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

Among the first measures of the new czar was the release of the British seamen imprisoned by his father. This order was dated April 7. On the 12th the British ships entered the Baltic,—much to the surprise of the Northern Powers, who thought their heavy draught would prevent. The three-deckers had to remove their guns to pass some shoal ground ten miles above Copenhagen. After an excursion to intercept a Swedish fleet said to be at sea, Parker anchored his ships in Kioge Bay,—off the coast of Zealand just within the entrance to the Baltic,—and there awaited further instructions from home; the Russian minister at Copenhagen having informed him that the new czar would not go to war. 33 Nelson entirely disapproved of this inactive attitude. Russia might yield the conditions of Great Britain, but she would be more likely to do so if the British fleet lay off the harbor of Revel. This seems also to have been the view of the ministry. It received news of the battle of Copenhagen on April 15, and at about the same date learned the death of Paul I. Advantage was very properly taken of the latter to adopt a policy of conciliation. On the 17th orders were issued to Parker modifying his first instructions. If Alexander removed the embargo and released the seamen, all hostile movements were to be suspended. If not, a cessation of hostilities was to be offered, if Russia were willing to treat; but upon condition that, until these ships and men were released, the Revel division should not join that in Cronstadt, nor vice versâ. 34 This presumed a position of the British fleet very different from Kioge Bay, over four hundred miles from Revel.

Four days later, orders were issued relieving Parker and leaving Nelson in command. Taken as this step was, only a week after the news of a victory, it can scarcely be construed otherwise than as an implied censure. To this view an expression of Nelson's lends color. "They are not Sir Hyde Parker's real friends who wish for an inquiry," he wrote to a confidential correspondent. "His friends in the fleet wish everything of this fleet to be forgot, for we all respect and love Sir Hyde; but the dearer his friends, the more uneasy they have been at his idleness, for that is the truth—no criminality." 35 The orders were received on May 5. Nelson's first signal was to hoist the boats aboard and prepare to weigh. "If Sir Hyde were gone," he wrote the same afternoon, "I would now be under sail." On the 7th the fleet left Kioge Bay and on the 12th appeared off Revel. The Russian division had sailed three days before and was now safe under the guns of Cronstadt. From Revel Nelson dispatched very complimentary letters to the Russian minister of foreign affairs, but received in reply the message that "the only proof of the loyalty of his intentions that the czar could accept was the prompt withdrawal of his fleet; and that until then no negotiation could proceed." "I do not believe he would have written such a letter," said Nelson, "if the Russian fleet had been in Revel;" 36 but the bird was flown, and with a civil explanation he withdrew from the port. He still remained in the Baltic, awaiting the issue of the negotiations; but Russia meant peace, and on the 17th of May the czar ordered the release of the embargoed British ships. On the 4th of June Great Britain also released the Danes and Swedes detained in her ports. Russia and Prussia had already agreed, on the 27th of April, that hostile measures against England should cease, Hamburg and Hanover be evacuated, and the free navigation of the rivers restored.

On the 17th of June was signed at St. Petersburg a convention between Russia and Great Britain, settling the points that had been in dispute. The question of Malta was tacitly dropped. As regards neutral claims Russia conceded that the neutral flag should not cover enemy's goods; and while she obtained the formal admission that articles of hostile origin which had become bonâ fide neutral property were exempt from seizure, she yielded the very important exception of colonial produce. This, no matter who the owner, could not by a neutral be carried direct from the colony to the mother country of a nation at war. 37 Great Britain, on the other hand, conceded the right of neutrals to carry on the coasting trade of a belligerent; and that naval stores should not be classed as contraband of war. The latter was an important concession, the former probably not, coasting trade being ordinarily done by small craft especially adapted to the local conditions. As regards searching merchant vessels under convoy of a ship of war, Russia yielded the principle and Great Britain accepted methods which would make the process less offensive. Privateers in such case could not search. The question was unimportant; for neutral merchant ships will not lightly submit to the restraint and delays of convoy, and so lose the chief advantage, that of speed, which they have over belligerents. When a neutral sees necessary to convoy her merchantmen, the very fact shows relations already strained.

Sweden and Denmark necessarily followed the course of Russia and acceded to all the terms of the convention between that court and Great Britain; Sweden on the 23d of October, 1801, and Denmark on the 30th of the following March. The claim to carry colonial produce to Europe, thus abandoned, was of importance to them, though not to Russia. At the same time the Baltic states renewed among themselves the engagements, which they had relinquished in their convention with Great Britain, that the neutral flag should cover enemy's property on board and that the convoy of a ship of war should exempt merchant vessels from search. These principles were in point of fact modifications sought to be introduced into international law, and not prescriptive rights, as commonly implied by French historians 38 dealing with this question. For this reason both the United States and the Baltic powers, while favoring the new rule, were little disposed to attempt by arms to compel the surrender by Great Britain of a claim sanctioned by long custom.

Thus had fallen resultless, as far as the objects of the first consul were concerned, the vast combination against Great Britain which he had fostered in the North. During its short existence he had actively pursued in the south of Europe, against Naples and Portugal, other measures intended further to embarrass, isolate, and cripple the great Sea Power, and to facilitate throwing much needed supplies and re-enforcements into Egypt. "The ambassador of the republic," he wrote in February, 1801, "will make the Spanish ministry understand that we must at whatsoever cost become masters of the Mediterranean.... France will have fifteen ships-of-the-line in the Mediterranean before the equinox; and, if Spain will join to them fifteen others, the English, who are about to have the ports of Lisbon, Sicily, and Naples closed to them, will not be able to keep thirty ships in the Mediterranean. That being so, I doubt not they will evacuate Mahon, being unable to remain in that sea." 39

For the closure of the ports Bonaparte relied with good reason upon his armies; but in the concurrent expectation of uniting thirty French and Spanish ships he reckoned without his host, as he did also upon the Russian Black Sea fleet, and the numbers the British must keep in the Baltic and off Brest. After the armistice with Austria in Italy, a corps under Murat was pushed toward Naples; and on the same day that the treaty of Lunéville was concluded, February 9, a truce for thirty days was signed with the Two Sicilies. This was followed on the 28th of March by a definitive treaty of peace. Naples engaged to exclude from all her ports, including those of Sicily, the ships both of war and commerce belonging to Great Britain and Turkey; while those of France and her allies, as well as of the Northern powers, should have free access. She also suffered some slight territorial loss; but the most significant article was kept secret. The boot of Italy was to be occupied by a division of twelve or fifteen thousand French, whom Naples was to pay and support, and to whom were to be delivered all the maritime fortresses south of the river Ofanto and east of the Bradano, including the ports of Taranto and Brindisi. "This occupation," wrote Bonaparte to his war-minister, "is only in order to facilitate the communications of the army of Egypt with France." 40 The Neapolitan ports became a refuge for French squadrons; while the army of occupation stood ready to embark, if any body of ships found their way to those shores. Unfortunately, the combined British and Turkish armies had already landed in Egypt, and had won the battle of Alexandria a week before the treaty with Naples was signed. As a speedy result the French in Egypt were divided; part being forced back upon Cairo and part shut up in Alexandria,—while the fleet of Admiral Keith cruised off the coast.

No French squadron succeeded in carrying to Egypt the desired re-enforcements, notwithstanding the numerous efforts made by the first consul. The failure arose from two causes: the penury of the French arsenals, and the difficulty of a large body of ships escaping together, or of several small bodies effecting a combination, in face of the watchfulness of the British. Both troubles were due mainly to the rigid and methodical system introduced by Earl St. Vincent; who, fortunately for Great Britain, assumed command of the Channel fleet at the same time that Bonaparte sought to impress upon the French navy a more sagacious direction and greater energy of action. His instructions to Admiral Bruix in February, 1800, 41 were to sail from Brest with over thirty French and Spanish sail-of-the-line, to drive the British blockaders from before the port, to relieve Malta, send a light squadron to Egypt, and then bring his fleet to Toulon, where it would be favorably placed to control the Mediterranean. Delay ensuing, owing to lack of supplies and the unwillingness of the Spaniards, he wrote again at the end of March, "If the equinox passes without the British fleet dispersing, then, great as is our interest in raising the blockade of Malta and carrying help to Egypt, they must be abandoned;" 42 and throughout the summer months he confined his action to the unremitting efforts, already noticed, to keep a stream of small vessels constantly moving towards Egypt.

After the autumn equinox Bonaparte again prepared for a grand naval operation. Admiral Ganteaume was detailed to sail from Brest with seven ships-of-the-line, carrying besides their crews four thousand troops and an immense amount of material. "Admiral Ganteaume," wrote he to Menou, commander-in-chief in Egypt, "brings to your army the succor we have not before been able to send. He will hand you this letter." The letter was dated October 29, 1800, but it never reached its destination. Ganteaume could not get out from Brest till nearly three months later, when, on January 23d, 1801, a terrible north-east gale drove off the British squadron and enabled him to put to sea. "A great imprudence," says Thiers, "but what could be done in presence of an enemy's fleet which incessantly blockaded Brest in all weathers, and only retired when cruising became impossible. It was necessary either never to go out, or to do so in a tempest which should remove the British squadron." The incident of the sortie, as well as Ganteaume's subsequent experiences, illustrates precisely the deterrent effect exercised by St. Vincent's blockades. 43 They could not prevent occasional escapes, but they did throw obstacles nearly insuperable in the way of combining and executing any of the major operations of war. Owing to the weather which had to be chosen for starting, the squadron was at once dispersed and underwent considerable damage. 44 It was not all reunited till a week later. On the 9th of February it passed Gibraltar; but news of its escape had already reached the British admiral Warren cruising off Cadiz, who followed quickly, entering Gibraltar only twenty-hours after the French went by. On the 13th of January Ganteaume captured a British frigate, from which he learned that the Mediterranean fleet under Lord Keith was then convoying an army of fifteen thousand British troops against Egypt. He expected that Warren also would soon be after him, and the injuries received in the gale weighed upon his mind. Considering all the circumstances, he decided to abandon Egypt and go to Toulon. Warren remained cruising in the Mediterranean watching for the French admiral, who twice again started for his destination. The first time he was obliged to return by a collision between two ships. The second, an outbreak of disease compelled him to send back three of the squadron. The other four reached the African coast some distance west of Alexandria, where they undertook to land the troops; but Keith's fleet appeared on the horizon, and, cutting their cables, they made a hasty retreat, without having effected their object.

Similar misfortune attended Bonaparte's attempt to collect an efficient force in Cadiz, where Spain had been induced or compelled to yield to him six ships-of-the-line, and where she herself had some vessels. To these he intended to send a large detachment from Rochefort under Admiral Bruix, who was to command the whole, when combined. To concentrations at any point, however, British squadrons before the ports whence the divisions were to sail imposed obstacles, which, even if occasionally evaded, were fatal to the final great design. The advantage of the central position was consistently realized. On the other hand, where a great number of ships happened to be together, as at Brest in 1801, the want of supplies, caused by the same close watch and by the seizure of naval stores as contraband, paralyzed their equipment. Finding himself baffled at Brest for these reasons, the first consul appointed Rochefort for the first concentration. When the second was effected at Cadiz, Bruix was to hold himself ready for further operations. If Egypt could not be directly assisted, it might be indirectly by harassing the British communications. "Every day," wrote Bonaparte, "a hundred sails pass the straits under weak convoy, to supply Malta and the English fleet." If this route were flanked at Cadiz, by a squadron like that of Bruix, much exertion would be needed to protect it. But the concentration at Rochefort failed, the ships from Brest could not get there, and the Rochefort ships themselves never sailed.

Coincidently with this attempt, another effort was made to strengthen the force at Cadiz. 45 The three vessels sent back by Ganteaume, after his second sailing from Toulon, were also ordered to proceed there, under command of Rear Admiral Linois. Linois successfully reached the Straits of Gibraltar, but there learned from a prize that seven British ships were cruising off his destination. These had been sent with Admiral Saumarez from the Channel fleet, to replace Warren, when the admiralty learned the active preparations making in Cadiz and the French ports. Not venturing to proceed against so superior an enemy, Linois put into Gibraltar Bay, anchoring on the Spanish side under the guns of Algesiras. Word was speedily sent to Saumarez; and on July 6, two days after Linois anchored, six British ships were seen rounding the west point of the bay. They attacked at once; but the wind was baffling, they could not get their positions, and both flanks of the French line were supported by shore batteries, which were efficiently worked by soldiers landed from the squadron. The attack was repulsed, and one British seventy-four that grounded under a battery was forced to strike. Saumarez withdrew under Gibraltar and proceeded to refit; the crews working all day and by watches at night to gain the opportunity to revenge their defeat. Linois sent to Cadiz for the help he needed, and on the 10th five Spanish ships-of-the-line and one French 46 from there anchored off Algesiras. On the 12th they got under way with Linois's three, and at the same time Saumarez with his six hauled out from Gibraltar. The allies retreated upon Cadiz, the British following. During the night the van of the pursuers brought the hostile rear to action, and a terrible scene ensued. A Spanish three-decker caught fire, and in the confusion was taken for an enemy by one of her own fleet of the same class. The two ships, of one hundred and twelve guns each and among the largest in the world, ran foul of each other and perished miserably in a common conflagration. The French "St. Antoine" was captured.

The incident of Saumarez's meeting with Linois has a particular value, because of the repulse and disaster to the British vessels on the first occasion. Unvarying success accounts, or seems to account, for itself; but in this case the advantage of the squadron's position before Cadiz transpires through a failure on the battle-field. To that position was due, first, that Linois's detachment could not make its junction; second, that it was attacked separately and very severely handled; third, that in the retreat to Cadiz the three French ships were not in proper condition to engage, although one of them when brought to action made a very dogged resistance to, and escaped from, an inferior ship. Consequently, the six British that pursued had only six enemies instead of nine to encounter. After making allowance for the very superior quality of the British officers and crews over the Spanish, it is evident the distinguishing feature in these operations was that the British squadron brought the enemies' divisions to action separately. It was able to do so because it had been kept before the hostile port, interposing between them.

Saumarez had wrung success out of considerable difficulty. The failure of the wind greatly increased the disadvantage to his vessels, coming under sail into action with others already drawn up at anchor, and to whom the loss of spars for the moment meant little. These circumstances, added to the support of the French by land batteries and some gunboats, went far to neutralize tactically the superior numbers of the British. With all deductions, however, the fight at Algesiras was extremely creditable to Linois. He was a man not only distinguished for courage, but also of a cautious temper peculiarly fitted to secure every advantage offered by a defensive position. Despite his success there, the broad result was decisively in favor of his opponents. "Sir James Saumarez's action," wrote Lord St. Vincent, "has put us upon velvet." Seven British had worsted nine enemy's ships, as distinctly superior, for the most part, in individual force as they were in numbers. Not only had the Spaniards three of ninety guns and over, and one of eighty, but two of Linois's were of the latter class, of which Saumarez had but one. The difference between such and the seventy-fours was not only in number of pieces, but in weight also. The substantial issue, however, can be distinguished from the simple victory, and it was secured not only by superior efficiency but also by strategic disposition.

Brilliant as was Saumarez's achievement, which Nelson, then in England, warmly extolled in the House of Lords, the claim made by his biographer, that to these operations alone was wholly due the defeat of Bonaparte's plan, is exaggerated. It was arranged, he says, that when the junction was made, the Cadiz ships should proceed off Lisbon, sack that place, and destroy British merchantmen lying there; "then, being re-enforced by the Brest fleet, they were to pass the Straits of Gibraltar, steer direct for Alexandria, and there land such a body of troops as would raise the siege and drive the English out of Egypt. This would certainly have succeeded had the squadron under Linois not encountered that of Sir James, which led to the total defeat of their combined fleets and to the abandonment of the grand plan." 47 This might be allowed to stand as a harmless exhibition of a biographer's zeal, did it not tend to obscure the true lesson to be derived from this whole naval period, by attributing to a single encounter, however brilliant, results due to an extensive, well-conceived general system. Sir James Saumarez's operations were but an epitome of an action going on everywhere from the Baltic to Egypt. By this command of the sea the British fleets, after they had adopted the plan of close-watching the enemy's ports, held everywhere interior positions, which, by interposing between the hostile detachments, facilitated beating them in detail. For the most part this advantage of position resulted in quietly detaining the enemy in port, and so frustrating his combinations. It was Saumarez's good fortune to illustrate how it could also enable a compact body of highly disciplined ships to meet in rapid succession two parts of a force numerically very superior, and by the injuries inflicted on each neutralize the whole for a definite time. But, had he never seen Linois, Bonaparte's plan still required the junctions from Rochefort and Brest which were never effected.

By naval combinations and by holding the Neapolitan ports Bonaparte sought to preserve Egypt and force Great Britain to peace. "The question of maritime peace," he wrote to Ganteaume, 48 "hangs now upon the English expedition to Egypt." Portugal, the ancient ally of Great Britain, was designed to serve other purposes of his policy,—to furnish equivalents, with which to wrest from his chief enemy the conquests that the sea power of France and her allies could not touch. "Notify our minister at Madrid," wrote he to Talleyrand, September 30, 1800, "that the Spanish troops must be masters of Portugal before October 15. This is the only means by which we can have an equivalent for Malta, Mahon, and Trinidad. Besides, the danger of Portugal will be keenly felt in England, and will by so much quicken her disposition to peace."

A secret treaty ceding Louisiana to France, in return for Tuscany to the Spanish infante, had been signed the month before; and Spain at the same time undertook to bring Portugal to break with Great Britain. Solicitation proving ineffectual, Bonaparte in the spring again demanded the stronger measure of an armed occupation of the little kingdom; growing more urgent as it became evident that Egypt was slipping from his grasp. Spain finally agreed to invade Portugal, and accepted the co-operation of a French corps. The first consul purposed to occupy at least three of the Portuguese provinces; but he was outwitted by the adroitness of the Spanish government, unwillingly submissive to his pressure, and by the compliance of his brother Lucien, French minister to Madrid. Portugal made no efficient resistance; and the two peninsular courts quickly reached an agreement, by which the weaker closed her ports to Great Britain, paid twenty million francs to France, and ceded a small strip of territory to Spain.

Bonaparte was enraged at this treaty, which was ratified without giving him a chance to interfere; 49 but in the summer of 1801 his diplomatic game reached a stage where further delay was impossible. He saw that the loss of Egypt was only a question of time; but so long as any French troops held out there it was a card in his hand, too valuable to risk for the trifling gain of a foothold in Portugal. "The English are not masters of Egypt," he writes boldly on the 23d of July to the French agent in London. "We have certain news that Alexandria can hold out a year, and Lord Hawkesbury knows that Egypt is in Alexandria;" 50 but four days later he sends the hopeless message to Murat, "There is no longer any question of embarking" 51 the troops about Taranto, sent there for the sole purpose of being nearer to Egypt. 52 He continues, in sharp contrast with his former expectation, "The station of the troops upon the Adriatic is intended to impose upon the Turks and the English, and to serve as material for compensation to the latter by evacuating those provinces." Both Naples and Portugal were too distant, too ex-centric, and thrust too far into contact with the British dominion of the sea to be profitably, or even safely, held by France in her condition of naval debility; a truth abundantly witnessed by the later events of Napoleon's reign, by the disastrous occupation of Portugal in 1807, by the reverses of Soult and Masséna in 1809 and 1811, and by the failure even to attempt the conquest of Sicily.

Russia and Prussia had grown less friendly since the death of Paul. Even their agreement that Hanover should be evacuated, disposed as they now were to please Great Britain, was to be postponed until "it was ascertained that a certain power would not occupy that country;" 53 a stipulation which betrayed the distrust felt by both. Since then each had experienced evasions and rebuffs showing the unwillingness of the first consul to meet their wishes in his treatment of the smaller states; and they suspected, although they did not yet certainly know, the steps already taken to incorporate with France regions to whose independence they held.54 Both were responding to the call of their interests, beneficially and vitally connected with the sea power of Great Britain, and threatened on the Continent by the encroaching course of the French ruler. Bonaparte felt that the attempt to make further gains in Europe, with which to traffic against those of Great Britain abroad, might arouse resistance in these great powers, not yet exhausted like Austria, and so indefinitely postpone the maritime peace essential to the revival of the French navy and the re-establishment of the colonial system; both at this time objects of prime importance in his eyes. Thus it was that, beginning the year 1801 without a single ally, in face of the triumphant march of the French armies and of a formidable maritime combination, the Sea Power of Great Britain had dispersed the Northern coalition, commanded the friendship of the great states, retained control of the Mediterranean, reduced Egypt to submission, and forced even the invincible Bonaparte to wish a speedy cessation of hostilities.