The Influence of Sea Power on the French Revolution. Alfred Thayer Mahan
disaster. At the same time the king of Prussia began to manifest the vacillating and shameless policy which made his country the byword of Europe during the next twelve years, and betrayed clearly his purpose of forsaking the coalition he had been so forward in forming. On the Spanish frontiers, the fortune of war was rather against the French, who were embarrassed by the necessity of concentrating all the force possible upon the siege of Toulon; the recovery of that port being urgently required for the national honor, as well as for the maritime interests of the republic in the Mediterranean.
It was, however, in restoring internal submission and asserting the authority of the central government that the most substantial results of 1793 were attained. The resistance of the Vendeans, long successfully protracted through the blunders and lack of unity among the republican leaders, began to yield, as more concentrated effort was imparted by the reconstituted Committee of Public Safety. After the battle of Cholet, October 16, the insurgents, routed and in despair, determined to leave their own country, cross the Loire, and march into Brittany. They traversed the latter province slowly, fighting as they went, and on the 12th of November reached Granville on the Channel coast, where they hoped to open communications with England. Their assault on the town failed, and as the hoped-for ships did not arrive, they started back for La Vendée; but as a coherent body they never recrossed the Loire, and a pitched battle, fought December 22, at Savenay, on the north bank, completed their dispersion. The embers of the civil war continued to burn in La Vendée and north of the Loire during the following year; but as a general insurrection, wielding large bodies of fighting men, it had ceased to be formidable to the nation and wrought its chief harm to the province which supported it.
The great stronghold of resistance in the east, Lyon, fell on the 9th of October. Despite the disaffection which had existed in the south and east, the commissioners of the government were able, without opposition, to collect round the city a body of men sufficient, first, to cut off its communications with the surrounding country, and, finally, to carry the works commanding the place. A spirit of discontent so feeble as to acquiesce tamely in the reduction of one of its chief centres gave no hope of support to any efforts made through Toulon by the allied forces; and the capitulation of Lyon showed that the port was not worth the cost of keeping, and at the same time released a large number of men to give activity to the siege. Toward the end of November, over twenty-five thousand republican troops were collected round the place. On the night of the 16th of December, the forts on a promontory commanding the anchorage for fleets were carried by assault. A council of war among the allies decided that the ships could not remain, and that the garrison could not hold out with its communications to the sea cut off. It therefore determined to evacuate the place, and on the 19th the British and Spaniards departed. Before sailing, an attempt was made to destroy both the dockyard and all the French ships that could not be taken away; but the danger threatening from the commanding positions that had now fallen to the enemy was so great, the necessity for quick departure so urgent, and so much had consequently to be done in a very limited time, that the proposed destruction was but imperfectly effected. Of twenty-seven French ships-of-the-line still in Toulon, nine were burned and three accompanied the retreat. The remaining fifteen constituted the nucleus of a powerful force, and most of them appear in the fleet which went with Bonaparte to Egypt and was there destroyed by Nelson in 1798. [71]
The loss of Toulon, after the extravagant hopes excited by its surrender, gave rise to much complaint in England. It is improbable, however, that its retention, even if feasible, would have been beneficial. The expenditure of men and money necessary to hold a seaport surrounded by enemy's territory, and commanded by a long line of heights which had to be occupied, would have been out of proportion to any result likely to follow. The communications, being by sea only, would ultimately depend upon Great Britain as the power best able to insure them and most interested in a naval position; and the distance to England was great. The utter lack of dependence to be placed upon local discontent, as an element in the usefulness of Toulon to the allied cause, had been shown by the failure to support Lyon and by the tame submission made in the southern provinces to the petty Conventional army sent against them. The country, moreover, was in 1793 wasted by dearth; and had there been in Toulon an allied force large enough to advance, it would have had to depend absolutely upon immense accumulations of food in the port. So great was the scarcity, that the French at one time thought of abandoning the siege on that account. In short, Toulon had, for the British, the disadvantage of great distance, far greater than Gibraltar, without the latter's advantages of strategic position and easy defence; and its occupation by them would have caused jealousy among the Mediterranean powers and introduced more discord into a coalition already mutually suspicious.
From Toulon Hood retired to Hyères Bay, a sheltered roadstead a few miles east of Toulon, where the end of the year found him still lying. Lord Howe took the Channel fleet into port in the middle of December, and there remained until the following May. Thus ended the maritime year 1793.
Note (to page 98). The Peninsular War, in its inception, was justified, not because the odds were favorable, but because there was a "fighting" chance of great results; just as there was at Toulon, where the attempt failed. The distinguished historian of that war claims that the British wrought the work of deliverance; and, after making every allowance for national prejudice, which in his case was certainly not undiscriminating, the general failure, except where the British arms were felt, may be taken to establish a fact which the disorganized state of Spain herself would alone render probable. The course of war in the west of the peninsula, where the British were, shows conclusively the limitations imposed upon the military enterprises of a state having a relatively small army with a great navy. Having landed in April, 1809, Wellesley, notwithstanding his genius and brilliant successes, notwithstanding the state of the peninsula, and notwithstanding, also, the immense length and difficulty of the French lines of communication, was still, in March, 1811, shut up within the lines of Torres Vedras; that is, he was simply holding on at Lisbon, unable to keep the country against the French. In external appearance, the military situation was just the same as at the beginning. The reasons for holding on were the same in character as in 1809; but the chances of success had become distinctly greater, owing to political and economical considerations, and to the extreme care and foresight by which the British leader had made his position round Lisbon inexpugnable. Nevertheless, the retreat and ultimate disaster of the French were due to the military difficulties of their enterprise, well understood and carefully improved by Wellington, and to the unmeasured political combinations of the emperor—not to the power of the British army in Portugal, which, though admirable in quality and leadership, was very inferior in numbers. In the last analysis it was the emperor's Continental System, directed against the Sea Power of England, which gave to the army of England in the Peninsula the opportunity by which alone the weaker force can profitably assume the offensive. It is not a lessening, but a heightening, of the merit of the great Englishman, to say that he had the genius to foresee that the opportunity, though distant, must come, and the courage to hold on till it came.
It is instructive to note the essential military resemblances between the British invasion of the Peninsula, which was finally crowned with success, and Napoleon's projected invasion of England, which came to nought. In the one case, a navy supreme on the ocean and a small military force; in the other, an unrivalled army, and a navy very inferior because of its quality. In each, the chances were largely against success. In each, the enterprise, strictly offensive in character by the inferior force, hinged upon the occurrence of the favorable opportunity, which it was the part of the offence to contrive and of the defence to prevent. That there was, in both cases, a long waiting of nearly equal duration is a fortuitous coincidence; but the attitude of unremitting watchfulness and constant readiness, in a skilfully chosen position, is the distinctive characteristic imposed upon the inferior force which hopes to escape from a mere defensive posture, and, by striking a blow, to make itself felt in the lists of war. The opportunity never came to Napoleon, because the British leaders never took their eyes off his fleet, upon which his profound combinations depended as an arch upon its keystone. It came to Wellington because the emperor turned his attention from the Peninsula, of whose troubles he was weary, and opposed inadequate means and divided commands to a single alert enemy.
CHAPTER IV.