The Influence of Sea Power on the French Revolution. Alfred Thayer Mahan
did the Channel fleet put to sea, nearly a fortnight after the French had returned to Brest. Whatever may be said of the inexpediency of exposing the heavy ships to winter weather, it seems clear that the opposite system left the enemy at perfect liberty to combine his movements; and that there was little likelihood of these being made known to the commander-in-chief in Torbay soon enough for him to follow efficaciously. Howe himself felt this, and, from instructions issued by him to Sir James Saumarez on the 15th of January, it would appear that this escape of the French roused him for a moment to contemplate the close watch off Brest, afterwards practised by Jervis and Cornwallis. [97] This was the last occasion on which the veteran admiral actually went to sea in command of a fleet; although, from an apparent reluctance to try new men, the government insisted upon his exercising a nominal charge from quarters on shore. He was now in his seventieth year and suffering from many infirmities. The command afloat devolved upon a man not much younger, Lord Bridport, one of the naval family of Hood, but whose career does not bear the impress of great ability which distinguished so many of its members. Immediately before this, general dissatisfaction had caused a change in the Admiralty, over which, since 1788, had presided Pitt's elder brother, the Earl of Chatham. He was succeeded, in December, 1794, by Earl Spencer, a more vigorous and efficient man, who remained First Lord until the fall of Pitt's administration in 1801.
The new head, however, did not make any substantial variation of system, calculated to frustrate the enemy's naval combinations by the strategic dispositions of the British fleet. More activity was displayed by keeping a small squadron of half a dozen ships-of-the-line constantly cruising in the soundings and to the westward, and the great Channel fleet was more continuously at sea during the summer months; but the close blockade of Brest was not attempted, nor was Bridport the man to persuade the government to the measures afterwards so vigorously, and in the main successfully, carried out by Lord St. Vincent, both as successor to Bridport in the Channel fleet and subsequently as First Lord of the Admiralty. To this faulty policy contributed not a little the system of telegraphs, adopted in 1795, by which communications were quickly transmitted from height to height between London and Portsmouth. This great improvement unfortunately confirmed the tendency of the Admiralty to keep the Channel fleet at the latter point, regardless of the obvious, but unappreciated, strategic disadvantage of a position so far east of Brest, with winds prevailing from the western quarters. To have the commander-in-chief just there, under their own hand, to receive orders from them, seemed much safer than to put him and his fleet in a central position whence he could most certainly intercept or most rapidly follow the enemy, and then to trust to the judgment of a trained and competent sea-officer to act as the emergency required. The plan came near resulting very disastrously when the French attempted to invade Ireland; and would have done so, had not the elements again interfered to remedy the absence of the British fleet. "If," says Osler in his life of Lord Exmouth, [98] from whom he probably received the idea, "if Lord Bridport (in 1796) had been waiting at Falmouth, with discretional powers, Sir Edward Pellew having been instructed to communicate directly with him, he might have sailed early on December 21st" (Pellew reached Falmouth from before Brest on the 20th) "and found the enemy in Bantry Bay, when perhaps not a ship would have escaped him. It is, however, to be remembered that, as the destination of the French armament was unknown to the last, the Admiralty might very properly determine that he should receive his final instructions from themselves, and therefore would keep the fleet at Spithead (Portsmouth) for the convenience of ready communication." But why! How could they in London judge better than a good admiral on the coast?
During the year 1794, now closing, the Revolution in France had been rapidly devouring its children. After the overthrow of the Girondists in June, 1793, the Terror pursued its pitiless march, sweeping before it for the time every effort made in behalf of moderation or mercy. The queen was put to death on the 16th of October, and her execution was followed on the 31st by that of those Girondists who had not deigned to escape from their accusers. Dissension next arose and spread among the now triumphant party of the Jacobins; resulting in March and April, 1794, in the trial and death of the Hébertists on the one side, and of Danton and his friends on the other. More and more power fell into the hands of the Committee of Public Safety, whose tokens to the world were Robespierre and his chief supporters, St. Just and Couthon, ruling the Convention which passively decreed their wishes, and, through the Convention, France. For three short months Robespierre now appeared as the master of the country, but was himself carried on and away by the torrent which he had done so much to swell. The exigencies and dangers of his position multiplied the precautions he deemed necessary to secure his authority and his safety; and the cold relentlessness of his character recognized no means so sure as death. On the 10th of June, by his sole authority, without the intervention of the Committee of Public Safety, he procured a decree modifying the procedure of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and suppressing the few checks that restrained its uncontrolled power. In the fourteen months preceding this decree 1256 persons had been by the tribunal condemned to death; in the six weeks that followed, until Robespierre himself fell, the executions were 1361. [99] So extreme an access of fury betokened approaching exhaustion; no society could endure the strain; the most violent and blood-thirsty, as well as the most timid, felt their own lives in danger. Bitter opposition to the dictator arose both in the Committee of Public Safety and in the Legislature. The doubtful struggle, between the prestige of his power and long continued success and the various passions of fear and vengeance animating his opponents, culminated in a violent scene in the Convention on the 27th of July. For some hours the issue was balanced, but in the end the arrest and trial of Robespierre and his chief supporters were decreed. The following day he, St. Just and Couthon, with some others of lesser note, died on the guillotine.
No immediate change in the form of government ensued. The Committee of Public Safety, reconstituted, continued to exercise the executive functions which nominally depended upon the Convention; and the impulse which it had imparted to the soldiers and armies of France continued for a time to carry them resistlessly forward. But the delirious intensity of the popular movement had reached its climax in the three months' unrestrained power of Robespierre, with whose name it has been ever associated. Though the external manifestations of strength continued for a time unabated, the inner tension was relaxing. Weakness was about to succeed the strength of fever, to spread from the heart throughout the whole organism, and, by threatening social dissolution, to prepare the way for concentrated absolute power.
The onward swing of the French armies on the north-east still continued. The year 1794 had opened with the investment of Landrecy by the allies, and its surrender to them on the 30th of April. The French began their campaign with the plan, especially affected by Carnot in all his military combinations, of attacking at the same time both flanks of the allied Austrians, Dutch and English, concentrating at each extremity of the line a force greatly superior to the enemy before it. As Jourdan, commanding the French right, threatened the allied stronghold of Charleroi, he drew thither the greater effort of the allies, and Pichegru, on the left, found his task easier. Five times did Jourdan cross the Sambre to attack Charleroi, and four times was he compelled to re-cross; but on the fifth, before the allies could come up in sufficient force, the place capitulated—the guns of the relieving force being heard just as the garrison was marching out. The following day, June 26, 1794, Jourdan fought and won the battle of Fleurus; the Austrians retreating upon Nivelles towards the future field of Waterloo. The allies on both flanks continued to fall back; Ostend and Nieuport, ports on the North Sea facilitating communication with England, were successively surrendered, and Brussels uncovered. On the 10th of July Pichegru entered Brussels and formed his junction with Jourdan. On the 15th the allies lost Landrecy, the first and only prize of the campaign. On the same day the French attacked in force the centre of the allied line, where the Anglo-Dutch left touched the Austrian right. The former being gradually turned fell back, and the Austrians, finding their flank uncovered, did the same. From this time the allies retired in divergent directions, the Anglo-Dutch north-east toward Holland, the Austrians eastward toward Coblentz; thus repeating in retreat the unmilitary and ruinous mistake which had rendered abortive the offensive campaign of 1793.
The French advance was now stayed by the Committee of Public Safety, in deference to an emotion of patriotism, until the towns surrendered the year before should be retaken. On the 11th of August Le Quesnoy opened its gates, on the 27th Valenciennes, and on the 30th Condé. The siege corps now rejoined the armies in the field and the