The Influence of Sea Power on the French Revolution. Alfred Thayer Mahan
evil effect was, therefore, not immediately felt in the armies—whose wants were also in part supplied by liberal demands upon their new allies in Holland. Boissi d'Anglas, in a speech made January 30, 1795, in the Convention, and adopted by that body as voicing its own sentiments, declared that the armies would demonstrate to Europe that, far from being exhausted by the three years of war, France had only augmented her resources. The year then opening was to witness to the emptiness of the boast, until Bonaparte by his military genius laid the Continent again at her feet.
The internal history of France during this year, though marked by many and important events, can be briefly summed up. The policy of reconciliation towards the classes who had most suffered under Jacobin rule was pursued by the government; but against the party lately dominant the reaction that set in was marked by many and bloody excesses. If in the North and West the insurgent Vendeans and Chouans accepted the proffered pardon of the Convention, in the South and East the reactionary movement produced a terror of its own; in which perished, by public massacre or private assassination, several thousand persons, many of whom had not been terrorists, but simply ardent republicans. In Paris, the Jacobins, though depressed and weakened by the loss of so many of their leaders, did not at once succumb; and the tendency to agitation was favored in that great centre by the poverty of the people and the scarcity of food. On the 1st of April, and again on the 20th of May, the halls of the Convention were invaded by crowds of men, women and children, demanding bread and the constitution of 1793. On the latter occasion a member of the Convention was shot while endeavoring to cover the president with his body, and the greater part of the deputies fled from the hall. Those who remained, belonging mostly to the old Mountain, voted certain propositions designed to calm the people; but the next day the crowd was driven out by the national guard from some sections of the city, and the reaction resumed its course with increased force and renewed thirst for vengeance. The deputies who had remained and voted the propositions of May 20 were impeached, and the arrest was ordered of all members of the Committees which had governed during the Terror, except Carnot and one other.
The following month, June, the project for a new constitution was submitted to the Convention, and by it adopted on the 22d of August. It provided for an Executive Directory of five members, and a Legislature of two Chambers; the upper to be called the Council of the Elders, the lower the Council of Five Hundred. To this scheme of a constitution, the Convention appended a decree that two thirds of the new Legislature must be taken from the members of the existing Convention. The Constitution and the decree were submitted to the country in September. The Provinces accepted both, but Paris rejected the decree; and the protest against the latter took form on the 4th of October in the revolt of the Sections—a movement of the bourgeoisie and reactionists against the Convention, which on this occasion fell back for support upon the party identified with the Jacobins. The defence of the Hall of Legislature and of its members was entrusted to Barras, who committed the military command to General Bonaparte, from whose skilful dispositions the assault of the Sections everywhere recoiled. On the 26th of October the National Convention dissolved, after an existence of three years and one month. On the 27th the new Legislature began its sittings; and the upper council at once elected the Executive Directory. Among its five members was Carnot.
On the sea the year 1795 was devoid of great or even striking events. On the 22d of February the six ships destined for Toulon, which had been driven back early in the month with the rest of the Brest fleet, again set sail under the command of Admiral Renaudin, and, although much delayed by heavy westerly winds in the Atlantic, reached their destination in safety early in April. Not an enemy's ship was seen on the way. The Channel fleet had gone back to Spithead as soon as Howe learned that the Brest fleet had returned to port after the disastrous January cruise; while in the Mediterranean the British, now under Admiral Hotham, were at anchor in a roadstead of Corsica when Renaudin drew near Toulon. This made the French in the Mediterranean twenty to the British thirteen. "What the new Lords of the Admiralty are after," wrote Nelson, "to allow such a detachment to get out here, surprises us all." [100]
Under the new admiralty small divisions of the Channel fleet continued to cruise to the westward or in the Bay of Biscay; but not until the 12th of June did the main body, under Lord Bridport, put to sea. Ten days later, numbering then fourteen sail-of-the-line, it fell in with Villaret's fleet of twelve ships close in with its own coast, about eighty miles south of Brest. This meeting was due to a succession of incidents which are worthy of narration, as showing the conditions of the war and the prostration of the French navy. The supplies of the squadron at Brest and L'Orient, as well as much of the local traffic of the country, were carried by small coasting vessels rather than by inland roads. A division of three ships-of-the-line was sent to protect a numerous convoy coming from Bordeaux. On the 8th of June these vessels encountered the British division of five ships cruising in the Bay of Biscay, which took from it eight of the convoy before they could escape under the land. When news of this reached Brest, Villaret was ordered to take the nine ships that alone were then ready for sea and join the other three. This junction was made, and on the 16th of June the twelve again fell in with the British five, which, after temporarily withdrawing, had returned to their cruising ground. Chase was of course given, and as two of the British sailed very badly there was a good prospect that either they would be taken, or the rest of the division compelled to come down to their aid; which, with the disparity of force, ought to result in the capture of the whole. The admiral, Cornwallis, behaved with the utmost firmness and coolness; but with such odds and the disadvantage of speed, no courage nor conduct can avert some disaster. The inefficiency and bad gunnery of the French saved their enemies. After a cannonade which lasted from nine in the forenoon of the 17th until six in the evening, one British ship had thirteen men wounded, and Villaret abandoned the pursuit.
Five days later Bridport's fleet was sighted, and the French being inferior stood in for their coast, intending to anchor and await action under the island called Groix. The pursuit continued with light airs all day and night; but at daybreak of June 23 the fastest British were within three miles of the slowest of the French, which opened fire at six A.M. All Villaret's signals could not bring his fleet into line, nor induce the undoubtedly brave, but ill trained, men who commanded the faster ships to take station for the support of the slower. A desultory action continued till half-past eight, ending in the capture of three French vessels, the last hauling down her flag within a mile of Île Groix. Bridport then called his ships off. It is the opinion of French writers, apparently shared by English critics, [101] that if he had pursued energetically, the remainder of the enemy must either have been taken or run ashore to avoid that fate. As it was, Villaret was permitted to get into L'Orient without molestation, although to do so he had to wait till the tide served. Such was the extreme circumspection characterizing the early naval operations of the British, until Jervis and Nelson enkindled their service with the relentless energy of spirit inspired by Bonaparte on land. Those to whom St. Vincent and the Nile, Algesiras and Copenhagen, have become history, see with astonishment nine ships of capital importance permitted to escape thus easily from fourteen; forgetting the hold tradition has on the minds of men, and that it belongs to genius to open the way into which others then eagerly press. How the admiralty viewed Bridport's action may be inferred from his retaining command of the fleet until April, 1800. The ships that reached L'Orient had to remain till the winter, when they slipped back two or three at a time to Brest.
The disaster at Île Groix, with some similar small misfortunes in the Mediterranean, [102] accompanied as they were by evidences, too plain to be any longer overlooked, of the inefficiency both of officers and men in the French fleets, determined the government to abandon all attempt to contest the supremacy of the sea. To this contributed also the extreme destitution, in the dockyards, of all sorts of stores for equipment or provision. With the English Channel and the forests of Corsica in the hands of Great Britain, the customary sources of supply were cut off; and moreover the providing for the navy—not the most cherished of the national institutions—met with the same difficulty as was experienced by other branches of the public service in the depreciation of the assignats, with which alone naval administrators could pay contractors. At the end of 1795 twelve hundred francs in paper were worth scarce twenty in gold. Having accepted naval inferiority as a necessary condition, the Committee of Public Safety resolved to maintain the great fleets in the ports simply as a threat to the enemy, and to send to sea only small divisions to prey upon his commerce and to levy tribute upon