The Influence of sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire 1793-1812, vol I

The answer can scarcely be yes. Nelson, indeed, exerted himself with the energy that never failed him; but his correspondence shows that he did not think the force assigned him equal to its task. Could it then have been increased? The answer again is scarcely doubtful. The British fleet of the line was slightly superior in numbers to the French at Toulon, and far superior in the quality of its officers and men. It was doubtless embarrassed by numerous duties,—by those conflicting interests whose divergence imposes the great test of capacity upon a general officer. The French fleet at Toulon, co-operation with the Austrian advance, the protection of trade, the covering of Corsica, the political interests involved in controlling the action of the small Italian states,—all these cares fell upon the British admiral. Of these, the French fleet was the most important; but all other interests of Britain and her allies were better served by co-operation with the Austrian advance,—by victory in the field,—than by any dissemination of force for other purposes. A decisive Imperial success would have determined the policy of every state in the western Mediterranean and closed every port to French cruisers.

In short, offensive action, and not the merely defensive attitude maintained through the campaign, was here clearly indicated. Nelson intimates that the only course by which the navy could practically intercept the French communications was to enter the coasting ports and destroy the coasters. These little vessels defied detection on their voyages; only by chasing them into their nests could their wings be clipped. "A few days ago," he writes, "I scoured the coast between Monaco and Borghetto so completely, that although I was only able to take one ship loaded with corn, yet I forced the others into the Bay of Alassio, where they are so completely under the protection of formidable batteries that not less than three sail-of-the-line could attempt to take or destroy them. The number of vessels loaded and unloaded at those places is near one hundred, the greater part loaded with stores and corn for France." 120 Here was the strategic direction to be given to the British navy, after providing for the watch off Toulon. "You will now," wrote Nelson five years later to Lord Keith, "bear me out in my assertion, when I say that the British fleet could have prevented the invasion of Italy; and if our friend Hotham had kept his fleet on that coast, I assert, and you will agree with me, no army from France could have been furnished with stores or provisions; even men could not have marched." 121 If the fleet proved unequal to this task, final condemnation was passed on the allied plan of campaign, which was not in its conception characterized by sound military judgment. But Admiral Hotham, as Nelson said, had "no head for enterprise, perfectly satisfied that each month passes without any losses on our side." 122 Nelson never had under his orders any other ship-of-the-line than his own "Agamemnon;" and at the time of the decisive battle of Loano all his little squadron had been taken away except two, so that French gunboats harassed with impunity the left flank of the Austrians. 123 He himself at that critical moment had to remain in Genoa with the "Agamemnon," at the request of the Imperial minister, to prevent the crew of a French frigate then in port, supported as it would have been by French partisans, from seizing Voltri,—an important point upon the line of retreat of the Austrians, where a few resolute men could have stopped them until the pursuing army came up. To him alone was therefore attributed the escape of several thousand Imperial soldiers, among whom was the commander-in-chief himself. 124 Prior to the battle Genoa had permitted French intrigues and armed enterprises of this character to be concerted, almost openly, in her territories. This she would not have dared to do, had the British navy been present in force on the coast, acting under such a commander as Nelson; for the probabilities of final success would have been with the allies. In short, this campaign of the British fleet contributes another to the numerous lessons of history, upon the importance of having sufficient force at the decisive point and taking the offensive. It may be added that Hotham could better have spared ships to Nelson, if he had not thrown away his two opportunities of beating the Toulon fleet.

While Nelson was co-operating with the Austrians as far as his force admitted, the British fleet was generally cruising off Toulon, returning from time to time to San Fiorenzo or Leghorn for refit and stores. It was in this latter part of the year 1795 that the Directory, as will be remembered, decided to abandon the policy of fleet-fighting and to enter upon that of commerce-destroying, directed against exposed colonies of the enemy as well as against his trade afloat. Two squadrons, numbering in all seven ships-of-the-line and eight smaller vessels, were ordered fitted out at Toulon, which was with difficulty done for want of seamen. Since the action of July off Hyères, nearly all the sailors in Martin's fleet had deserted, disgusted with the bad food, scanty clothing, and constant disaster that were their portion. Enough, however, were at last gathered to man the ships selected; and on the 14th of September six of the line and three frigates got away under the command of Captain Richery. It does not appear whether the British fleet was then at sea or at San Fiorenzo; but in either case it was at this port, and not until September 22d, that Hotham learned their escape. On the 5th of October this leisurely commander-in-chief sent Admiral Mann with six of the line in pursuit; but the French, having so great a start, could not be overtaken. They passed the Straits of Gibraltar early in October, bound to the British possessions in North America. On the 7th of the month, when a hundred and fifty miles west of Gibraltar, they fell in with an enemy's convoy of thirty-one merchant ships from the Levant, under the protection of three seventy-fours. Richery succeeded in capturing one of the latter, which had lost a topmast, and all the merchant ships except one. Having so valuable a booty, he decided to escort it into Cadiz, where he anchored on the 13th and was soon after found by Mann, whose arrival prevented his departure to fulfil his original mission. At about the same time some French frigates in the Atlantic took eighteen ships out of a Jamaica convoy. The other Toulon division, of one ship-of-the-line and six smaller vessels, cruised in the Levant; and, having made a number of prizes, returned safely to Toulon. Its commander, Captain Ganteaume, though undistinguished by any great achievements, was throughout his career remarkably fortunate in escaping the search of an enemy. It was he who commanded the flotilla on board which Bonaparte stole unseen through all the British cruisers, on his return from Egypt to France in 1799.

These results, coinciding so closely with the adoption of the new policy of commerce-destroying, confirmed the government in favor of this course, to which the French have always been strongly disposed. They hoped from it, to use the words of a representative in the Convention, "to force the English to a shameful bankruptcy;" what they obtained was the demoralization of their navy, the loss of the control of the sea and of their own external commerce, finally Napoleon's Continental System and the fall of the Empire.

The battle of Loano, decisive of the campaign of 1795, is yet more distinguished as marking the entrance upon the scene of two of the most remarkable figures in the war of the French Revolution. During the week after it was fought, Admiral Sir John Jervis, better known by his later title of Earl St. Vincent, arrived at San Fiorenzo, as the regular successor to Hood in the Mediterranean. During the winter Napoleon Bonaparte was chosen by the Directory to relieve Schérer in command of the Army of Italy.

The career and character of the youthful republican general are too well known, have been too often described, to be attempted by the author, from whose immediate theme, moreover, they stand apart. The personality of the already aged admiral, whose iron hands stamped his own image on the British navy and fashioned it into the splendid instrument with which the triumphs of Nelson were won, is, on the contrary, familiar to few except the students of naval history. Born in 1734, Sir John Jervis, when he assumed command of the Mediterranean fleet in his sixty-second year, had had no opportunity of distinguishing himself in the eyes of the world outside of the service to which he belonged. With the members of that service, however, he had long been a marked man. The child of a poor though well-born family, he had in early life, under the pressure of poverty, required of himself the same stern discipline and submission to the duty of the moment which he afterwards so rigorously exacted of others. Grave and unbending in his official relations, immovable as a rock when his determination was once formed, unrelenting almost to mercilessness in suppressing insubordination, then rife throughout the British navy, he had the high-bred polish of a man used to good society, and his demeanor was courteous, and, when occasion demanded, even courtly. A traveller by land as well as by sea, a constant and judicious reader, in a period when such habits were rarer than now among seamen, he was well informed in matters other than those relating merely to his profession. Of the latter, however, he was a master. His ship was the model of the British fleet during the American Revolution, and his high reputation drew to her quarter-deck youths from the best families of England, when they could obtain interest to get there. Yet no man was ever less swayed, in an age when social and political influence counted for so much, by any extrinsic claims of that character. Personal merit first, after that a family claim upon the navy, that a father or brother had given his life for the service,—nay, the very friendlessness of a deserving man,—such were the considerations that determined him in the use of patronage at his own disposal.

Yet, with all these strong attributes, capable too of a tenderness which could mourn long and deeply the loss of a valued comrade, the rule of Jervis was one of fear rather than love. It is impossible to criticise adversely measures whose extreme severity was justified, if not imperatively demanded, by the appalling crisis of the mutinies of 1797; impossible to withhold admiration, not unmingled with awe, from the impressive figure of the chief who stood unmoved and unyielding amid the smothered discontent, revolt threatening from below, the enemy's coast in sight from the deck, knowing that in every other fleet the crews had taken the ships from their officers, but determined it should not be so in the Mediterranean. Yet admiration is qualified by the feeling that to the ruthless temper of the man the position was not wholly displeasing,—that he was in his natural element when crushing opposition. A captain, who with great personal courage had quelled a rising in his ship, dragging the ringleaders with his own hands from among their followers, interceded on behalf of one of the condemned because he had previously borne a good character. "I am glad of it," replied Jervis; "hitherto we have been hanging scoundrels. Now men will know that no good character will atone for the crime of mutiny." In lesser matters, also, his tendency was to exaggerate restraint as well as punishment. "Where I would take a penknife," said Nelson, "Lord St. Vincent takes a hatchet."

With such characteristics, accompanied though they were by resolution and high professional accomplishments, it is not to be expected that the fire of genius will be found. Though not an ungenerous man, Lord St. Vincent lacked the sympathetic qualities that made Nelson at once so lovable and so great a leader of men. Escaping the erratic temper and the foibles of his great successor, upon whose career these defects have left marks ever to be regretted by those who love his memory, Jervis fell short too of the inspiration, of the ardor, which in moments of difficulty lifted Nelson far above the common plane of mankind, and have stamped his actions with the seal of genius. But after Nelson, Jervis, though of a different order, stands first among British commanders-in-chief. For inspiration he had a cool, sound, and rapid professional judgment; for ardor, a steady, unflinching determination to succeed; and these, joined to a perfect fearlessness of responsibility such as Nelson also showed, have won for him a place in the first rank of those chieftains, whether sea or land, who have not received the exceptional endowments of Nature's favorites. In the one general action which Fortune permitted to him, the battle of Cape St. Vincent, he illustrated these traits to a high degree; as Nelson then also showed that faculty of quick appreciation and instant action, in which all the processes of thought and will blend into one overpowering conviction and impulse that lesser men never know. Whether we consider the vastly superior numbers then deliberately engaged, the tactics of the admiral on the battle-field, or his appreciation of the critical position in which Great Britain then stood, Sir John Jervis's conduct on that occasion must make the battle of Cape St. Vincent ever illustrious among the most brilliant sea-fights of all ages.

To these powerful elements of his nature, Jervis added a capacity for comprehensive and minute attention to the details of discipline, order and economy, without which mere severity would become aimless and productive of none but bad results. He was fortunate in finding among the Mediterranean captains an unusual number of men of consummate seamanship, energy and resources, in all the vigor of a prime still youthful, who were only waiting for a master-hand to combine and give direction to their abilities. With such a head and with such subordinates, the British Mediterranean fleet soon became a model of efficiency and spirit, which was probably never equalled in the days of sailing ships. Nelson so considered it; and the old admiral himself bewailed its memory several years later, when commanding the Channel fleet, and complained testily of the "old women in the guise of young men," whom he found in charge of ships off Brest. As an administrator, when First Lord, the economy of Jervis became exaggerated into parsimony, and his experience of the frauds connected with the dockyards of the day led him into a crusade against them, which was both well meant and necessary, but particularly ill-timed. It has consequently left a stigma of failure upon his administration, which is due, however, not to his executive inefficiency, but to a misapprehension of the political signs of the times. Absorbed in reform, and for it desiring quiet, he saw only peace while the dark clouds of war were gathering thick on the horizon. Therefore the British navy, well-worn by the first war, was not ready for that which followed it in 1803.

Jervis's arrival in the Mediterranean was too late to remedy the impending evils. It was a singular misfortune for Great Britain, that the interregnum between two such able men as Hood and Jervis should have coincided with the determination of the French to try the chance of battle with their Mediterranean fleet, and that the opportunities they lost should have fallen to so sluggish and cautious an admiral as Hotham. "To say how much we wanted Lord Hood on the 13th of July," wrote Nelson, "is to say, Will you have all the French fleet, or no action?" 125 Accepting this opinion in the light of Nelson's subsequent achievements, it may be permitted to think that, if not all the fleet, so many ships would have fallen as to have prevented the sailing of Richery's squadron and the consequent necessary detachment of Admiral Mann; while the loss of seamen captured would have seriously crippled the operations of the flotilla, which from Toulon supplied the Army of Italy with ammunition, artillery and stores. Light guns on mountain carriages could be carried along the Corniche; but at the opening of Bonaparte's operations all heavy guns, and artillery outfits of all kinds, had to be taken by sea from Nice to Savona. 126 The demands of this flotilla necessitated the laying up of the fleet, 127—a matter of less consequence as the determination to resort to commerce-destroying had then been reached. The French navy therefore became, through the flotilla, a very important part of Bonaparte's communications; and it has already been pointed out that sailing ships could not break up, though they might much disturb, the voyages of the smaller vessels employed on a difficult coast, with batteries under which to take refuge.

After the battle of Loano, Nelson, whose occupation on the Gulf of Genoa was for the time over, went to Leghorn to refit his ship, then nearly three years in commission. Not till January 19,1796, did he join Jervis, who since his arrival on the station had, for the most part, remained in San Fiorenzo organizing his fleet. The new admiral showed him the same confidence as his predecessors, and sent him at once to his old station, with a light division, to prevent any small number of men making a descent upon Italy. A predominant idea, one might almost call it a fad, in Nelson's mind, was the landing of a body of men from ships in rear of the enemy. As has been seen, he was forward to recommend such an attempt to Devins, promising to support it with his squadron; and the intelligence concerning flat-boats and gunboats prepared in the French ports suggested nothing to his mind so much as transporting troops to Tuscany, in rear of the Austrians, while the main French army operated in their front. Like Bonaparte, Nelson recognized the resources which the plains of Piedmont, Lombardy and Tuscany would offer to the needy enemy. He called them a gold mine; but he did not understand the weakness of the French in seamen, nor realize the improbability of Bonaparte's attempting such a use of his troops as would put them far out of mutual support and away from his own control. Certainly no indication of such a purpose is to be found in his correspondence or in the instructions of the Directory to him. On the contrary, he had strongly advised against a pet project of the Committee of Public Safety, early in 1795, to land an expedition in the papal states,—unless with control of the sea. 128

Had the Austrians again advanced to the sea and occupied Vado, Jervis would undoubtedly have supported them and harassed the French to a very important extent. Nelson gave express assurances on that point. 129 Bonaparte, however, allowed him no opportunity. Leaving Paris on the 14th of March, 1796, the young general reached Nice on the 27th of the month. On the 5th of April he moved his headquarters to Albenga, and on the 9th to Savona. On the 10th Beaulieu, the new Austrian general, began to move his left wing by the pass of La Bochetta, his right by that of Montenotte; the junction to be formed at Savona. Quick as lightning, Bonaparte struck at once where the Austrian right touched the Sardinian left. Blow followed blow upon the centre of the allies, and after six days' fighting their armies were definitively separated. Driving the Sardinians before him in unremitting pursuit, Bonaparte on the 28th granted an armistice, by which three of the principal fortresses of Piedmont were put into his possession and plenipotentiaries dispatched to Paris to treat for peace. This was concluded and signed on the 15th of May. Sardinia abandoned the coalition, surrendered the counties of Savoy and Nice, and yielded other conditions favorable to France,—particularly in the boundary lines traced on the crests of the mountains, where the commanding military positions were given to the republic. Thus the gates of Italy were forced; and Austria, stripped of her ally on shore and cut off from the British at sea, alone confronted Bonaparte.

The French were now in the plains of Piedmont, with Lombardy before them. Beaulieu, expecting an advance against Milan by the north bank of the Po, had withdrawn across that river, intending to dispute its passage. If forced, he would cover Milan by falling back successively upon the lines of the Sesia and the Ticino, tributaries of the main stream. Bonaparte, however, was not the man to attack an enemy in front and force him back along his natural line of retreat to his proper base. Weighing accurately the political and military conditions of the peninsula, he had fixed his eye upon the line of the Adige as that which he wished to reach and hold, and which, under all the circumstances, he believed he could master. The Adige flows from the Tyrol south along the east shore of the Lake of Garda, then turns to the eastward and enters the Adriatic between the Po and Venice. Occupying it, the French army would cover all the valleys of the Po, lay tribute upon their resources as well as upon those of the small states south of the river, interpose between Austria and southern Italy, and isolate Mantua, the enemy's great stronghold. Making, therefore, a feint of following Beaulieu by the methodical front attacks expected by him, Bonaparte pushed his main force stealthily along the south bank of the Po. On the 7th of May the advance-guard reached Piacenza, and crossed at once by boats. On the 9th a bridge was completed over the river, which at this point is fifteen hundred feet wide and very rapid. Beaulieu's intended positions on the Sesia and Ticino were thus turned, and the Austrians necessarily fell back to the line of the Adda. On the 10th of May, just one month after Beaulieu began his forward movements, the bridge of Lodi, over the Adda, was carried; and the Austrians again fell back to the Mincio, the outlet of the Lake of Garda, uncovering Milan. On the 15th Bonaparte entered Milan in triumph. Here he paused for ten days, and, after quitting the place, had to return to punish a revolt which broke out among the people; but on the 30th of May the French crossed the Mincio, the Austrians retreating northward toward the Tyrol, along the east shore of the Lake of Garda.

This retrograde movement left Mantua to itself. On the 3d of June Bonaparte's headquarters were at Verona,—a strongly fortified place bestriding the Adige, thus insuring an easy transit to either side of the river, and which derives further strategic importance from its topographical position. A number of spurs run south from the Tyrol along the Lake of Garda and fall into the plain at Verona, which thus stands at the foot of the valleys formed by them. On either side of this cluster of spurs lie the valleys of the Adige and the Brenta, the two probable lines by which an Austrian attack would come. Verona, therefore, was a central point with reference to any offensive movements of the enemy, and became the pivot upon which Bonaparte's strategy hinged. On the 4th of June Mantua was blockaded. Having now compassed his first objective, Bonaparte passed temporarily from the offensive to the defensive, ceased his advance, and occupied himself with assuring the line of the Adige and pressing the siege of Mantua.

There remained only to realize the political advantages gained by his wonderful successes. The Duke of Parma had entered into a convention on the 9th of May, followed in the same course on the 17th by the Duke of Modena. On the 5th of June the Court of Naples, startled out of its dream of security, signed an armistice, withdrawing its troops from the coalition and its ships from the British fleet,—a precipitate abandonment of the common cause as ill-judged as it was cowardly. At that very moment the French leader was writing, "I see but one means not to be beaten in the autumn; and that is, so to arrange matters that we shall not be obliged to advance into southern Italy." 130 The Pope still holding out, Bonaparte improved the time which the Austrians must need to prepare a new movement, by marching into the papal states a corps under Augereau, whom he followed in person. On the 19th Bologna was reached, and on the 24th the Pope signed an armistice. Coincidently with this advance, it was felt safe and opportune to send into Tuscany a division taken from the corps occupying Piedmont. This detachment entered Leghorn on the 28th of June, occupied the port despite the neutrality of Tuscany, drove out and broke up the great British commercial and naval interests centred there, and obtained a secure base for the intended attempt upon Corsica.

The failure of the Austrians to reach the coast, and their subsequent retreat, of course put an end to any direct co-operation between them and the British fleet. Jervis was forced to confine himself to watching the Toulon ships,—an operation conducted in the same spirit and on the same system which he afterwards imparted to the Brest blockade, and generally to that of all hostile arsenals. For over six months, from the beginning of April to the middle of October, he cruised with fifteen sail-of-the-line off the port; the heavy ships remaining some distance from it, but near enough to support a light division of three seventy-fours, which kept just out of range of the batteries, about two miles from the entrance. By unremitting care and foresight, the ships on this arduous service were provisioned, watered and repaired on the spot, without going into harbor. Nelson, as the year before, was actively employed in the Gulf of Genoa, harassing the coast communications, and was on one occasion fortunate enough to capture a convoy with guns and entrenching tools for the siege of Mantua. In the Adriatic, a few frigates and a flotilla of small vessels were engaged in protecting the Austrian communications by way of Trieste. Admiral Mann, with seven ships-of-the-line, was still off Cadiz, in the station assigned him by Hotham to watch Richery. Besides these strictly military operations, ships were called for in every direction to convoy trade, to cover the passage of storeships, and generally to keep the sea safe for unarmed British vessels, whether traders or government transports, upon whom depended the supplies of the fleet and those of Gibraltar drawn from Barbary. Between thirty and forty frigates and smaller vessels were thus occupied, and were found insufficient to meet the varied demands arising from the wide diffusion of British commerce and the activity of French cruisers.