THE NAPOLEONIC WARS: THE FIRST OF JUNE AND CAMPERDOWN

Ten years after the War of American Independence, British sea power was drawn into a more prolonged and desperate conflict with France. This time it was with a France whose navy, demoralized by revolution, was less able to dispute sea control, but whose armies, organized into an aggressive, empire-building force by the genius of Napoleon, threatened to dominate Europe, shaking the old monarchies with dangerous radical doctrines, and bringing all Continental nations into the conflict either as enemies or as allies. The dismissal of the French envoy from England immediately after the execution of Louis XVI (Jan. 21, 1793) led the French Republic a week later to a declaration of war, which continued with but a single intermission—from October, 1801, to May, 1803—through the next 22 years.

The magnitude of events on land in this period, during which French armies fought a hundred bloody campaigns, overthrew kingdoms, and remade the map of Europe, obscures the importance of the warfare on the sea. Yet it was Great Britain by virtue of her navy and insular position that remained Napoleon's least vulnerable and most obstinate opponent, forcing him to ever renewed and exhausting campaigns, reviving continental opposition, and supporting it with subsidies made possible by control of sea trade. In Napoleon's own words the effect of this pressure is well summarized: "To live without ships, without trade, without colonies, is to live as no Frenchman can consent to do." The Egyptian campaign, conceived as a thrust at British sources of wealth in the East, and defeated at the Nile; the organization of the northern neutrals against England, overthrown at Copenhagen; the direct invasion of the British Isles, repeatedly planned and thwarted at St. Vincent, Camperdown, and Trafalgar; the final and most nearly successful effort to ruin England by closing her continental markets and thus, in Napoleon's phrase, "defeating the sea by the land"—these were the successive measures by which he sought to shake the grip of sea power.

The following narrative of these events is in three divisions: the first dealing with the earlier engagements of the First of June and Camperdown, fought by squadrons based on home ports; the second with the war in the Mediterranean and the rise of Nelson as seen in the campaigns of St. Vincent, the Nile, and Copenhagen; the third with the Trafalgar campaign and the commercial struggle to which the naval side of the war was later confined. The career of Nelson is given an emphasis justified by his primacy among naval leaders and the value of his example for later times.

The effect of land events in obscuring the naval side of the war, already mentioned, is explained not merely by their magnitude, but by the fact that, though Great Britain was more than once brought to the verge of ruin, this was a consequence not of the enemy's power on the sea, but of his victories on land. Furthermore, the slow process which ended in the downfall of Napoleon and the reduction of France to her old frontiers was accomplished, not so conspicuously by the economic pressure of sea power, as by the efforts of armies on battlefields from Russia to Spain. On the sea British supremacy was more firmly established, and the capacities of France and her allies were far less, than in preceding conflicts of the century.

The French Navy Demoralized

The explanation of this weakness of the French navy involves an interesting but somewhat perplexing study of the influences which make for naval growth or decay. That its ineffectiveness was due largely to an inferior national instinct or genius for sea warfare, as compared with England, is discredited by the fact that the disparity was less obvious in previous wars; for, as Lord Clowes has insisted, England won no decisive naval victory against superior forces from the second Dutch War to the time of Nelson. The familiar theory that democracy ruined the French navy will be accepted nowadays only with some qualifications, especially when it is remembered that French troops equally affected by the downfall of caste rule were steadily defeating the armies of monarchical powers. It is true, however, that navies, as compared with armies, are more complicated and more easily disorganized machines, and that it would have taxed even Napoleonic genius to reorganize the French navy after the neglect, mutiny, and wholesale sweeping out of trained personnel to which it was subjected in the first furies of revolution. Whatever the merits of the officers of the old rÉgime, selected as they were wholly from the aristocracy and dominated by the defensive policy of the French service, three-fourths of them were driven out by 1791, and replaced by officers from the merchant service, from subordinate ratings, and from the crews. Suspicion of aristocracy was accompanied in the navy by a more fatal suspicion of skill. In January, 1794, the regiments of marine infantry and artillery, as well as the corps of seamen-gunners, were abolished on the ground that no body of men should have "the exclusive privilege of fighting the enemy at sea," and their places were filled by battalions of the national guard. Figures show that as a result, French gunnery was far less efficient than in the preceding war.

The strong forces that restored discipline in the army had more difficulty in reaching the navy; and Napoleon's gift for discovering ability and lifting it to command was marked by its absence in his choice of leaders for the fleets. Usually he fell back on pessimistic veterans of the old rÉgime like Brueys, Missiessy, and Villeneuve. An exception, Allemand, showed by his cruise out of Rochefort in 1805 what youth, energy, and daring could accomplish even with inferior means. Considering the importance of leadership as a factor in success, we may well believe that, had a French Nelson, or even a Suffren, been discovered in this epoch, history would tell a different tale. If further reasons for the decadence of the navy are needed, they may be found in the extreme difficulty of securing naval stores and timber from the Baltic, and in the fact that, though France had nearly three times the population of the British Isles, her wealth, man-power, and genius were absorbed in the war on land.

Aside from repulsion at the violence of the French revolution and fear of its contagion, England had a concrete motive for war in the French occupation of the Austrian Netherlands and the Scheldt, the possession of which by an ambitious maritime nation England has always regarded as a menace to her safety and commercial prosperity. "This government," declared the British Ministry in December, 1792, "will never view with indifference that France shall make herself, directly or indirectly, sovereign of the Low Countries or general arbitress of the rights and liberties of Europe."

In prosecuting the war, Great Britain fought chiefly with her main weapon, the navy, leaving the land war to her allies. A contemporary critic remarked that she "worked with her navy and played with her army"; though the latter did useful service in colonial conquests and in Egypt, the two expeditionary forces to the Low Countries in 1793 and 1799 were ill-managed and ineffective. The tasks of the fleet were to guard the British Isles from raids and invasion, to protect British commerce in all parts of the world, and, on the offensive, to seize enemy colonies, cut off enemy trade, and coÖperate in the Mediterranean with allied armies. To accomplish these aims, which called for a wide dispersion of forces, the British naval superiority over France was barely adequate. According to the contemporary naval historian James, the strength of the two fleets at the outbreak of war was as follows:

Of her main fighting units, the ships-of-the-line, England could put into commission about 85, which as soon as possible were distributed in three main spheres of operation: in the Mediterranean and its western approaches, from 20 to 25; in the West Indies, from 10 to 12; in home waters, from the North Sea to Cape Finisterre, from 20 to 25, with a reserve of some 25 more in the home bases on the Channel. Though this distribution was naturally altered from time to time to meet changes in the situation, it gives at least an idea of the general disposition of the British forces throughout the war. France, with no suitable bases in the Channel, divided her fleet between the two main arsenals at Brest and Toulon, with minor squadrons at Rochefort and, during the Spanish alliance, in the ports of Spain.

Distant Operations

In the West Indies and other distant waters, France could offer but little effective resistance, and operations there may hence be dismissed briefly, but with emphasis on the benefit which naval control conferred upon British trade, the main guaranty of England's financial stability and power to keep up the war. Fully one-fifth of this trade was with the West Indies. Consequently, both to swell the volume of British commerce and protect it from privateering, the seizure of the French West Indian colonies—"filching the sugar islands," as Sheridan called it—was a very justifiable war measure, in spite of the scattering of forces involved. Hayti was lost to France as a result of the negro uprising under Toussaint l'Ouverture. Practically all the French Antilles changed hands twice in 1794, the failure of the British to hold them arising from a combination of yellow fever, inadequate forces of occupation, and lax blockade methods on the French coast, which permitted heavy reËnforcements to leave France. General Abercromby, with 17,000 men, finally took all but Guadaloupe in the next year. As Holland, Spain, and other nations came under French control, England seized their colonies likewise—the Dutch settlements at the Cape of Good Hope and Ceylon in 1795; the Moluccas and other Dutch islands in the East Indies in 1796; Trinidad (Spanish) in 1797; CuraÇao (Dutch) in 1800; and the Swedish and Danish West Indies in 1801. By the Treaty of Amiens in 1802 all these except Trinidad and Ceylon were given back, and had to be retaken in the later period of the war, Guadaloupe remaining a privateers' nest until its final capture in 1810. Though French trade was ruined, it was impossible to stamp out privateering, which grew with the growth of British commerce which it preyed upon, and the extent of which is indicated by the estimate that in 1807 there were from 200 to 300 privateers on the coasts of Cuba and Hayti alone. As for the captured islands, Great Britain in 1815 retained only Malta, Heligoland, and the Ionian Islands in European waters; Cape Colony, Mauritius, and Ceylon on the route to the East; and in the Caribbean, Demerara on the coast, Santa Lucia, Trinidad, and Tobago—some of them of little intrinsic value, but all useful outposts for an empire of the seas.

In the Channel and Bay of Biscay, the first year of war passed quietly. Lord Howe, commanding the British Channel fleet, had behind him a long, fine record as a disciplinarian and tactician; he had fought with Hawke at Quiberon Bay, protected New York and Rhode Island against d'Estaing in 1778, and later thrown relief into Gibraltar in the face of superior force. Now 68 years of age, he inclined to cautious, old-school methods, such as indeed marked activities on both land and sea at this time, before Napoleon had injected a new desperateness into war. Both before and after the "Glorious First of June" the watch on the French coast was merely nominal; small detachments were kept off Brest, but the main fleet rested in Portsmouth throughout the winter and took only occasional cruises during the remainder of the year.

The Battle of the First of June

Though there had been no real blockade, the interruption of her commerce, the closure of her land frontiers, and the bad harvest of 1793, combined to bring France in the spring following to the verge of famine, and forced her to risk her fleet in an effort to import supplies from overseas. On April 11 an immense flotilla of 120 grain vessels sailed from the Chesapeake under the escort of two ships-of-the-line, which were to be strengthened by the entire Brest fleet at a rendezvous 300 miles west of Belleisle. Foodstuffs having already been declared subject to seizure by both belligerents, Howe was out on May 2 to intercept the convoy. A big British merchant fleet also put to sea with him, to protect which he had to detach 8 of his 34 ships, but with orders to 6 of these that they should rejoin his force on the 20th off Ushant. Looking into Brest on the 19th, Howe found the French battle fleet already at sea. Not waiting for the detachment, and thus losing its help in the battle that was to follow, he at once turned westward and began sweeping with his entire fleet the waters in which the convoy was expected to appear.

The French with 26 ships-of-the-line—and thus precisely equal to Howe in numbers—had left Brest two days before. The crews were largely landsmen; of the flag officers and captains, not one had been above the grade of lieutenant three years before, and nine of them had been merchant skippers with no naval experience whatever. On board were two delegates of the National Convention, whose double duties seem to have been to watch the officers and help them command. To take the place of experience there was revolutionary fervor, evidenced in the change of ship-names to such resounding appellations as La Montagne, Patriote, Vengeur du Peuple, Tyrannicide, and Revolutionnaire. There was also more confidence than was ever felt again by French sailors during the war. "Intentionally disregarding subtle evolutions," said the delegate Jean Bon Saint Andree, "perhaps our sailors will think it more appropriate and effective to resort to the boarding tactics in which the French were always victorious, and thus astonish the world by new prodigies of valor." "If they had added to their courage a little training," said the same commissioner after the battle, "the day might have been ours."

The commander in chief, Villaret de Joyeuse, who had won his lieutenancy and the esteem of Suffren in the American war, was no such scorner of wary tactics. Thus when the two fleets, more by accident than calculation on either side, came in contact on the morning of May 28, 1794, about 400 miles west of Ushant, it would have been quite possible for him to have closed with the British, who were 10 miles to leeward in a fresh southerly wind. But his orders were not to fight unless it were essential to protect the convoy, and since this was thought to be close at hand, he first drew away to the eastward, with the British in pursuit.

The chase continued during the remainder of this day and the day following, with partial engagements and complicated maneuvering, the net result of which was that in the end Howe, in spite of the superior sailing qualities of the French ships, had kept in touch with them, driven his own vessels through their line to a windward position, and forced the withdrawal of four units, with the loss of but one of his own. Two days of thick weather followed, during which both fleets stood to the northwest in the same relative positions, the French, very fortunately indeed, securing a reËnforcement of four fresh ships from detachments earlier at sea.

Now 26 French to 25 British, the two fleets on the morning of the final engagement were moving to westward on the still southerly wind, in two long, roughly parallel lines. Confident of the individual superiority of his ships, the British admiral had no wish for further maneuvering, in which his own captains had shown themselves none too reliable and the enemy commander not unskilled. Possibly also he feared the confusion of a complicated plan, for it was notorious (as may be verified by looking over his correspondence) that Howe had the greatest difficulty in making himself intelligible with tongue or pen. His orders were therefore to bear up together toward the enemy and attack ship to ship, without effort at concentration, and with but one noteworthy departure from the time-honored tactics in which he had been schooled. This was that the battle should be close and decisive. The instructions were that each ship should if possible break through the line astern of her chosen opponent, raking the ships on each side as she went through, and continue the action to leeward, in position to cut off retreat. "I don't want the ships to be bilge to bilge," said Howe to the officers of his flagship, the Queen Charlotte, "but if you can lock the yardarms, so much the better; the battle will be the quicker decided." The approach was leisurely, nearly in line abreast, on a course slightly diagonal to that of the enemy. At 10 A. M. the Queen Charlotte, in the center of the British line, shoved past just under the stern of Villaret's flagship, the Montagne, raking her with a terrible broadside which is said to have struck down 300 of her men. As was likely to result from the plan of attack, the ships in the van of the attacking force were more closely and promptly engaged than those of the rear; only six ships actually broke through, but there was hot fighting all along the line.

Famous among the struggles in the mÊlÉe was the epic three-hour combat of the Brunswick, next astern of Howe, and the Vengeur, both 74's. With the British vessel's anchors hooked in her opponent's port forechannels, the two drifted away to leeward, the Brunswick by virtue of flexible rammers alone able to use her lower deck guns, which were given alternately extreme elevation and depression and sent shot tearing through the Vengeur's deck and hull; whereas the Vengeur, with a superior fire of carronades and musketry, swept the enemy's upper deck. When the antagonists wrenched apart, the Brunswick had lost 158 of her complement of 600 men. The Vengeur was slowly sinking and went down at 6 P. M., with a loss of 250 killed and wounded and 100 more drowned. "As we drew away," wrote a survivor, "we heard some of our comrades still offering prayers for the welfare of their country; the last cries of these unfortunates were, 'Vive la RÉpublique!' They died uttering them."

Out of the confusion, an hour after the battle had begun, Villaret was able to form a column of 16 ships to leeward, and though ten of his vessels lay helpless between the lines, three drifted or were towed down to him and escaped. Howe has been sharply criticized for letting these cripples get away; but the battered condition of his fleet and his own complete physical exhaustion led him to rest content with six prizes aside from the sunken Vengeur. The criticism has also been made that he should have further exerted himself to secure a junction with the detachment on convoy duty, which on May 19 was returning and not far away. If he had at that time held his 32 ships between Brest and Rochefort, with scouts well distributed to westward, he would have been much more certain to intercept both Villaret's fleet and the convoy, which would have approached in company, and both of which, with the British searching in a body at sea, stood a good chance of escape. Howe's hope, no doubt, was to meet the convoy unguarded. The latter, protected by fog, actually crossed on May 30 the waters fought over on the 29th, and twelve days later safely reached the French coast. Robespierre had told Villaret that if the convoy were captured he should answer for it with his life. Hence the French admiral declared years later that the loss of his battleships troubled him relatively little. "While Howe amused himself refitting them, I saved the convoy, and I saved my head."

Though the escape of the convoy enabled the French to boast a "strategic victory," the First of June in reality established British prestige and proved a crushing blow to French morale. A British defeat, on the other hand, might have brought serious consequences, for within a year's time the Allied armies, including the British under the Duke of York, were driven out of Holland, the Batavian Republic was established in league with France (February, 1795), and both Spain and Prussia backed out of the war. Austria remained England's only active ally.

During the remainder of 1794 and the year following only minor or indecisive encounters occurred in the northern theater of war, lack of funds and naval supplies hampering the recovery of the French fleet from the injuries inflicted by Howe. Ill health forcing the latter's retirement from sea duty, he was succeeded in the Channel by Lord Bridport, who continued his predecessor's easy-going methods until the advent of Jervis in 1798, instituted a more rigorous rÉgime. It was not yet recognized that the wear and tear on ships and crews during sea duty was less serious than the injurious effect of long stays in port upon sea spirit and morale.

French Projects of Invasion

With their fleets passive, the French resorted vigorously to commerce warfare, and at the same time kept England constantly perturbed by rumors, grandiose plans, and actual undertakings of invasion. That these earlier efforts failed was due as much to ill luck and bad management as to the work of Bridport's fleet. Intended, moreover, primarily as diversions to keep England occupied at home and sicken her of the war, they did not altogether fail of their aim. Some of these projects verged on the ludicrous, as that of corraling a band of the criminals and royalist outlaws that infested France and dropping them on the English coast for a wild campaign of murder and pillage. Fifteen hundred of these Chouans were actually landed at Fishguard in February of 1798, but promptly surrendered, and France had to give good English prisoners in exchange for them on the threat that they would be turned loose again on French soil.

Much more serious was General Hoche's expedition to Ireland of the winter before. Though Hoche wished to use for the purpose the army of over 100,000 with which he had subdued revolt in the VendÉe, the Government was willing to venture a force of only 15,000, which set sail from Brest, December 15, 1796, in 17 ships-of-the-line, together with a large number of smaller war-vessels and transports. Heavy weather and bad leadership, helped along by British frigates with false signals, scattered the fleet on the first night out. It never again got together; and though a squadron with 6,000 soldiers on board was actually for a week or more in the destination, Bantry Bay, not a man was landed, and by the middle of January nearly all of the flotilla was back in France. The British squadron under Colport, which had been on the French coast at the time of the departure, had in the meanwhile been obliged to make port for supplies. Bridport with the main fleet left Portsmouth, 250 miles from the scene of operations, four days after news of the French departure. During the whole affair neither he nor Colport took a single prize.

Even so small a force cÖoperating with rebellion in Ireland might have proved a serious annoyance, though not a grave danger. Invasion on a grand scale, which Napoleon's victorious campaign in Italy and the peace with Austria (preliminaries at Loeben, April, 1797) now made possible, was effectually forestalled by two decisive victories at sea. Bonaparte, who was to lead the invasion, did not minimize its difficulties. "To make a descent upon England without being master of the sea," he wrote at this time, "is the boldest and most difficult operation ever attempted." Yet the flotilla of small craft necessary was collected, army forces were designated, and in February of 1798 Bonaparte was at Dunkirk. All this served no doubt to screen the Egyptian preparations, which amid profound secrecy were already under way. The Egyptian campaign was an indirect blow at England; but the direct blow would certainly have been struck had not the naval engagements of Cape St. Vincent (February, 1797) and Camperdown (October, 1797) settled the question of mastery of the sea by removing the naval support of Spain and Holland on the right and left wings.

The Battle of Camperdown

Admiral Duncan's victory of Camperdown, here taken first as part of the events in northern waters, is noteworthy in that it was achieved not only against ever-dangerous opponents, but with a squadron which during the preceding May and June had been in the very midst of the most serious mutiny in the history of the British navy. In Bridport's fleet at Portsmouth this was not so much a mutiny as a well organized strike, the sailors it is true taking full control of the ships, and forcing the Admiralty and Parliament to grant their well justified demands for better treatment and better pay. Possibly a secret sympathy with their grievances explains the apparent helplessness of the officers. The men on their part went about the business quietly, and even rated some of their former officers as midshipmen, in special token of esteem. At the Nore, however, and in Duncan's squadron at Yarmouth, the mutiny was marked by bloodshed and taint of disloyalty, little surprising in view of the disaffected Irish, ex-criminals, impressed merchant sailors, and other unruly elements in the crews. In the end 18 men were put to death and many others sentenced.

Duncan faced the trouble with the courage but not the mingling of fair treatment and sharp justice which marked its suppression by that great master of discipline, Jervis, in the fleet off Spain. On his own ship and another, Duncan drew up the loyal marines under arms, spoke to the sailors, and won their allegiance, picking one troublesome spirit up bodily and shaking him over the side. But the rest of the squadron suddenly sailed off two days later to join the mutineers at the Nore, where all the ships were then in the hands of the crews. With his two faithful ships, Duncan made for the Texel, swearing that if the Dutch came out he would go down with colors flying. Fortunately he was rejoined before that event by the rest of his squadron, the mutinous ships having been either retaken by the officers or voluntarily surrendered by the men.

The whole affair, among the ships in Thames mouth, was over in a month's time, from mid-May to mid-June, so quickly that the enemy had little chance to seize the advantage. The Dutch, driven willy-nilly into alliance with France and not too eager to embark upon desperate adventures in the new cause, were nevertheless not restrained from action by any kind feeling for England, who had seized their ships and colonies and ruined their trade. When at last, during a brief withdrawal of Duncan, their fleet under Admiral de Winter attempted a cruise, it was in a run-down condition. Aside from small units, it consisted of 15 ships (4 of 74 guns, 5 of 68, 2 of 64, and 4 under 60), against Duncan's stronger force of 16 (7 of 74, 7 of 64 and 2 of 50). The Dutch ships were flat-bottomed and light-draft for navigation in their shallow coastal waters, and generally inferior to British vessels of similar rating, even though the latter were left-overs from the Channel Fleet.

On the morning of the Battle of Camperdown, October 11, 1797, the Dutch were streaming along their coast on a northwest wind bent on return into the Texel. Pressing forward in pursuit, Duncan when in striking distance determined to prevent the enemy's escape into shallow water by breaking through their line and attacking to leeward. The signal to this effect, however, was soon changed to "Close action," and only the two leading ships eventually broke through. The two British divisions—for they were still in cruising formation and strung out by the pursuit—came down before the wind. Onslow, the second in command, in the Monarch, struck the line first at 12:30 and engaged the Dutch Jupiter, fourth from the rear. Eighteen minutes later Duncan in the Venerable closed similarly to leeward of the Staten Generaal, and afterward the Vrijheid, in the Dutch van.

The two leaders were soon supported—though there was straggling on both sides; and the battle that ensued was the bloodiest and fiercest of this period of the war. The British lost 825 out of a total of 8221 officers and men,[1] more than half the loss occurring in the first four ships in action. The British ships were also severely injured by the gruelling broadsides during the onset, but finally took 11 prizes, all of them injured beyond repair. Though less carefully thought out and executed, the plan of the attack closely resembles that of Nelson at Trafalgar. The head-on approach seems not to have involved fatal risks against even such redoubtable opponents as the Dutch, and it insured decisive results.

[Footnote 1: As compared with this loss of 10%, the casualties in Nelson's three chief battles were as follows: Nile, 896 out of 7401, or 12.1%; Copenhagen, 941 out of 6892, or 13.75%; Trafalgar, 1690 out of 17,256, or 9.73%.]

Duncan's otherwise undistinguished career, and the somewhat unstudied methods of his one victory, may explain why he has not attained the fame which the energy displayed and results achieved would seem to deserve. "He was a valiant officer," writes his contemporary Jervis, "little versed in subtleties of tactics, by which he would have been quickly confused. When he saw the enemy, he ran down upon them, without thinking of a fixed order of battle. To conquer, he counted on the bold example he gave his captains, and the event completely justified his hopes."

Whatever its tactical merits, the battle had the important strategic effect of putting the Dutch out of the war. The remnants of their fleet were destroyed in harbor during an otherwise profitless expedition into Holland led by the Duke of York in 1799. By this time, when naval requirements and expanding trade had exhausted England's supply of seamen, and forced her to relax her navigation laws, it is estimated that no less than 20,000 Dutch sailors had left their own idle ships and were serving on British traders and men-of-war.[1]

[Footnote 1: For references, see end of Chapter XIII, page 285.]