The Influence of Sea Power on the French Revolution. Alfred Thayer Mahan
The lesson, however, has not been lost on the seamen, who, seeing the mis-steps into which these hangmen by profession lead them, have denounced one of them." [39] Grave disorders all the same took place, and two Corsican National Guards were hanged by a mob of seamen and soldiers from the fleet; but how extraordinary must have been the feelings of the time when a critic could speak so gingerly of, not to say praise, the temper that showed itself in this way.
While the tone and the military efficiency of officers and crew were thus lowered, the material condition of both ships and men was wretched. Incompetency and disorder directed everywhere. There was lack of provisions, clothing, timber, rigging, sails. In De Galles's fleet, though they had just sailed, most of the ships needed repairs. The crews counted very many sick, and they were besides destitute of clothing. Although scurvy was raging, the men, almost in sight of their own coast, were confined to salt food. Of the Toulon squadron somewhat later, in 1795, we are told almost all the seamen deserted. "Badly fed, scarcely clothed, discouraged by constant lack of success, they had but one thought, to fly the naval service. In September, ten thousand men would have been needed to fill the complements of the Toulon fleet." [40] The country was ransacked for seamen, who dodged the maritime conscription as the British sailor of the day hid from the press-gang.
After the action called by the British the Battle of L'Orient, and by the French that of the Île de Groix, in 1795, the French fleet took refuge in L'Orient, where they remained two months. So great was the lack of provisions that the crews were given leave. When the ships were again ready for sea "it was not an easy thing to make the seamen come back; a decree was necessary to recall them to the colors. Even so only a very small number returned, and it was decided to send out singly, or at most by divisions, the ships which were in the port. When they reached Brest the crews were sent round to L'Orient by land to man other ships. In this way the fleet sailed at different dates in three divisions." [41] In the Irish expedition of 1796, part of the failure in handling the ships is laid to the men being benumbed with cold, because without enough clothes. Pay was constantly in arrears. The seamen, whatever might be their patriotism, could not be tempted back to the discomforts and hardships of such a service. Promises, threats, edicts, were all of no avail. This state of things lasted for years. The civil commissioner of the navy in Toulon wrote in 1798, concerning the preparations for Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt: "Despite the difficulties concerning supplies, they were but a secondary object of my anxiety. To bring seamen into the service fixed it entirely. I gave the commissioners of the maritime inscription the most pressing orders; I invited the municipalities, the commissioners of the Directory, the commanders of the army, to second them; and to assure the success of this general measure, I sent with my despatches money to pay each seaman raised a month's advance and conduct money. The inveterate insubordination of seamen in most of the western ports, their pronounced aversion to the service, making almost null the effects of the maritime commissioners, I sent a special officer from the port, firm and energetic," to second their efforts; "at length after using every lawful means, part of the western seamen have repaired to this port. There are still many stragglers that are being pursued unremittingly." [42]
The chief causes for this trouble were the hardships and the irregularity of pay, with the consequent sufferings to their families. As late as 1801, Admiral Ganteaume drew a moving picture of the state of the officers and men under his command. "I once more call your attention to the frightful state in which are left the seamen, unpaid for fifteen months, naked or covered with rags, badly fed, discouraged; in a word, sunk under the weight of the deepest and most humiliating wretchedness. It would be horrible to make them undertake, in this state, a long and doubtless painful winter cruise." [43] Yet it was in this condition he had come from Brest to Toulon in mid-winter. At the same time the admiral said that the officers, receiving neither pay nor table money, lived in circumstances that lowered them in their own eyes and deprived them of the respect of the crews. It was at about this time that the commander of a corvette, taken by a British frigate, made in his defence before the usual court-martial the following statement: "Three fourths of the crew were sea-sick from the time of leaving Cape Sepet until reaching Mahon. Add to this, ill-will, and a panic terror which seized my crew at the sight of the frigate. Almost all thought it a ship-of-the-line. Add to this again, that they had been wet through by the sea for twenty-four hours without having a change of clothes, as I had only been able to get ten spare suits for the whole ship's company." [44] The quality of the crews, the conditions of their life, and the reason why good seamen kept clear of the service, sufficiently appear from these accounts. In the year of Trafalgar, even, neither bedding nor clothing was regularly issued to the crews. [45]
Surprise will not be felt, when human beings were thus neglected, that the needs of the inanimate ships were not met. In the early part of the war it is not easy to say whether the frequent accidents were due to bad handling or bad outfit. In 1793, the escape of six sail-of-the-line, under Admiral Van Stabel, from Lord Howe's fleet, is attributed to superior sailing qualities of the hulls and the better staying of the masts. [46] The next year, however, the commissioner of the Convention who accompanied the great ocean fleet, Jean Bon Saint-André, tried to account for the many accidents which happened in good weather by charging the past reign with a deliberate purpose of destroying the French navy. "This neglect," wrote he, "like so many more, belonged to the system of ruining the navy by carelessness and neglect of all the parts composing it." [47] It was well known that Louis XVI. had given special care to the material and development of the service; nor is it necessary to seek any deeper cause for the deterioration of such perishable materials than the disorders of the five years since he practically ceased to reign. From this time complaints multiply, and the indications of the entire want of naval stores cannot be mistaken. To this, rather than to the neglect of the dockyard officials in Brest, was due the wretched condition of the fleet sent in December, 1794, by the obstinacy of the Committee of Public Safety, to make a mid-winter cruise in the Bay of Biscay, the story of whose disasters is elsewhere told. [48]
The expedition to Ireland in 1796 was similarly ill-prepared; and indeed, with the British preponderance at sea hampering trade, the embarrassment could scarcely fail to grow greater. Spars carried away, rigging parted, sails tore. Some ships had no spare sails. This, too, was a mid-winter expedition, the squadron having sailed in December. In 1798 the preparation of Bonaparte's Egyptian expedition at Toulon met with the greatest difficulty. The naval commissioner showed much zeal and activity, and was fearless in taking upon himself responsibility; but the fleet sailed for an unknown destination almost without spare spars and rigging, and three of the thirteen were not fit for sea. Two had been condemned the year before, and on one they did not dare to put her regular battery. In January, 1801, a squadron of seven sail-of-the-line left Brest under Admiral Ganteaume, having the all-important mission of carrying a reinforcement of five thousand troops to the army in Egypt. Becoming discouraged, whether rightly or wrongly, after entering the Mediterranean, the admiral bore up for Toulon, where he anchored after being at sea twenty-six days. Here is his report of his fleet during and after this short cruise: "The 'Indivisible' had lost two topmasts and had no spare one left. The trestle-trees of the mainmast were sprung and could not support the new topmast. The 'Desaix' had sprung her bowsprit. The 'Constitution' and the 'Jean-Bart' were in the same condition as the 'Indivisible,' neither having a spare main-topmast after carrying away the others. Both the 'Formidable' and the 'Indomptable,' on the night we got under way, had an anchor break adrift. They had to cut the cable; but both had their sides stove in at the water-line, and could not be repaired at sea. Finally, all the ships, without exception, were short of rope to a disquieting extent, not having had, on leaving Brest, a single spare coil; and the rigging in place was all bad, and in a state to risk every moment the speed and safety of the ships." [49] It will be unnecessary to quote more of these mishaps, in which lack of skill and bad equipment each bore its part; nor need we try to disentangle the one cause from the other.
Enough has now been said to show the general state of the French navy in the last ten years of the eighteenth century. The time and space thus used have not been wasted, for these conditions, which continued under the empire, were as surely the chief cause of the continuous and overwhelming overthrow of that navy, as the ruin of the French and Spanish sea-power, culminating at Trafalgar, was a principal factor in the final result sealed at Waterloo. Great Britain will be seen to enter the war allied with many of the nations of Europe against France. One by one the allies drop away, until the island