. He passed the Straits on the 10th December. Jervis had not yet left for Lisbon, and the French squadron was sighted, but could not be pursued. A storm which blew right into the anchorage at Gibraltar was raging at the time. One of Jervis’ ships was driven on shore, and two were damaged. The admiral could do no more than send a frigate home with the news that a French squadron had escaped from the Mediterranean. Villeneuve went on to Brest. On the 21st December he was seen and chased by the blockading fleet of Admiral Colpoys, but though forced to turn from Brest, he reached L’Orient safely on the 23rd. Villeneuve’s was not the only reinforcement received at this time by the French forces in the Channel and the Bay. Richery, after doing considerable damage in Newfoundland, had reached the island of Aix on the 5th of November, and had gone on to Brest with part of his squadron. A part, detached on the coast of America, had preceded him. Richery was swept into the most determined, and by far the most nearly successful, of the efforts made during this war to invade the British Isles in force.

The very nature of the struggle they had provoked taught the French to dwell on the hope of delivering the much threatened blow at the heart which was to bring their enemy to the ground. Schemes of invasion abounded, and may still be read with interest (or amusement) in Captain Desbrière’s history of Les Projets et Tentatives de Débarquement aux Îles Britanniques between 1793 and 1805. Some were only foolish. Some, without ceasing to be foolish, were ferocious. The most notable of these were the plans for carrying a chouannerie into the British Isles. A chouannerie was a warfare of atrocious brigandage. It took its name from the desperate Royalist partisans who, when no longer able to oppose the Republican armies in the field in Brittany, betook themselves to highway robbery, housebreaking, murder and torture of political opponents, or even only of defenceless people who possessed property. As they naturally preferred to act by night and by surprise, they were known as the Chouans—the brown owls. In the fury of their hatred the French planned to let loose hundreds of insubordinate soldiers and common criminals on the English coast as a measure of revenge for the evils which, so they argued, the support given by England to the Royalist partisans had brought upon France. Soldiers who were in prison for acts of indiscipline were formed into a corps under the name of the Légion des Francs. Another corps, aptly surnamed the Légion Noire, was formed of common criminals. The two were to be landed on the English coast to burn, murder, and plunder. The calculation made was that France stood to win in any case. If the two legions did murder and pillage, loss would be inflicted on England. If the English shot or hanged every man of them, France would be rid of hundreds of violent blackguards. The calculation was silly, in spite of its specious air of cunning. The Chouans in Brittany knew the country and the language, and had friends. The legions would have been perfectly helpless in England—and so they proved in February 1797. In that month a French naval expedition of two frigates, a corvette, and a lugger, escaped unobserved from Brest, and landed about 1500 of the Légion des Francs and the Légion Noire at Fishguard, in Pembroke. Captain Castagnier, who commanded the ships, had hardly sailed out of sight before these intended Chouans with their leader, Tate, a rascally American adventurer, surrendered to an inferior force of Welsh militiamen under Lord Cawdor. They had no intention of losing their lives in a frantic attempt to do mere mischief. The English Government then called on the French to exchange a number of its English prisoners for these cowardly ruffians. When the French refused, they were brought to their senses by a threat to land the legionaries on the coast of France without exchange. The mere prospect created a panic, and the British Government had its way. The end of the Fishguard invasion was therefore that hundreds of useful Englishmen were exchanged against men who were a danger and a burden to France, while other hundreds of honest Frenchmen who were capable of serving their country well remained in prison for months.

Before the Fishguard Invasion ended in sour pleasantry, a more sane and manly attack had failed, partly through mismanagement, but to a far greater extent because of the protection which the superhuman powers governing this universe have not seldom afforded to England. When the war in La Vendée had fairly come to its close by June 1796, the general commanding the Republican army, Lazare Hoche, urged that the large army of 117,000 men left free by the submission of the Royalists should be used for an invasion of the British Isles. His Government was ready to approve, but for a time it distracted its general by double-minded schemes. The belief that our empire in India was the cause, and not, as in truth it was, the consequence, of our strength, was general in France. The French Navy, conscious of its inability to contend with the concentrated force of the Royal Navy in the four seas of Britain, and longing for the warm seas and abundant prize money of the East, was eager for an expedition to India. So the Government at Paris played with dreams of a great expedition to the East Indies which was to drop a body of French troops in Ireland on its way, and the naval officers at Brest obstructed all other plans. The good sense of Hoche saw that division of aim must be fatal to success, and he at last persuaded his superiors to consent to attempt a vigorous invasion of Ireland. An invasion of England in force would have inflicted the worse blow, but it was rightly judged to be, if not impossible, yet so hazardous that it was not entertained. What Castagnier was able to do with four small vessels and a few hundred cut-throats in February 1797, might conceivably have been done by ten line-of-battle ships and several thousand good soldiers in 1796. But a Government which was ready to risk a few small vessels and a flying column of men whom it would willingly have seen at the bottom of the Channel was not disposed to run an equal hazard with valuable ships and fine soldiers. An invasion of Ireland would cause great, perhaps paralysing embarrassment to England. The country was on the verge of rebellion, France was full of Irish exiles who promised the co-operation of their countrymen. So an invasion of Ireland was undertaken.

All through the summer preparations were made. The English Government was well served by its spies in France. Some of them were among the Irish exiles. But it could learn nothing definite as to the exact aim of the invasion which was known to be in preparation. The vacillations of the French Government served it in one way. No definite information could be obtained where no definite plan was adopted. Nothing could be done save stand on guard and watch. The measures of defence taken were sufficient if they had been more effectually applied. A force kept at about fifteen sail of the line cruised off Brest. A western squadron of five, under Curtis, watched beyond the Brest blockade. The grand fleet, under Bridport, lay at Spithead to support and reinforce. But Spithead was too difficult to leave against head-winds and too far off to give an adequate support to the Brest blockade, and the blockade itself was somewhat slackly kept. Our measures were half measures. We had partially dropped Howe’s plan of watch from afar, but had not yet adopted St. Vincent’s close watch on the spot.

On the 15th December 1796 the French expedition drew out from the inner harbour of Brest to the outer roadstead. Some collisions took place among the vessels on their way, but they were not more serious than the similar misfortunes which were to befall Bridport’s ships a few days later. On the 16th the French fleet was ready to start. It consisted of seventeen sail of the line, fourteen frigates, two corvettes, one brig, and three luggers, with transports, and it carried 14,750 soldiers under the command of Hoche. The French admirals—Morard de Galle, Bouvet, and Nielly—had hoisted their flags in frigates, which they had the option to do; but Richery had his flag in the Pégase, 74. Morard de Galle was with Hoche in the Fraternité. The wind was from the east, the weather frosty and clear. The orders were to steer through the Raz du Sein, the southerly passage through the rocks which on that side bound the roadstead of Brest. This course was adopted in order to avoid the English blockading force the better. But on the 16th our ships under Admiral Colpoys, who had just taken up the command, were some fifty miles away to the west, too far off to strike quickly, with the east wind against them—too far off also to be quickly warned by Sir Edward Pellew, who with his own frigate, the Indefatigable, 44, and others, was close to the French port. When through the Raz the French were to steer for 120 miles W.¼S.W. and then head for Bantry.

A detailed account of their cruise belongs rather to the history of the French than of the English Navy, which, for reasons about to be given, as good as vanished for the next few days. But the fate of the invasion cannot be left untold. As the day grew on on the 16th, the wind drew round to the S.E., and became unfavourable to a fleet passing the narrow Raz du Sein. With an unpardonable want of foresight, Morard de Galle had not provided for this highly probable contingency. So when he suddenly decided in the afternoon to take the direct course to the west through the wide Iroise, and steered in that direction himself, he was followed only by the Nestor, 74, and the Romaine and Cocarde frigates. The rest of the ships either followed Bouvet through the Raz du Sein or hesitated and made movements which are now uncertain. One, the Séduisant, was wrecked on the Grand Stevenec. Pellew, who watched the French closely, added to their confusion by false fires and signals of no meaning. He sent the Phœbe frigate to warn Colpoys, and when assured of the direction the French were taking, went himself in search of his admiral.

The French, therefore, were divided from the beginning, and so remained. On the 17th Bouvet had with him the vessels which had followed him through the Raz du Sein, eight line-of-battle ships and eight frigates. The wind in drawing round to the S.E. had become milder, bringing with it a drizzle of rain and fog. He steered for Bantry, and on the 18th crossed the track of the Fraternité which was standing to the south to look for him. Thus the French naval and military commanders-in-chief went roaming out to the Atlantic, looking for their command, which was steering away from them. On the 19th, Bouvet was joined by Nielly and Richery with six sail of the line and two frigates. In variable and gusty winds they pushed on for Bantry. The wind was from the west when he sighted Mizen Head on the 21st, but it swung round to the east, and drove him to leeward of Bantry Bay, and to the point of Dursey Island. Only eight of the line-of-battle ships and six frigates succeeded in tacking into the bay with Bouvet, where they anchored between Bear Island and the southern side, instead of going into Beerhaven, between the island and the northern bank, where they would have been safe. The others remained beating to and fro outside. On the 24th the weather was fine, and there were 6000 soldiers in the ships with Bouvet. A landing could easily have been effected, and as there were few troops in the south of Ireland, the French might well have occupied Cork, where lay an immense mass of military and naval stores. But the command in the absence of Hoche was in the hands of Grouchy, whose name is associated with a still greater French disaster eighteen years later. He hesitated. No landing was made, and on the 25th the wind settled in the east, and blew with fury down the bay. Bouvet was forced to sea in his frigate, lost heart, and made for Brest, which he reached on the 1st January 1797. Bedout, of the Indomptable, 80, to whom the command now fell, held on till the 29th, when he too cut his cables and fled seaward before the easterly wind. All hope was not given up even yet, and some of the French vessels went to the mouth of the Shannon, which had been named as the alternative landing-place. They found nothing to do, and so turned home to France. Meanwhile the two commanders-in-chief had been groping for their commands. The Fraternité had been lost in fog and tossed in storm. She had sighted the lights of Bouvet, had mistaken them for those of an enemy; had turned away; had been chased, compelled to throw guns overboard to lighten herself for flight, and to alter her course again and again; had returned off Bantry Bay on the 29th, only to find the Révolution, 74, endeavouring to save the crew of the sinking Scévola frigate, and had finally steered for France. The wrecks of the French armament reached home between the 11th and 14th January. Afflavit Deus et dissipati sunt.

One of the line-of-battle ships carried into Bantry Bay by Bouvet was destined not to escape. The Droits de l’homme, 74, commanded by Captain Baron La Crosse, had been among the vessels which went to the mouth of the Shannon. While cruising there, she captured the Cumberland letter of marque—that is to say, trading-ship, which carried a commission authorising her to act as a privateer. The Cumberland had on board thirty soldiers on their way home from the West Indies. La Crosse took the English passengers and crew into his own ship, and sent the Cumberland to France with a prize crew. Then he headed for home, after looking once more into Bantry. He lost sight of the Irish coast on the 9th, and on the 13th, in strong westerly winds and thick hazy weather, calculated that he was seventy-five miles to the west of the Penmarchs. Early in the afternoon two vessels were seen to windward in the haze, and Captain La Crosse steered to the S.E. to avoid them. At about 3.30 two other vessels were seen to leeward cutting off his road to France. They were the Indefatigable, 44, Captain Sir Edward Pellew, and the Amazon, 36, Captain Reynolds. Captain La Crosse had to fight his way home between them. In conversation with an English army officer, taken prisoner in the Cumberland, Lieutenant Pipon, he had declared that he would sink rather than surrender. His conduct was to show that these were not words of idle boasting. The Droits de l’homme was indeed a 74 and her opponents were frigates, but though one 74 was adjudged more than a match for two frigates, she was at a disadvantage. She was so built that her lower deck ports were fourteen French inches—nearly sixteen English—nearer the water than in other vessels of her class. While under a press of sail to throw off the pursuit of the ships seen to windward, she lost her fore and maintop. Having no sufficient spread of sail aloft to steady her she rolled heavily, and the water poured on to her main-deck. It ran down the cables on the English prisoners who had been sent to the cable tier to escape the shot of their friends. So Captain La Crosse was not able to make use of the 36-pounders on his main deck but had to rely on the 18-pounders and smaller guns of his upper decks, firing from a high and most unstable platform. The Droits de l’homme had in fact the use of a lighter broadside than the Indefatigable, a very heavy frigate, armed with 24-pounders on her main deck. Her sole advantage was that she carried 700 soldiers in addition to her crew, and could replace the 250 casualties she suffered in the action.

It began at 5.30. The Droits de l’homme was steering to the west for the coast of France. The Indefatigable overtook her, and tried to rake her. The French captain baffled the attempt, and then Pellew shot ahead, risking and receiving a raking broadside, which did his frigate little harm, and placing himself on the Frenchman’s bow. At a quarter to seven the Amazon came up and took her station on the other bow. At 7.30 the two English frigates shot ahead, the Indefatigable to repair damage to her rigging, the Amazon, because the press of sail she carried to gain her station had given her so much way that she could not stop. Then the action was resumed, to be again suspended to repair damage at 10.30 and once more resumed. It lasted through the night. The English crews fought with fine manhood and skill, often up to their waists in water on the main decks. Guns broke from their fastenings and had to be made secure again—as often as four times. They were often filled with water after being loaded, and the charges had to be withdrawn before they could be reloaded and safely fired. Repairs had to be done in the rigging, and the Amazon used up every inch of spare rope. The Frenchman fought with a heroism which surmounted the loss of all hope of victory, or even of escape, manœuvring to board so long as his ship could answer her helm, and always baffled by the English frigates, which were under perfect control. At 4.30 the moon broke through the clouds for a moment, and Lieutenant George Bell, on the forecastle of the Indefatigable, saw the land. None of the three ships could know where they were. It was only certain that they were on a lee-shore, the wind blowing strong and the sea running high. The Indefatigable was turned to the north, and was followed by the Amazon. Just before daybreak breakers were seen on the lee-bow. The Indefatigable was brought round to the south, but not the Amazon which was unmanageable, and was driven on shore. As the Indefatigable stood southward in the first light of day, her crew saw they were in Audierne Bay, and Droits de l’homme lay on her side in front of Ploxevet with the sea breaking over her. Her mizen-mast, the lower foremast, and bowsprit had gone. The cable of the only anchor she had left was cut by English shot, and after a manful effort to reeve a new one had been made, and the anchor had failed to hold, she drove ashore. The position of the Indefatigable was terrible, for her one chance of escape was to round the Penmarchs at the south point of Audierne Bay, and she was damaged. But her crew and officers showed “their full value,” as their captain gratefully acknowledged. She cleared the rocks and gained the open sea.

The Droits de l’homme lay without possibility of help, for two days, in the breakers, and two more passed before the last survivors were taken from the wreck. The story may be read in the narrative of Lieutenant Pipon. The English prisoners were called up from the cable tier with the cry Pauvres anglais! Pauvres anglais! Montes Bien vite. Nous sommes tous perdus. When the boats were lowered some women and children, who were among the English prisoners, were given the first chance of escape. But the boats were shattered alongside, and they all perished. The Droits de l’homme lay breaking up, and the crew perished slowly, one brave man, the sailmaker, Lamende, nearly lost his life in an attempt to swim ashore with a line, and an army officer who followed him was drowned. The English worked manfully in the common cause, one of them, a merchant skipper, going over the side fourteen times to save the people in the boats. They could get neither food nor fresh water. The pangs of hunger can be outlived but not those of thirst. Many drank urine and salt water and went mad. Of the 380 who remained on the wreck on the fourth night half were dead in the morning. The French Government released the English prisoners freely, and gave several of them rewards in money. The shipwrecked crew of the Amazon were well treated. La Crosse survived and was promoted. The loss of the Droits de l’homme was an incident in a campaign, but skill and manhood, heroism, humanity, and devotion to duty are noble and immortal things. We cannot look at them too carefully or too long.

In all these events fortune had a great share, but excepting the activity of a few frigates, the Royal Navy had little part. When Admiral Colpoys heard from the captain of the Phœbe that the French were at sea, his fleet was in want of stores, and he knew not where the enemy was gone. So he bore up for Spithead, and, dropping part of his ships at the western ports on the way, reached it on the 31st December with six sail. Bridport, urged to get quickly to sea when the Government learnt that the French were out, had started on the 25th, four days after Bouvet reached Bantry. But he met difficulties. The Prince ran into the Sans-Pareil, and the Formidable into the Ville de Paris. The Atlas grounded. Then he was stopped in a gale, and he did not sail with his fourteen ships of the line till the 3rd January 1797. He cruised about, from Ushant to Cape Clear, chased the much chased Fraternité on the 9th, and intercepted nothing. He was fifty-seven miles west of Ushant when the last of the returning French ships entered Brest. Before he returned to Spithead on the 3rd February, he detached Rear-Admiral Sir W. Parker to join Jervis with the Prince George, Namur, Irresistible, Orion, Colossus, and Thalia frigate. They were to be usefully employed, for it was this reinforcement which enabled Jervis to fight the battle of Cape St. Vincent.

The five line-of-battle ships and the frigate were sent to join Jervis at his rendezvous at Cape St. Vincent in fulfilment of a promise that the squadron carried off by Mann should be replaced, and his force brought up again to twenty sail. They served to bring him up to the fifteen he had had a few weeks before they joined him on the 6th February. The Courageux, 80, had been lost, and the Gibraltar, 80, driven on the Pearl Rock during the furious gale of the 10th December, in which Villeneuve escaped from the Mediterranean. Shortly after Jervis left Gibraltar for Lisbon on the 16th December, the Zealous, 74, struck on a rock in Tangier Bay, and was badly damaged. As he entered Lisbon on the 21st, the Bombay Castle, 74, ran ashore and was lost. When he left it on the 18th January to escort a Portuguese convoy out of danger and to observe the Spaniards, the St. George, 98, after running into and dismasting a Portuguese frigate, grounded heavily on the great Cachop. His command had therefore been brought down to ten by the 6th February. To complete the tale it may be added that the fifteen were nearly reduced to fourteen or even thirteen while it was still dark on the morning of the 12th, when the Culloden, 74, ran into the Colossus, 74, because the second, after holding her wind too long while the fleet was tacking in succession, suddenly bore up across the bows of the first, and tore her fore-rigging badly.[3] The energy of Captain Troubridge of the Culloden brought his ship quickly into trim, and she took a leading part in the coming battle.

Lángara had been superseded by Don José de Córdoba at Carthagena, and the Spanish fleet under its new admiral came on in pursuit of a wild scheme to sail to Brest, join the French ships there, now under the command of Villeneuve, then join a Dutch force in the Texel and renew the attempted invasion of England. The scheme was wild on many grounds, but particularly because of the utter want of quality in the Spanish fleet. It has already been said, when speaking of the American War, that the Spanish Government had endeavoured to form a great fleet by building more ships than it could afford, and had never had money to spend on training officers and men. Every evil it suffered from in 1779 had been intensified under the imbecile government of King Charles IV. A mass of fine ships was heaped up, but they were manned with crews which hardly included a tenth of seamen, and commanded by officers who had had little practice. Nothing had been done to improve it since the wars began in 1793. On the contrary, neglect, failure to pay or even feed the men, made the service odious, and it grew even worse. The best officer in the Spanish navy, Jose Mazaredo, had refused to take the command unless the Government bound itself to commission no more ships than it could man. He had been arrested, to punish him for questioning the wisdom of his superiors. Every officer in the Spanish fleet knew its unfitness to meet the English.

Every English officer knew its weaknesses too, and nobody better than Jervis. He was aware that the narrow failure of the invasion of Ireland had shaken the nerve of the country. The discontent in the fleet, which was just about to break into mutiny, was not unknown to him. A victory was very necessary to England. A weak man would have looked to numbers alone, and would have been cautious. Jervis looked to the quality of the enemy, and the greatness of the crisis. He saw how much better it would be that every one of his fifteen ships should go to the bottom if only she could take a Spaniard with her, than that Córdoba should reach Brest. Therefore as Hood sailed from Antigua resolved to fight Grasse, be his number what they might, so Jervis waited at Cape St. Vincent, resolute to give battle whatever numbers the Spaniards might bring against him.

On the morning of the 13th February he was joined by the Minerva, 36, which had just sighted the Spaniards, and had been chased by them. Nelson had been sent up the Mediterranean in her to bring away Sir Gilbert Elliot from Porto Ferrajo, whither he had retired after the evacuation of Corsica. He now hoisted his commodore’s pennant in the Captain, 74. At four in the afternoon the signal was made to clear for action, and during the night the fleet remained under reduced canvas, keeping its post of watch. The signal guns of the Spaniards were heard at half-past one on the morning of the 14th, and at half-past two, a Scotchman, Captain Campbell, in the Portuguese service, who commanded the Carlotta frigate, spoke the flagship, and informed Jervis that the Spaniards were fifteen miles to windward—that is, to the west of him. Daylight came on the 14th with fresh breezes from the west and a thick haze. At six, reefs were shaken out and the search for the enemy began. By seven, strange sails were seen in the haze to the S.S.W. stretching across our route to the S.E. The reconnoitring frigates and sloops reported their numbers, which were discovered to be greater as the air cleared. At 8.20 the signal was made to prepare for battle, and at 9.20 the Culloden, Blenheim, and Prince George were ordered to chase. When at 9.47 the Bonne Citoyenne sloop reported seeing more vessels to the S.W., the Irresistible and Colossus were ordered to join in the chase. The Orion joined without orders and was not recalled. About ten the air cleared, and the two fleets were fully revealed to one another.

The Spaniards were aware of the approach of Jervis, and two of their look-out frigates had actually seen part of his ships, but they underestimated his strength. Their national carelessness, intensified perhaps by the desperation of men who knew they were devoted to a hopeless task, was never more conspicuous. Their ships were wandering in two confused shoals, one of nineteen sail was to windward and westward of the English, another of six was to leeward and eastward. The two were trying to join, but there was a wide interval between them. A twenty-sixth Spaniard was seen outside the windward division, and a twenty-seventh was coming up from leeward. Jervis at once headed from the open space between the two divisions. At 10.57 the order was given to form in a line of battle ahead and astern of the flagship as most convenient.

As the ships fell in to their places the line was formed thus:—