The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire 1793-1812, Vol II

At quarter before five Admiral Gravina, whose ship had been the rear of the order during the battle and had lost heavily, retreated toward Cadiz, making signal to the vessels which had not struck to form around his flag. Five other Spanish ships and five French followed him. As he was withdrawing, the last two to resist of the allied fleet struck their colors.

During the night of the 21st these eleven ships anchored at the mouth of Cadiz harbor, which they could not then enter, on account of a land wind from south-east. At the same time the British and their prizes were being carried shoreward by the heavy swell which had prevailed during the battle; the light air blowing from the sea not enabling them to haul off. The situation was one of imminent peril. At midnight the wind freshened much, but fortunately hauled to the southward, whence it blew a gale all the 22d. The ships got their heads to the westward and drew off shore, with thirteen of the prizes; the other four having had to anchor off Cape Trafalgar. That morning the "Bucentaure," Villeneuve's late flag-ship, was wrecked on some rocks off the entrance to Cadiz; and toward evening the "Redoutable," that had so nobly supported her, was found to be sinking astern of the British ship that had her in tow. During the night of the 22d she went down, with a hundred and fifty of her people still on board. On the 24th the same fate befell the great "Santisima Trinidad," which had been the French admiral's next ahead. Thus his own ship and his two supports vanished from the seas.

For several days the wind continued violent from north-west and south-west. On the 23d five of the ships that had escaped with Gravina put out, to cut off some of the prizes that were near the coast. They succeeded in taking two; but as these were battered to pieces, while three of the five rescuers were carried on the beach and wrecked with great loss of life, little advantage resulted from this well-meant and gallant sortie. Two other prizes were given up to their own crews by the British prize-masters, because the latter were not able with their scanty force to save them. These got into Cadiz. Of the remaining British prizes, all but four either went ashore or were destroyed by the orders of Collingwood, who despaired of saving them. No British ship was lost.

Of thirty-three combined French and Spanish ships which sailed out of Cadiz on the 20th of October, eleven, five French and six Spanish, mostly now disabled hulks, lay there at anchor on the last day of the month. The four that escaped to sea under Dumanoir fell in with a British squadron of the same size near Cape Ortegal, on the 4th of November, and were all taken. This raised the allied loss to twenty-two,—two more than the twenty for which Nelson, in his dying hour, declared that he had bargained.

No attempt to move from Cadiz was again made by the shattered relics of the fight. On the 25th of October Rosily arrived and took up his now blasted command. Nearly three years later, when the Spanish monarchy, so long the submissive tool of the Directory and of Napoleon, had been overthrown by the latter, and the Spanish people had risen against the usurper, the five French ships were still in the port. Surprised between the British blockade and the now hostile batteries of the coast, Rosily, after an engagement of two days with the latter, surrendered his squadron, with the four thousand seamen then on board. This event occurred on the 14th of June, 1808. It was the last echo of Trafalgar.

Such, in its leading outlines and direct consequences, was the famous battle of Trafalgar. Its lasting significance and far-reaching results have been well stated by a recent historian, more keenly alive than most of his fellows to the paramount, though silent, influence of Sea Power upon the course of events: "Trafalgar was not only the greatest naval victory, it was the greatest and most momentous victory won either by land or by sea during the whole of the Revolutionary War. No victory, and no series of victories, of Napoleon produced the same effect upon Europe.... A generation passed after Trafalgar before France again seriously threatened England at sea. The prospect of crushing the British navy, so long as England had the means to equip a navy, vanished. Napoleon henceforth set his hopes on exhausting England's resources, by compelling every state on the Continent to exclude her commerce. Trafalgar forced him to impose his yoke upon all Europe, or to abandon the hope of conquering Great Britain.... Nelson's last triumph left England in such a position that no means remained to injure her but those which must result in the ultimate deliverance of the Continent." 246

These words may be accepted with very slight modification. Napoleon's scheme for the invasion of Great Britain, thwarted once and again by the strategic difficulties attendant upon its execution, was finally frustrated when Villeneuve gave up the attempt to reach Brest and headed for Cadiz. On the part of the allies Trafalgar was, in itself, a useless holocaust, precipitated in the end by the despair of the unfortunate admiral, upon whose irresolution Napoleon not unjustly visited the anger caused by the wreck of his plans. Villeneuve was perfectly clear-sighted and right in his appreciation of the deficiencies of his command,—of the many chances against success. Where he wretchedly failed was in not recognizing the simple duty of obedience,—the obligation to persist at all hazards in the part of a great scheme assigned to him, even though it led to the destruction of his whole force. Had he, upon leaving Ferrol, been visited by a little of the desperation which brought him to Trafalgar, the invasion of England might possibly—not probably—have been effected.

An event so striking as the battle of Trafalgar becomes, however, to mankind the symbol of all the circumstances—more important, perhaps, but less obvious—which culminate in it. In this sense it may be said that Trafalgar was the cause—as it certainly marked the period—of Napoleon's resolution to crush Great Britain by excluding her commerce from the Continent. Here, therefore, the story of the influence of Sea Power upon this great conflict ceases to follow the strictly naval events, and becomes concerned simply with commerce-destroying, ordinarily a secondary operation of maritime war, but exalted in the later years of Napoleon's reign to be the principal, if not the sole, means of action.

To this the two next chapters are devoted. Of these, the first deals with commerce-destroying in the ordinary sense of the words, directed against enemies' property on the high seas; beginning with the outbreak of war in 1793, and narrating the series of measures by which the republic sought to break down British commerce and foreshadowed the policy of Napoleon's Berlin and Milan decrees. The second begins with the Berlin decree, in 1806; and, tracing one by one the steps which carried the emperor from violence to violence, seeks to show how these found their necessary outcome in the Russian expedition and the fall of the Empire. Detached thus, as far as may be, from the maze of contemporary history in which they are commonly lost, these successive acts of the French government are seen to form a logical sequence, connected by one motive and dominated by one necessity. The motive is the destruction of Great Britain, the necessity that of self-preservation. Each nation, unassailable on its own element, stood like an impregnable fortress that can be brought to surrender only by the exhaustion of its resources. In this struggle of endurance Napoleon fell.

CHAPTER XVII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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