Transcriber's Note:

This book was published in two volumes, of which this is the first. The second volume was released as Project Gutenberg ebook #52589, available at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/52589

THE

INFLUENCE OF SEA POWER

UPON THE

FRENCH REVOLUTION AND EMPIRE 1793-1812

BY

CAPTAIN A. T. MAHAN, U.S.N.

PRESIDENT UNITED STATES NAVAL WAR COLLEGE

AUTHOR OF "THE INFLUENCE OF SEA POWER UPON HISTORY, 1660-1783"
OF "THE GULF AND INLAND WATERS," AND OF A
"LIFE OF ADMIRAL FARRAGUT"

IN TWO VOLUMES

Vol. I.

FOURTH EDITION.

LONDON

SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON
(LIMITED)

University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.

PREFACE.

THE present work, like its predecessor, "The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783," is wholly a result of the author's connection with the United States Naval War College as lecturer upon Naval History and Naval Tactics.

When first asked to undertake that duty, the question naturally arose how to impart to the subject of Naval History an aspect which, in this very utilitarian age, should not be open to the ready reproach of having merely archæological interest, and possessing no practical value for men called upon to use the changed materials of modern naval war. "You won't have much to say about history," was then the somewhat discouraging comment of a senior officer of his own service.

In pondering this matter, it occurred to the author—whose acquaintance with naval history was at that time wholly superficial—that the part played by navies, and by maritime power generally, as a factor in the results of history, and as shaping the destinies of nations and of the world, had received little or no particular attention. If this were so, an analysis of the course of events through a series of years, directed to show the influence of Sea Power upon History, would at least serve to imbue his hearers with an exalted sense of the mission of their calling; and might also, by throwing light upon the political bearings of naval force, contribute to give the service and the country a more definite impression of the necessity to provide a fleet adequate to great undertakings, lest, if an occasion should arise for what he has ventured to call "statesmanship directing arms," we should be found unprepared, through having no sufficient armed force to direct.

In avowing this as the original, and, for a time at least, almost the sole motive of his work, the author practically confesses that he at the beginning had no scientific appreciation or reasoned knowledge of the naval history of the past. Upon giving this the attention required by his new duties, and collating the various incidents with the teachings of recognized authorities upon land warfare, he soon came to recognize that the principles which they claimed to be of general application in their own specialty received also ample and convincing illustration in naval annals; although the development of the Art of War at sea has been slower, and is now less advanced, than on shore. This backward result has been due, partly, to uncertainties peculiar to the sea, and partly to a contempt for the study of the past, and of its experience, as "not practical," from which the naval profession has not yet wholly rid itself.

Thus, in its course, the author's former work, without abandoning its first simple motive, expanded into an attempt to analyze the strategic conduct of the naval campaigns, as well as the tactical features of the various battles—all too few—in which any clear tactical purpose was shown by the commanders engaged. The cordial reception given to the work by his professional brethren, in Great Britain as well as at home, has been to him not only most gratifying, but wholly unexpected. Its chief significance is, however, not personal. The somewhat surprised satisfaction testified is virtually an admission that, in the race for material and mechanical development, sea-officers as a class have allowed their attention to be unduly diverted from the systematic study of the Conduct of War, which is their peculiar and main concern. For, if the commendation bestowed be at all deserved, it is to be ascribed simply to the fact that the author has been led to give to the most important part of the profession an attention which it is in the power of any other officer to bestow, but which too few actually do.

That the author has done so is due, wholly and exclusively, to the Naval War College, which was instituted to promote such studies. If further success attend his present venture, it is his hope that this avowal may help to assure the long uncertain fortunes of the College, to which,—and to its founder, Rear-Admiral Stephen B. Luce,—he gratefully acknowledges his indebtedness for guiding him into a path he would not himself have found.

The term of this work is fixed at the year 1812; a date signalized by Napoleon's invasion of Russia, which wrecked his empire,—or at least gave the outward and visible token of the wreck,—and also by the outbreak of war between Great Britain and the United States. To the latter, as a subject of particular national interest, the author hopes in the near future to devote a special study.

A. T. MAHAN.

October, 1892.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

Outline of Events in Europe, 1783-1793.

Page

Prominence of the year 1793

1

Leading features and results of the war of 1778

2

Condition of the different belligerents at its termination

3

Success of the second Pitt as a peace minister

5

Advantage to Great Britain arising from his secure tenure of power

6

Desire of Western Europe for peace

7

Causes of disturbance

7

Accession of Joseph II. to crown of Austria

7

Commercial expansion of Austrian Netherlands during war of 1778

8

Question of the navigation of the Scheldt

9

Wide-spread interests therein involved

10

The Eastern Question, 1780-1790

11

Change of relations between Great Britain and Russia from 1770 to 1785

12

Interests of France and of Great Britain in the Levant and Baltic

14

Importance of Antwerp as a naval station

15

Interests of European States in Holland and the Netherlands

16

Relations between Russia and France, 1780-1790

17

Preponderance of French influence in Dutch politics

17

Joseph II. drops the question of the Scheldt

18

Treaty of alliance between France and Holland, 1785

18

Armed interference of Prussia in Holland, 1787

19

British party regains ascendency in Holland, 1787

19

Meeting of the Notables in France, February, 1787

19

Turkey declares war against Russia, August, 1787

19

Austria declares war against Turkey, February, 1788

19

Great Britain and Holland proclaim a strict neutrality

20

Consequent effect upon Russia's maritime projects

20

Sweden attacks Russian Finland, June, 1788

21

Defensive alliance between Great Britain, Prussia, and Holland, 1788

21

Denmark attacks Sweden

21

Interposition of Great Britain and Prussia in the Baltic

21

Significance of this action

22

Dawn of the modern Eastern Question

22

Conflicting views of British statesmen about Russia, 1791

23

External influence of France paralyzed by home troubles

24

Progress of the war in southeastern Europe

24

Renewed interference of Great Britain and Prussia in the Baltic

25

Meeting of the States-General in France, 1789

25

Cessation of hostilities between Austria and Turkey, September, 1790

26

Storming of Ismail by Suwarrow, Christmas, 1790

26

Peace of Galatz between Russia and Turkey, August, 1791

27

General peace in eastern Europe, 1791

27

Progress of the Revolution in France, 1789-1791

28

Flight of the King, 1791

28

Declaration of Pilnitz, August, 1791

28

Significant coincidence of this date with Peace of Galatz

29

France declares war against Austria, April, 1792

29

Disorders in Paris, June-September, 1792

30

Suspension of the King, August, 1792

30

Battle of Valmy, September 20, 1792

30

Meeting of National Convention, September 22, 1792

31

Royalty abolished in France

31

Battle of Jemappes, November 6, 1792

31

The French occupy Austrian Netherlands and open the Scheldt

31

Decree of Fraternity, November 19, 1792

31

Decree extending the French system with their armies, December 15, 1792

32

Strained relations between Great Britain and France

32

Execution of Louis XVI., January 21, 1793

32

Dismissal of the French minister by the British court

34

France declares war against Great Britain and Holland, February 1, 1793

34

CHAPTER II. The Condition of the Navies in 1793—and especially of the French Navy. Causes of the deterioration of the French navy after 1789

35

Ignorance of maritime conditions among French administrators

37

Value of the lessons derivable from this experience

38

Factors conditioning the effects of any form of military activity

38

The gun the one sea-weapon of the period in question

39

A ship is a mobile battery

39

It is handled by an organic body, whose members are mutually dependent

39

Necessity of special training to such an organization

40

Blindness of the French Legislature to these facts

41

Rise and growth of insubordination in the navy

41

The disturbances in Toulon, 1789

42

Maltreatment of Commodore D'Albert de Rions

43

Weakness of the National (Constituent) Assembly

43

The Nootka Sound trouble between Spain and Great Britain, 1790

44

France prepares to support Spain

45

De Rions ordered to command the Brest fleet

45

Mutiny in the Brest fleet

45

De Rions leaves the navy

46

His services and distinguished professional reputation

46

Disorders in the navy abroad

47

Disastrous effects upon the French colonies

48

Emigration of French naval officers

49

Reorganization of the navy by the Constituent Assembly, 1791

50

Previous measures of the monarchical government, 1786

51

Reorganization decrees of the Assembly, April, 1791

52

Essential spirit of this legislation

53

The Second (Legislative) Assembly lowers the qualifications for officers

54

Naval officers in the Reign of Terror

54

Further legislation by Third Assembly (National Convention), 1793

55

Results of the successive measures

56

Action of the Assemblies touching enlisted men

57

Singular arguments based on equality of rights

58

Extravagancies of the period

59

Direct results of these measures as shown in battle

60

Indirect effects of the laxness of the Assemblies upon discipline

60

Mutiny in the Brest fleet, 1793

62

Disorders in the Mediterranean fleet, 1792

63

Deterioration of the material of the navy

64

Misery of officers and seamen

64

Want of naval supplies and equipment

67

Effect of these disadvantages upon naval efficiency

68

Effect of naval inefficiency upon the general results of the war

68

Endurance and success of Great Britain due to her Sea Power

69

Condition of the British navy in 1793

69

Possesses a body of trained officers having a continuous tradition

69

Embarrassment of Great Britain for seamen

70

Condition and health of the crews

71

Mutinies in the British navy. How characterized

72

Character of the material in the British navy

73

Comparative force of the French and British navies

75

Numbers and condition of the Spanish navy

75

Inefficiency of its officers and seamen

76

Navies of Holland, Naples, and Portugal

78

Of Turkey and the Baltic States

78

CHAPTER III. The General Political and Strategic Conditions, and the Events of 1793. France declares war against Spain, March 7, 1793

79

Character of the governments arrayed against France

79

Mutual jealousy of Austria and Prussia

80

Attitude of the smaller German States

80

Military and naval situation of Spain

81

Policy of Great Britain

82

Attitude of Russia

82

Second Partition of Poland

82

Course of Sweden and Denmark

83

Internal dissensions and external dangers of Holland

83

Dutch colonies

83

Relations between Portugal and Great Britain

84

Attitude of the Italian States

84

Extent and disorganization of the Turkish Empire

85

Strategic importance of the Mediterranean islands

85

Their political distribution

86

Value of Malta and of Port Mahon

87

Corsica in the beginning of the French Revolution

88

Internal commotions in France

89

Reverses in Belgium and treason of Dumouriez

89

Reorganization of the Committee of Public Safety

90

Revolt of Lyon against the Convention

90

Fall of the Girondists

90

Risings of their followers throughout France

90

Siege of Lyon by Conventional troops

91

Toulon delivered to the British and Spanish fleets

92

French reverses on the eastern and northeastern frontiers

93

Desperate state of France

93

Mistakes of the allies

94

Energy of the Convention and its commissioners

94

Effect upon the armies

94

Failure to attain similar results in the navy

95

Causes of this failure

96

Naval unpreparedness of Great Britain in 1793

96

Difficulty in manning the fleet

96

Distribution of the British naval forces

96

Military and naval problem before Great Britain

97

Military value of insurrections in an enemy's country

98

Measures to compel the French navy to leave port

99

Difficulty of blockading French ports

99

Maritime claims of Great Britain

100

Military character of Lord Howe

101

His views of naval policy

101

Proper strategic use of the British fleet

102

Effects of inactivity upon a naval force

102

Successes of the French armies toward the close of 1793

103

Disasters of the Vendean insurgents

104

Fall of Lyon

105

The allies abandon Toulon, Dec. 19, 1793

105

Disadvantages of Toulon for the allies

106

End of the maritime year 1793

106

CHAPTER IV. The West Indies, 1793-1810. Present importance of the West India islands

109

Their value at the end of the eighteenth century

109

Control of a maritime region dependent upon the navy

110

Interests of Great Britain in the Caribbean Sea

110

Condition of Haïti

111

Relation of Haïti to the routes of commerce

112

Mistaken policy of the British in Haïti

113

Military and commercial value of the Lesser Antilles

114

Their political distribution in 1793

114

Naval weakness of Great Britain in that region

115

Expedition of Jervis and Grey in 1794

115

Capture of the French islands

115

The French retake Guadaloupe

116

Disastrous results to British possessions and commerce

117

Expedition of Christian and Abercromby, 1796

117

Its successes

118

Criticism of British military policy in 1794

119

Injury to Great Britain of Spanish and Dutch alliance with France

120

Capture of Trinidad by the British

121

Subsequent events in the West Indies

121

CHAPTER V. The Naval Campaign of May, 1795, and Battle of the First of June. Distress in France in 1793 and 1794

122

Food supplies ordered from the United States

123

Ships of war sent to convoy them to France

123

Squadrons of Nielly and Villaret sent to meet the convoy

124

Determination of British government to intercept it

125

Sailing of the Channel Fleet under Lord Howe

125

Howe meets the French fleet under Villaret Joyeuse, May 28

126

Partial engagement of May 28

127

Manœuvres of May 29

129

Partial engagement of May 29

130

Lord Howe breaks the French line

131

Villaret loses the advantage of the wind

131

Summary of the results of the two days' engagements

133

Merits of Howe's tactics

135

Strategic mistake by which Montagu's squadron was not on hand

135

Events of May 30 and 31

135

Preparations for battle, June 1

136

Character of Howe's attack

137

Opening of the battle

138

Howe's flag-ship again breaks the French line

139

General success of the first attack

140

The contest between the "Vengeur" and the "Brunswick"

140

Sinking of the "Vengeur"

143

Results of the encounter

144

Villaret's manœuvre to rescue his crippled ships

145

Howe's manœuvre to preserve his prizes

146

Incomplete results of the British victory

147

Physical prostration of Lord Howe

147

Tactical analysis of the action

149

Inferences deduced therefrom

152

Conduct of the French captains

153

Study of the strategic conduct of the two admirals

155

Howe's tactical success neutralized by strategic error

160

Termination of the campaign

161

Safe arrival of the convoy at Brest

161

CHAPTER VI. The Year 1794 in the Atlantic and on the Continent. Inaction of the British Channel fleet

162

Capture of the "Alexander," 74

162

Disastrous winter cruise of the French Brest fleet

163

Continued inactivity of the British Channel fleet

164

Howe leaves the command afloat

165

Succeeded by Bridport

165

Change in the British Admiralty

165

Little change of system

165

Dangers incurred by faulty dispositions

166

Reign of Terror in France

167

Fall of Robespierre, July 27, 1794

167

French successes on north-east frontier

168

Divergent retreat of Austrians and Anglo-Dutch

169

Conquest of Holland by the French

170

Establishment of Batavian Republic

170

Effect of this event upon the coalition

170

War between Great Britain and Holland

170

Fall of Dutch colonies

171

French successes on the Rhine and in the Pyrenees

171

Peace made with France by Prussia, Holland, and Spain

172

Treaties of Great Britain with Austria and Russia

172

CHAPTER VII. The Year 1795 in the Atlantic and on the Continent. The year 1795 one of reaction in France

173

Reactionary measures

174

Counter-revolutionary disorders

175

Constitution of 1795

175

Dissolution of the National Convention

176

Six French ships-of-the-line transferred from Brest to Toulon

176

Action between Villaret Joyeuse and Cornwallis

177

Bridport's action off Île Groix

178

French adopt policy of commerce-destroying and withdraw their fleets from the ocean

179

Criticism of this decision

179

Military conclusions derivable from Napoleon's naval policy

180

Weakness of French military action in 1795

180

Serious reverses in Germany

181

Suspension of arms in Germany

182

Narrative shifts to the Mediterranean

183

Summary of results in 1795

183

CHAPTER VIII. The Mediterranean and Italy.—From the Evacuation of Toulon in 1793 to the British Withdrawal from that Sea, in 1796, and Battle of Cape St. Vincent, in February, 1797.—Austria Forced to Make Peace. Requirements of a base of operations

184

Policy and objects of Great Britain in the Mediterranean

185

Inadequacy of Gibraltar to these ends

185

Advantages of Corsica as a base

186

Expulsion of the French from Corsica

187

The crown of Corsica offered to the king of Great Britain

188

Strained relations between Paoli and the viceroy

188

French Toulon fleet puts to sea, in March, 1795

189

Action with the British Mediterranean fleet, March 14

190

Lethargy of Admiral Hotham

192

Losses in the two fleets

192

French re-enforced by a detachment from Brest

192

Disturbances in Toulon

193

Brush between the fleets off the Hyères Islands

194

Military events in Italy, 1795

195

Difficulty of suppressing coasting trade along the Riviera of Genoa

196

Sluggish movements of the Austrian general Devins

197

Decisive defeat of the Austrians at the battle of Loano

198

They retire across the Apennines

198

Criticism of the management of the British navy

199

Importance of Nelson's services

200

Commerce-destroying by the French

201

Admiral Jervis assumes command in the Mediterranean, and General Bonaparte in Italy

203

Professional Characteristics of Jervis

203

Disastrous results of Hotham's inactivity

207

Share of the French flotilla in maintaining Bonaparte's communications

207

Bonaparte's Italian campaign of 1796

208

Sardinia forced to peace

209

Successive defeats of the Austrians

210

Bonaparte occupies the line of the Adige, and blockades Mantua

210

Political results of the campaign

211

Naples abandons the Coalition, and the French occupy Leghorn

211

Consequent effects upon the British fleet

212

Bonaparte's designs upon Corsica

213

The British seize Elba

213

Offensive and defensive alliance between Spain and France

214

Singular conduct of Rear-Admiral Mann

214

Critical position of the British Mediterranean fleet

215

Ordered to evacuate Corsica

215

Junction of French and Spanish fleets

215

Jervis withdraws his fleet to Gibraltar

216

Policy of thus evacuating the Mediterranean

217

Influence of Naples upon Bonaparte's plans

218

Succession of disasters to Jervis's fleet

219

He repairs with it to Lisbon, January, 1797

219

Nelson's detached expedition to evacuate Elba

219

Events leading to the battle of Cape St. Vincent

220

Battle of Cape St. Vincent

221

Nelson's brilliant action

226

Merit of Sir John Jervis

228

Results of the battle

229

Sir John Jervis created Earl St. Vincent

229

Public depression in Great Britain at this time

230

Influence upon public feeling of the news of the battle

231

St. Vincent establishes the blockade of Cadiz

232

Critical condition of discipline in the British navy

232

Bonaparte's position in Italy

233

Capitulation of Mantua

233

Bonaparte advances through Carinthia into Austria

234

Preliminaries of peace signed at Leoben, April, 1797

234

Conditions, both open and secret

235

Austria treats alone, apart from Great Britain

235

Advantage to Great Britain from her Sea Power

236

Note,—incident of the mutinies of 1797 occurring in the fleet of Earl St. Vincent

236-239

CHAPTER IX. The Mediterranean in 1797 and 1798. Bonaparte's Egyptian Expedition—The Return of the British to the Mediterranean and the Battle of the Nile.—Great Britain resumes control of the Mediterranean and the Second Coalition is formed. Negotiations for peace between Great Britain and France, 1796

240

The British envoy ordered to quit France

241

Difficulties between the United States and France

242

Death of Catharine II. of Russia and accession of Paul I.

243

Reactionary results of the French elections in 1797

243

Coup d'État of September 3-4, 1797

244

Reactionary members exiled from France

245

Renewed negotiations with Great Britain, 1797

245

The British envoy again dismissed

246

Bonaparte's Eastern projects

246

Insidious treatment of Venice

247

Nelson's expedition against Teneriffe

249

He is repulsed, loses his right arm, and returns to England

250

Peace of Campo Formio between France and Austria

250

Conditions of the peace

251

Venice ceases to exist, and France acquires the Ionian islands

251

Bonaparte leaves Italy and returns to Paris

252

Commands army intended to invade England

252

Difficulties of this enterprise

252

The expedition to Egypt determined in its stead

253

Absence of the British fleet from the Mediterranean in 1797

254

Nelson rejoins the fleet off Cadiz, April, 1798

256

Sent with three ships to watch the preparations in Toulon

256

Bonaparte sails with expedition for Egypt, May 19, 1798

256

Nelson joined by a re-enforcement of ten ships-of-the-line

257

Bonaparte seizes Malta, and sails again for Alexandria

257

Perplexity of Nelson as to the enemy's designs

258

Pursues to Alexandria, but fails to find the French

259

Cause of this disappointment

259

Retraces his steps to the westward

260

Bonaparte anchors off Alexandria, and at once disembarks troops

260

Nelson anchors at Syracuse, and again sails for Alexandria

261

Discovers the French fleet anchored in Aboukir Bay

261

Indecision and lethargy of the French admiral Brueys

262

Neglect of Bonaparte's orders

263

Description of Aboukir Bay

263

Brueys's inadequate preparations against attack

264

Comparison with those made by Hood in a like position

265

Battle of the Nile

266

Concentration upon the head of the French column

268

Grounding of the "Culloden"

269

Arrival of the British reserve and concentration on the French centre

270

The French flag-ship blows up

271

Only two French ships-of-the-line escape

271

Discussion of Nelson's claims to the credit of this action

273

Successes of Bonaparte in Egypt

277

Effect upon French troops of the battle of the Nile

277

Effect of the battle upon foreign powers

277

Aggressive action of France upon the continent of Europe

278

Intervention in Switzerland and Rome

279

Dissatisfaction of Naples and Austria

280

Hostile attitude of Paul I. of Russia

281

Alliance between Russia and Austria

282

Effect of the tidings of the battle of the Nile

282

Influence of the battle in India

283

Nelson ordered to Naples

284

Blockade of Malta by the British

285

Disposition of the British Mediterranean fleet

286

Russo-Turkish attack upon the Ionian islands

286

Minorca captured by the British

287

Maritime results of the year 1798

287

CHAPTER X. The Mediterranean from 1799 to 1801. Bonaparte's Syrian Expedition and Siege of Acre.—The Incursion of the French Brest Fleet under Admiral Bruix.—Bonaparte's Return to France.—The French lose Malta and Egypt. Bonaparte's hopes from the Egyptian expedition

288

Weakness of Egyptian institutions

289

Conquest of Upper Egypt

289

The Pasha of Syria advances against Egypt

290

Isolation of the French in Egypt

290

Consequent embarrassment of Bonaparte

291

Bonaparte hears of the Turkish preparations against him

292

Resolves to invade Syria

292

The French capture El Arish and advance to Acre

293

Character of Sir Sidney Smith, commanding the British squadron off Acre

294

His naval and diplomatic mission to the Levant

296

Annoyance thereby caused to Nelson and St. Vincent

297

Smith assumes command off Alexandria

298

Importance of Acre

299

Smith arrives at Acre from Alexandria

299

Captures a convoy with Bonaparte's siege train

300

Siege of Acre

300

Arrival of Turkish re-enforcements from Rhodes

301

Final assault by the French

302

They raise the siege and retreat to Egypt

302

Services of Sir Sidney Smith at Acre

303

The French fleet of twenty-five ships-of-the-line, under Admiral Bruix, escapes from Brest

304

Conduct of Lord Bridport

305

Excitement in Great Britain

306

Bruix appears off Cadiz, and enters the Mediterranean

307

Exposed position of the British naval detachments

308

Anxieties of Earl St. Vincent

309

Measures taken by him

309

Action of Nelson

310

Activity and sagacity shown by St. Vincent

311

The Spanish fleet leaves Cadiz and reaches Cartagena

312

St. Vincent's health fails, and he gives up command to Keith

312

Bruix eludes Keith's pursuit and joins Spaniards in Cartagena

313

The allied fleets pass the Straits and reach Brest

316

Keith pursues to Brest and then goes to Torbay

316

Discussion of the French objects in this cruise

316

Conduct of the British admirals at the same time

318

The Turkish army lands in Aboukir Bay to attack the French

321

It is destroyed by Bonaparte

322

Bonaparte quits Egypt and returns to France

323

Criticism of the Egyptian expedition

324

Absolute control of the Mediterranean by the British navy

328

Surrender of Malta

330

Isolation of Egypt

330

Convention of El Arish for the evacuation of Egypt by the French

332

Ratification refused by British government, because unauthorized

333

Abercromby's expedition. Final loss of Egypt by the French

334

Assassination of Kleber

334

CHAPTER XI. The Atlantic, 1796-1801.—The Brest Blockades.—The French Expeditions against Ireland. The French resolution to depend upon commerce-destroying

335

Consequent effect upon naval war and upon the control of the sea

336

Resulting dispositions of French and British navies

337

Inefficient character of the blockade of Brest

338

Conditions of the maritime problem before Great Britain stated

339

Measures proper to be adopted

340

Mutual relations of the elements of a defensive system

341

Two aspects under which the military value of Brest should be considered

342

Description of the port and its surroundings

342

Strategic importance of the winds

344

Anchorages available to the British fleets as bases of operations against Brest

344

Theory of the Brest blockade

345

Fitness of the British bases relative to this theory

345

Policies of St. Vincent, Howe, and Bridport

346

Causes leading to the Irish expedition of 1796

347

Preparations for the expedition

348

Hoche appointed to command it

349

Villaret Joyeuse appointed to command the fleet

349

His distaste for the enterprise

349

He is superseded by Morard de Galles

350

Inefficiency of the French navy at this time

350

Departure of the expedition

351

Its dispersal on the night of starting

353

Reunion of the greater part of the ships

354

Absence of the two commanders-in-chief

354

The expedition reaches the coast of Ireland

355

Mishaps in Bantry Bay

356

The ships return to France

357

Shipwreck of the "Droits de l'Homme"

358

Misfortunes of the ship carrying Hoche and Morard

359

Inefficiency of the British dispositions against invasion

360

Analysis of these dispositions

361

Consequent impunity of the French

367

St. Vincent succeeds, in 1800, to the command of the Channel fleet

368

His strategic management of the general operations

369

His tactical dispositions to maintain the watch of the port

371

Dependence of the admiralty upon the commander-in-chief

373

St. Vincent's provisions in case of the blockade being forced

374

Decisive effects of the system introduced by him

375

Paralysis of Brest under this watch

376

Napoleon in consequence adopts Antwerp as his chief dockyard

377

Purposed expedition against Ireland from the Texel

378

Naval battle of Camperdown

378

Death of Hoche

378

The expeditions of 1798 against Ireland

379

Cessation of the attempts upon Ireland

380

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

VOLUME I.

MAPS AND BATTLE PLANS.

Page

I.

Manœuvres of May 29, 1794, Figures 1 and 2

129

II.

Manœuvres of May 29, 1794, Fig. 3

131

III.

Battle of June 1, 1794

137

IV.

Map of Northern Italy

195

V.

Battle of Cape St. Vincent

223

VI.

Map of the Mediterranean

257

VII.

Coast Map, Alexandria to the Nile

263

VIII.

Battle of the Nile

266

IX.

Map of English Channel and North Sea

335

X.

Map of Brest and its Approaches

342

THE

INFLUENCE OF SEA POWER

UPON THE

FRENCH REVOLUTION AND EMPIRE.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

Outline of Events in Europe, 1783-1793.

THE ten years following the Peace of Versailles, September 3, 1783, coming between the two great wars of American Independence and of the French Revolution, seem like a time of stagnation. The muttering and heaving which foretold the oncome of the later struggle were indeed to be heard by those whose ears were open, long before 1793. The opening events and violences which marked the political revolution were of earlier date, and war with Austria and Prussia began even in 1792; but the year 1793 stands out with a peculiar prominence, marked as it is by the murder of the king and queen, the beginning of the Reign of Terror, and the outbreak of hostilities with the great Sea Power, whose stubborn, relentless purpose and mighty wealth were to exert the decisive influence upon the result of the war. Untiring in sustaining with her gold the poorer powers of the Continent against the common enemy, dogged in bearing up alone the burden of the war, when one by one her allies dropped away, the year in which Great Britain, with her fleets, her commerce, and her money, rose against the French republic, with its conquering armies, its ruined navy, and its bankrupt treasury, may well be taken as the beginning of that tremendous strife which ended at Waterloo.

To the citizen of the United States, the war whose results were summed up and sealed in the Treaty of Versailles is a landmark of history surpassing all others in interest and importance. His sympathies are stirred by the sufferings of the many, his pride animated by the noble constancy of the few whose names will be forever identified with the birth-throes of his country. Yet in a less degree this feeling may well be shared by a native of Western Europe, though he have not the same vivid impression of the strife, which, in so distant a land and on so small a scale, brought a new nation to life. This indeed was the great outcome of that war; but in its progress, Europe, India, and the Sea had been the scenes of deeds of arms far more dazzling and at times much nearer home than the obscure contest in America. In dramatic effect nothing has exceeded the three-years siege of Gibraltar, teeming as it did with exciting interest, fluctuating hopes and fears, triumphant expectation and bitter disappointment. England from her shores saw gathered in the Channel sixty-six French and Spanish ships-of-the-line,—a force larger than had ever threatened her since the days of the Great Armada, and before which her inferior numbers had to fly, for the first time, to the shelter of her ports. Rodney and Suffren had conducted sea campaigns, fought sea fights, and won sea victories which stirred beyond the common the hearts of men in their day, and which still stand conspicuous in the story of either navy. In one respect above all, this war was distinguished; in the development, on both sides, of naval power. Never since the days of De Ruyter and Tourville had so close a balance of strength been seen upon the seas. Never since the Peace of Versailles to our own day has there been such an approach to equality between the parties to a sea war.

The three maritime nations issued wearied from the strife, as did also America; but the latter, though with many difficulties still to meet, was vigorous in youth and unfettered by bad political traditions. The colonists of yesterday were thoroughly fitted to retrieve their own fortunes and those of their country; to use the boundless resources which Divine Providence had made ready to their hands. It was quite otherwise with France and Spain; while Great Britain, though untouched with the seeds of decay that tainted her rivals, was weighed down with a heavy feeling of overthrow, loss and humiliation, which for the moment hid from her eyes the glory and wealth yet within her reach. Colonial ambition was still at its loftiest height among the nations of Europe, and she had lost her greatest, most powerful colony. Not only the king and the lords, but the mass of the people had set their hearts upon keeping America. Men of all classes had predicted ruin to the Empire if it parted with such a possession; and now they had lost it, wrung from them after a bitter struggle, in which their old enemies had overborne them on the field they called their own, the Sea. The Sea Power of Great Britain had been unequal to the task laid upon it, and so America was gone. A less resolute people might have lost hope.

If the triumph of France and Spain was proportionate to their rival's loss, this was no true measure of their gains, nor of the relative positions of the three in the years after the war. American Independence profited neither France nor Spain. The latter had indeed won back the Floridas and Minorca; but she had utterly failed before Gibraltar, and Jamaica had not even been attacked. Minorca, as Nelson afterwards said, was always England's when she wanted it. It belonged not to this power or that, but to the nation that controlled the sea; so England retook it in 1798, when her fleets again entered the Mediterranean. France had gained even less than Spain. Her trading posts in India had been restored; but they, even more than Minorca, were defenceless unless in free communication with and supported by the sea power of the mother-country. In the West Indies she returned to Great Britain more than the latter did to her. "France," says a French historian, "had accomplished the duties of her providential mission" (in freeing America); "her moral interests, the interests of her glory and of her ideas were satisfied. The interests of her material power had been badly defended by her government; the only solid advantage she had obtained was depriving England of Minorca, that curb on Toulon, far more dangerous to us when in their hands than is Gibraltar." [1]

Unfortunately at this moment France was far richer in ideas, moral and political, and in renown, than in solid power. The increasing embarrassment of the Treasury forced her to stay her hand, and to yield to her rival terms of peace utterly beyond what the seeming strength of either side justified. The French navy had reaped glory in the five years of war; not so much, nearly, as French writers claim for it, but still it had done well, and the long contest must have increased the efficiency of its officers along with their growing experience. A little more time only was wanted for France, allied to Spain, to gain lasting results as well as passing fame. This time poverty refused her.

Spain, as for centuries back, still depended for her income almost wholly upon her treasure ships from America. Always risked by war, this supply became more than doubtful when the undisputed control of the sea passed to an enemy. The policy of Spain, as to peace or war, was therefore tied fast to that of France, without whose navy her shipping lay at England's mercy; and, though the national pride clung obstinately to its claim for Gibraltar, it was forced to give way.

Great Britain alone, after all her losses, rested on a solid foundation of strength. The American contest by itself had cost her nearly £100,000,000, and rather more than that amount had during the war been added to the national debt; but two years later this had ceased to increase, and soon the income of the State was greater than the outgo. Before the end of 1783, the second William Pitt, then a young man of twenty-four, became prime minister. With genius and aims specially fitted to the restorative duties of a time of peace, the first of British finance ministers in the opinion of Mr. Gladstone, [2] he bent his great powers to fostering the commerce and wealth of the British people. With firm but skilful hand he removed, as far as the prejudices of the day would permit and in the face of much opposition, the fetters, forged by a mistaken policy, that hampered the trade of the Empire. Promoting the exchange of goods with other nations, simplifying the collection of taxes and the revenue, he added at once to the wealth of the people and to the income of the State. Although very small in amount, as compared with the enormous figures of later years, the exports and imports of Great Britain increased over fifty per cent between the years 1784 and 1792. Even with the lately severed colonies of North America the same rate of gain, as compared with the trade before the war, held good; while with the old enemy of his father and of England, with France, there was concluded in 1786 a treaty of commerce which was exceedingly liberal for those days, and will, it is said, bear a favorable comparison with any former or subsequent treaty between the two countries. "In the course of little more than three years from Mr. Pitt's acceptance of office as First Lord of the Treasury," says the eulogist of his distinguished rival, Fox, "great commercial and financial reforms had been effected.... The nation overcoming its difficulties, and rising buoyant from depression, began rapidly to increase its wealth, to revive its spirit, and renew its strength." [3]

Such was the home condition of the British people; but fully to appreciate the advantageous position to which it was rising, in preparation for the great conflict still unforeseen, it must be remembered that all things worked together to centre and retain the political executive power in the hands of Pitt. The feelings of the king, then a very real force in the nation; the confidence of the people, given to his father's son and fixed by the wisdom of his own conduct and the growth of the moneyed prosperity so dear to the British heart; the personal character of his only rival in ability,—all combined to commit the political guidance of the State to one man at the great crisis when such unity of action was essential to strength. Whether the great peace minister was equal to the wisest direction of war has been questioned, and has been denied. Certainly it was not the office he himself would have chosen; but it was a great gain for England that she was at this time able to give herself wholly to a single leader. He took office with a minority of one hundred in the House of Commons, held it for two months constantly out-voted, and then dissolving Parliament appealed to the country. The election gave him a majority of over a hundred,—a foretaste of the unwavering support he received from the representatives of the people during the early and critical years of the French Revolution, when the yet fluid opinions of the nation were gradually being cast and hardened into that set conviction and determination characteristic of the race.

How different the state of France is well known. The hopeless embarrassment of the finances, hopeless at least under the political and social conditions, the rapid succession of ministers, each sinking deeper in entanglements, the weak character of the king, the conflict of opinions, the lack of sympathy between classes, all tending to the assembling of the Notables in February, 1787, and the yet more pregnant meeting of the States General, May 4, 1789, which was the beginning of the end. France was moneyless and leaderless.

But while the Western countries of Europe were by these circumstances disposed or constrained to wish for the continuance of peace, restlessness showed itself in other quarters and in ways which, from the close relations of the European States, disquieted the political atmosphere. The Austrian Netherlands and Holland, Poland and Turkey, the Black Sea and the Baltic, became the scene of diplomatic intrigues and of conflicts, which, while they did not involve the great Western Powers in actual war, caused them anxiety and necessitated action.

The Empress-Queen of Austria and Hungary, Maria Theresa, had died in 1780. Her son, the Emperor Joseph II., came to the throne in the prime of life, and with his head full of schemes for changing and bettering the condition of his dominions. In 1781, the weakness of Holland being plainly shown by her conduct of the war with Great Britain, and the other countries having their hands too full to interfere, he demanded and received the surrender of the fortified towns in the Austrian Netherlands; which, under the name of the "barrier towns," had been held and garrisoned by Holland since the Peace of Utrecht in 1713, as a bridle upon the ambition of France. At the same time the circumstances of the great maritime contest, which during the American Revolution covered all the seas of Europe, impelled every neutral nation having a seaboard to compete for the carrying trade. Holland for a time had shared this profit with the nations of the North; but when Great Britain, rightly or wrongly, forced her into war, the trade which had been carried on through Holland and her great rivers reaching into the heart of Germany, being denied its natural channel, sought a new one through the Austrian Netherlands by the port of Ostend. The growth of the latter, like that of Nassau during the Civil War in the United States, was forced and unhealthy,—due not to natural advantages but to morbid conditions; but it fostered the already strong wish of the emperor for a sea power which no other part of his dominions could give.

This movement of Belgian commerce was accelerated by the disappearance of the British carrying trade. As in the days of Louis XIV., before he had laid up his ships-of-the-line, so in the American War the cruisers and privateers of the allies, supported by the action of the combined fleets occupying the British navy, preyed ravenously on British shipping. In the days of the elder Pitt it had been said that commerce was made to live and thrive by war; but then the French great fleets had left the sea, and British armed ships protected trade and oppressed the enemy's cruisers. Between 1778 and 1783 Great Britain was fully engaged on every sea, opposing the combined fleets and protecting as far as she could her colonies. "This untoward state of things reduced the English merchants to difficulties and distresses, with respect to the means of carrying on their trade, which they had never experienced in any other war. Foreign vessels were used for the conveyance of their goods, and the protection of a foreign flag for the first time sought by Englishmen." [4] The writer forgot the days of Jean Bart, Duguay-Trouin, and Forbin; we may profitably note that like conditions lead to like results.

Thus, while America was struggling for life, and the contests of England, France, and Spain were heard in all quarters of the world, Netherland ships showed abroad on every sea the flag of an inland empire, and Ostend grew merrily; but if the petty port and narrow limits thus throve, how should the emperor bear to see the great city of Antwerp, with its noble river and its proud commercial record, shut up from the sea as it had been since the Treaty of Westphalia? His discontent was deep and instant; but it was the misfortune of this prince that he took in hand more than his own capacity and the extent of his estates would let him complete. His attention being for the moment diverted to southeastern Europe, where Austria and Russia were then acting in diplomatic concert against the Porte, the question of Antwerp was dropped. Before it could be resumed, the Peace of Versailles had left Great Britain, France, and Holland—all so vitally interested in whatever concerned Belgium—free, though loath, to enter into a new contention. Matters having been for the time arranged with Turkey, the emperor again in 1784 renewed his demands, alleging, after the manner of statesmen, several collateral grievances, but on the main issue saying roundly that "the entire and free navigation of the Scheldt from Antwerp to the sea was a sine qua non" to any agreement.

The arguments—commercial, political, or founded on treaty—which were in this instance urged for or against the natural claim of a country to use a river passing through its own territory, to the sea that washes its shores, are not here in question; but it is important to analyze the far-reaching interests at stake, to note the bearing of this dispute upon them and so upon the general diplomacy of Europe, and thereby trace its intimate connection with that Sea Power whose influence upon the course of history at this period it is our aim to weigh. Though modified in expression by passing events, and even at times superficially reversed, like natural currents checked and dammed by contrary winds, these underlying tendencies—being dependent upon permanent causes—did not cease to exist during the storm of the Revolution. Ever ready to resume their course when the momentary opposition was removed, the appreciation of them serves to explain apparent contradictions, produced by the conflicts between transient necessity and enduring interests.

From that great centre of the world's commerce where the Scheldt, the Meuse, the Rhine, and the Thames meet in the North Sea, near the Straits of Dover, there then parted two principal lines of trade passing through European waters,—through seas, that is, along whose shores were planted many different powers, foreign and possibly hostile to each other. Of these two lines, one ended in the Baltic; the other, after skirting the coasts of France and the Spanish peninsula and running the gantlet of the Barbary corsairs, ended in the Levant or Turkish Seas. The great Empire of Russia, which only made itself felt in the sphere of European politics after the Treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, had since then been moving forward not only its centre, which bore upon the continent of Europe, but also both its wings; one of which touched and overshadowed the Baltic on the North, while the other, through a steady course of pressure and encroachment upon the Turks, had now reached the Black Sea. This advance had been aided by the fixedness with which France and England, through their ancient rivalry and their colonial ambitions, had kept their eyes set upon each other and beyond the Atlantic; but the Peace of Versailles forced the combatants to pause, and gave them time to see other interests, which had been overlooked through the long series of wars waged, between 1739 and 1783, over commerce and colonies. It was then realized that not only had Russia, in the past half-century, advanced her lines by the partition of Poland and by taking from Sweden several provinces on the Baltic, but also that she had so added to her influence upon the Black Sea and over the Turkish Empire by successive aggressions, wresting bits of territory and establishing claims of interference in behalf of Turkish subjects, as to make her practical supremacy in Eastern waters a possibility of the future.

The Western Question, as it may fitly be called, had been settled by the birth of a new nation, destined to greatness and preponderance in the western hemisphere; the Eastern Question, phrase now so familiar, soon loomed on the horizon. Was it to receive a like solution? Was a great nation, already close to the spot, to win a position of exceptional advantage for dominating in eastern waters as America must do in western? for it must be remembered that, although the Levant was then only the end of a European trade route, both the history of the past and the well understood possibilities of the future pointed to it as one of the greatest centres of commerce, and therefore of human interest and political influence, in the world. The Levant and Egypt had then, and still keep, the same interest that is now being felt in the Isthmus of Panama and the Caribbean; and it is hard to imagine a more threatening condition of naval power than the possession of the Black Sea and its impregnable entrance, by a vigorous nation, so close to the Eastern highway of the world. The position in 1783 was the more dangerous from the close alliance and respective abilities of the rulers of Austria and Russia; the cool-headed and experienced Catharine, through her influence on her weaker colleague, directing the resources of both empires in a path most favorable to Russia.

The tendency of Russian growth, and the historic events which marked its progress, were, of course, well enough known in England long before; but there is a difference between knowing facts and realizing their full meaning. Circumstances alter cases; and men's minds, when strongly bent one way, do not heed what is passing elsewhere. Hence, in 1785, we find the attitude of Great Britain toward Russia very different from that of fifteen years earlier, when the empress and the Porte were at war. In 1770, British officers commanded Russian fleets and ships, and a British admiral had leave to take a place in the Russian Admiralty, with the promise of his home rank being restored to him. The Czarina sent a fleet of twenty sail-of-the-line from the Baltic to the Levant. They stopped and refitted in Spithead; Russian soldiers were landed and camped ashore to refresh themselves; English sergeants of marines were employed to drill them; a Russian eighty-gun ship, flying the flag of an Anglo-Russian admiral, was docked in Portsmouth and cut down to improve her sailing qualities. Thus comforted and strengthened they sailed for the Mediterranean; and, receiving further damage from the poor seamanship of their crews, they were again fitted at Port Mahon,—then an English dockyard,—for action in the Levant. [5] When, among the hard knocks of the two following years, the Russians destroyed a Turkish fleet of fifteen ships-of-the-line in a port of Asia Minor, British lieutenants commanded the fire-ships, and a British commodore the covering squadron.

To us now, with our remembrance of Kars and Silistria, of the Crimea and Hobart Pasha, of Cyprus and Besika Bay, these things seem like a dream; and the more so, that the Mediterranean powers of the earlier day viewed the Russian approach with ill-concealed mistrust, and laid severe restrictions upon the use of their ports. But Turkey then, though a good friend to Great Britain, was a yet better friend to France; the Turkish alliance had been useful to the latter country by making diversion in her wars with Austria, Great Britain's natural ally; the French were the favored nation by Turkish commercial treaties, and a naval war in eastern waters could not but be injurious to their commerce. Difficulties about trade might even bring about a collision between France and Russia, which at least could do no harm to Great Britain at a time when her rival was known to be steadily building up her navy with a view to revenge past defeats; just as now she is thought to be looking for a day of reckoning with Germany. The Baltic trade was also of immense value, and the friendship of Russia was necessary thereto. Altogether, in 1770, the Russian nation, notwithstanding the French leanings of the Czarina, was, upon the whole, the friend of Great Britain's friends, and the opponent of her enemies,—especially of the one traditional, or, as even generous Englishmen used to say, the natural enemy, France. Russia bore especially against Sweden, Poland, and Turkey; and these it was the consistent aim of the best school of French statesmen to court and strengthen.

But in 1785 a great change had taken place. The war of 1770 had planted Russia firmly on the Black Sea. The treaty of Kainardji in 1774 admitted her trade freely to the Mediterranean,—a privilege which other trading nations, in the narrow spirit of the day, considered their own loss. Russian frigates had entered the Dardanelles on their way to the Black Sea; and though the Porte, terrified at the consequences of its action, stopped them at Constantinople, the move was none the less significant. Then there had come, in 1774, the partition of Poland, universally condemned as unrighteous and dangerous to the balance of power, though submitted to by the other States. If Great Britain, though restless over this, saw still some compensation in the injury done to France by the weakening of her allies, and hugged herself with the belief that her insular position made the continental balance of less moment, she had had a severe reminder of Russia's growing strength and power to injure, in the Armed Neutrality of 1780. This unfriendly blow, aimed by a State she had looked upon as almost a natural ally, which she had so greatly helped but ten years before, and which had now chosen the moment of her direst straits to attack what she considered her maritime rights, probably completed the alienation, and opened the eyes of British statesmen to the new danger with which they were threatened by the position of Russia upon the Baltic and close to the Mediterranean.

France, also, had little less interest than England in this condition of things, and certainly felt no less. From the days of Henry IV. and Colbert, and even before, she had looked upon the Levant as peculiarly her own field, the home of a faithful ally, and the seat of a lucrative trade which was almost monopolized by her. Although so far foiled in India, she had not yet lost her hopes of overcoming and replacing the British hold upon that land of fabled wealth, and she understood the important bearing of the Levant and Egypt upon the security of tenure there. It need not then surprise us, in the great maritime war which we are approaching, to find Napoleon—for all his greatness, the child of his generation—amid all the glory and bewildering rush of his famous Italian campaign, planning conquest in Egypt and the East, and Nelson, that personification of the British sea power of his day, fighting his two most brilliant battles in the Levant and in the Baltic. Nor will we be unprepared to see an importance equal to that of Gibraltar and Mahon in former days, now attached to points like Malta, Corfu, Taranto, Brindisi, as well as to Sicily and Egypt, by the statesmen, generals, and admirals, whose counsels directed the military efforts of the belligerents. Many of these points had heretofore lain out of the field of action of the Western Powers, but the rising Eastern Question was bringing them forward.

Nor was it in the Levant alone that questions vitally affecting the rival States awaited solution. The trade interests of the Baltic, as the outlet through which great rivers and the products of immense regions found their way to the world beyond, made its control also an object of importance to both the chief parties in the coming struggle,—to Great Britain who strove to drive her enemy off the sea, and to France who wished to shut out hers from the land. But, besides its commercial importance, the secluded character of the sea, the difficulty of the approach,—aggravated by the severe climate,—and the immense preponderance in strength of Russia over Sweden and Denmark, made always possible an armed combination such as that of 1780, which was in fact renewed in 1800, seriously threatening the naval supremacy of Great Britain. Such a coalition it was vital to the latter to prevent, and most desirable to her enemy to effect. If formed, it was a nucleus around which readily gathered all other malcontents, dissatisfied with the harsh and overbearing manner in which the great Sea Power enforced what she considered her rights over neutral ships.

The nearness of England to the Baltic made it unnecessary to have naval stations on the way for the repair or shelter of her shipping, but it was most undesirable that the ports and resources of Holland and Belgium, lying close on the flank of the route, and doubly strong in the formidable outworks of shoals and intricate navigation with which nature had protected them, should be under the control of a great hostile power. Jean Bart, and his fellow-privateersmen of a hundred years before, had shown the danger to British shipping from even the third-rate port of Dunkirk, so situated. Where Dunkirk sent squadrons of frigates, Antwerp could send fleets of ships-of-the-line. The appearance of Russia, therefore, and her predominance on the Baltic, made weightier still the interest in the political condition of the Low Countries which, for generations past, Great Britain had felt on account of her commercial relations with them, and through them with Germany; an interest hitherto aroused mainly by the ambition of France to control their policy, if not actually to possess herself of a large part of their territory. She had to fear that which was realized under Napoleon,—the conversion of Antwerp into a great naval station, with free access to the sea, and the control of its resources and those of the United Provinces by a strong and able enemy.

Great Britain, therefore, had in 1781 seen with just apprehension the aggressive attitude of Joseph II. toward the Dutch, and the fall of the "barrier towns." It is true that these fortresses had ceased to afford much protection to Holland, owing to her military decline, but the event emphasized her exposure to France; while the power of Austria to defend her own provinces, or the Dutch, was notoriously less than that of France to attack, owing to the relative distance of the two from the scene, and the danger to troops, on the march from Austria, of being assailed in flank from the French frontier. Now, again, in 1784, she was forced to look with anxiety—less on account of Austria than of France—upon this raising of the question of the Scheldt. There was little cause to fear Austria becoming a great sea power now, when she had held the Netherlands three fourths of a century without becoming such; but there was good reason to dread that the movements in progress might result in increasing her rival's sea power and influence—perhaps even her territory—in the Low Countries. All these things did come to pass, though not under the dying monarchy.

It may be presumed that the wise Catharine of Russia, without in the least foreseeing the approaching French convulsion which shook her plans as well as those of other European rulers, realized the true relations between her country and the Western powers, when she so heartily supported the emperor in his claim for the free navigation of the Scheldt. There was no likelihood then, as there is little likelihood now, that Great Britain and France would act together in the Eastern Question, then too new to outweigh former prejudices or to unite old enemies. If the contention of Austria were successful, Russia would secure a friendly port in a region naturally hostile to her pretensions. If unsuccessful, as things then looked, the result would probably be the extension of French influence in the Netherlands and in the United Provinces; and French gain there meant gain of sea power, with proportionate loss of the same to Great Britain. The empress could still reckon on their mutual antagonism; while the British navy, and the way in which it was used in war, were more serious dangers to Russia than the French armies. Whatever her reasoning, there is no doubt that at this time her policy was drawing closer to France. The French ministers in the East mediated between her and the Sultan in the unceasing disputes arising from the treaty of Kainardji. A commercial treaty on most favorable terms was concluded with France, while that with Great Britain was allowed to lapse, and its renewal was refused during many years.

Such were the ambitions and the weighty solicitudes, well understood on all hands, which, during the eight years succeeding the emperor's demand for the opening of the Scheldt, underlay and guided the main tendencies of European policy, and continued so to do during the revolutionary wars. The separate events which group themselves round these leading outlines, up to the outbreak of war in 1793, can only be hastily sketched.

Notwithstanding the close family relationship between Louis XVI. and the emperor, the French government looked coldly upon the latter's action in the matter of the Scheldt. The long-standing struggle in the United Provinces between partisans of Great Britain and France was just now marked by the preponderance of the latter, and, consequently, of French influence. As Austria seemed resolved to enforce her claims by war, the king first offered his mediation, and, when that was unavailing, told the emperor he would interpose by arms. His troops were accordingly massed on the Belgian frontier. It was understood that the king of Prussia, who was brother-in-law to the stadtholder, would act with France. Russia, on the other hand, proclaimed her intention to support Austria. Sweden, as the enemy of Russia, began to put ships in commission and enlist soldiers; while from Constantinople came a report that, if war began, the sultan also would improve so good an opportunity of regaining what he had lately lost. While the quarrel about the Scheldt was thus causing complications in all quarters, an incident occurred upon the chief scene of trouble, which under such conditions might well have precipitated a general war. An Austrian brig was ordered to sail from Antwerp to the sea, to test the intentions of Holland. Upon passing the boundary she was fired upon and brought to by a Dutch armed ship. This happened on the 8th of October, 1784.

Yet after all war did not come, owing to Joseph's volatile attention being again drawn from the matter immediately in hand. He proposed to the elector of Bavaria to take the Netherlands in exchange for his electorate. This transfer, which by concentrating the possessions of Austria would greatly have increased her weight in the Empire, was resisted by the whole Germanic body with Frederic the Great at its head. It therefore came to naught; but the slackening of the emperor's interest in his Scheldt scheme promoted, under French auspices, a peaceful arrangement; which, while involving mutual concessions, left the real question substantially untouched. Its solution was not reached until the storm of the Revolution swept city and river into the arms of the French republic. This compromise was shortly followed by a treaty of the closest alliance between France and the United Provinces, engaging them to mutual support in case of war, fixing the amount of armed ships or men to be furnished, and promising the most intimate co-operation in their dealings with other States. This agreement, which, as far as compacts could, established French preponderance in the councils of Holland, was ratified on Christmas Day, 1785.

This treaty gave rise to serious and regretful consideration in Great Britain; but the growing financial embarrassment and internal disturbance of France were rapidly neutralizing her external exertions. The following years were marked by new combinations and alliances among States. In 1786 Frederic the Great's death took away an important element in European politics. The quarrel between the two factions in Holland had reached the verge of civil war, when an insult offered by the French party to the wife of the stadtholder, sister to the new king of Prussia, led to an armed interference by this sovereign. In October, 1787, Prussian troops occupied Amsterdam and restored to the stadtholder privileges that had been taken from him. Even France had strongly condemned the act of those who had arrested the princess, and advised ample satisfaction to be given; but, nevertheless, when the French party appealed for aid against the Prussian intervention, she prepared to give it and notified her purpose to Great Britain. The latter, glad again to assert her own influence, replied that she could not remain a quiet spectator, issued immediate orders for augmenting her forces by sea and land, and contracted with Hesse for the supply of twelve thousand troops upon demand. The rapid success of the Prussians prevented any collision; but Great Britain had the gratification, and France the mortification, of seeing re-established the party favorable to the former.

In February, 1787, the Assembly of Notables, which had not met since 1626, was opened by Louis XVI. at Versailles. But the most striking event of this year was the declaration of war against Russia by Turkey, which determined no longer to wait until its enemy was ready before engaging in an inevitable conflict. The Turkish manifesto was sent forth August 24; Russia replied on the 13th of September.

The emperor, as the ally of Russia, declared war against Turkey on the 10th of February, 1788. Operations were carried on by the Austrians around Belgrade and on the Danube. The Russians, bent on extending their power on the Black Sea, invested Oczakow at the mouth and on the right bank of the Dnieper,—Kinburn on the left side having already been ceded to them by the treaty of Kainardji. The czarina also decided to renew in the Mediterranean the diversion of 1770, again sending ships from the Baltic. When the distance and inconvenience of this operation, combined with the entire lack of any naval station in the Mediterranean, are considered in connection with the close proximity of Russia to that sea in mere miles, there will be felt most forcibly her tantalizing position with reference to commerce and sea power, to whose importance she has been keenly alive and to which she has ever aspired since the days of Peter the Great. It is difficult to understand how Russia can be quiet until she has secured an access to the sea not dependent upon the good-will of any other State.

Notwithstanding the many causes of displeasure she had given to Great Britain, Catharine went on with her arrangements as though assured of the good-will and help before received. Pilot boats were engaged to meet the ships in British waters, and take them to British dockyards. Under her orders, British merchants chartered eighteen large ships to convey artillery and stores after the fleet. All these arrangements were quietly frustrated by Pitt's ministry, which forbade seamen to serve in any foreign ships; and, upon the ground that the nation was to be strictly neutral, made the contractors renounce their engagements. Catharine then turned to Holland, which also refused aid, pleading the same purpose of neutrality. This concert of action between the two maritime States forced Russia to abandon so distant an expedition and illustrated the advantage she would have obtained from the emperor's claim to the Scheldt. It was at this time that the celebrated Paul Jones, who had distinguished himself by his desperate courage in the American Revolutionary War, took service in the Russian Navy and was given a high command; but his appointment so offended the British officers already serving in the fleet, whom their government had foreborne to recall, that they at once resigned. The Russians could not afford to lose so many capable men, and Jones was transferred from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

Soon a fourth State took part in the contest. On the 21st of June, 1788, Sweden advanced her troops into Russian Finland, and on the 30th war against her was declared by Russia. It now proved fortunate for the latter that she had not been able to get her fleet away from the Baltic. The fighting on land was there mainly confined to the north coast of the Gulf of Finland, while in the waters of the Gulf several very severe actions took place. These battles were fought not only between ships-of-the-line of the usual type, but by large flotillas of gunboats and galleys, and were attended with a loss of life unusual in naval actions.

War being now in full swing throughout the East, Great Britain and Prussia drew together in a defensive treaty, and were joined by Holland also, under the new lease of power of the stadtholder and British party. The quota of troops or ships to be furnished in case of need by each State was stipulated. The allies soon had occasion to act in favor of one of the belligerents. Denmark, the hereditary enemy of Sweden, and now in alliance with Russia, took this opportunity to invade the former country from Norway, then attached to the Danish crown. On September 24, 1788, twelve thousand Danish troops crossed the frontier and advanced upon Gottenburg, which was on the point of surrendering when the sudden and unexpected arrival of the king, in person and alone, prevented. There was not, however, force enough to save the town, had not Great Britain and Prussia interfered. The British minister at Copenhagen passed over hastily into Gottenburg, induced the Swedish king to accept the mediation of the two governments, and then notified the Danish commander that, if the invasion of Sweden was not stopped, Denmark would be by them attacked. The peremptory tone held by the minister swept away the flimsy pretext that the Danish corps was only an auxiliary, furnished to Russia in accordance with existing treaty, and therefore really a Russian force. There was nothing left for Denmark but to recede; an armistice was signed at once and a month later her troops were withdrawn.

The true significance of the alliance between the two Western Powers, to which Holland was accessory, is markedly shown by this action, which, while ostensibly friendly to Sweden, was really hostile to Russia and a diversion in favor of the sultan. Great Britain and Prussia, in consequence of the growing strength and influence of Russia in the Baltic, the Black Sea, and the Continent, and to check her progress, followed what was then considered to be the natural policy of France, induced by ties and traditions long antedating the existing state of things in Europe. Sweden then, and Turkey later, traditional allies of France, and in so far in the opposite scale of the balance from Great Britain, were to be supported by the demonstration—and if need were by the employment—of force. This was done, not because France was as yet less dreaded, but because Russia had become so much more formidable. It was again the coming Eastern Question in which, from the very distance of the central scene of action from Western Europe, and from the character of the interests and of the strategic points involved, Sea Power, represented chiefly by the maritime strength and colonial expansion of Great Britain, was to play the leading and most decisive part. It was the dawning of the day, whose noon the nineteenth century has not yet seen, during which Nelson and Napoleon, Mohammed Ali and Ibrahim Pasha, the Sultan Mahmoud and the Czar Nicholas, Napier, Stopford, and Lalande in 1840, the heroes of Kars, Silistria, and the Crimea, and of the Russo-Turkish war of 1877, were to play their parts upon the scene.

But in the years after the Peace of Versailles this was a new question, upon which opinions were unformed. It was true that, to quote from a contemporary writer, "England had had full leisure to ruminate upon, and sufficient cause to reprobate, that absurd and blind policy, under the influence of which she had drawn an uncertain ally, and an ever-to-be-suspected friend, from the bottom of the Bothnic Gulf to establish a new naval empire in the Mediterranean and Archipelago." [6] These meditations had not been fruitless, as was seen by the consistent attitude of Pitt's ministry at this time; but on the other hand, when it was proposed in 1791 to increase the naval force in commission, in order "to add weight to the representations" [7] being made by the allies to the belligerents,—in order, in other words, to support Turkey by an armed demonstration,—Fox, the leader of the Whigs, said that "an alliance with Russia appeared to him the most natural and advantageous that we could possibly form;" [8] while Burke, than whom no man had a juster reputation for political wisdom, observed that "the considering the Turkish Empire as any part of the balance of power in Europe was new. The principles of alliance and the doctrines drawn from thence were entirely new. Russia was our natural ally and the most useful ally we had in a commercial sense." [9] That these distinguished members of the opposition represented the feelings of many supporters of the ministry was shown by a diminished majority, 93, in the vote that followed. The opposition, thus encouraged, then introduced a series of resolutions, the gist of which lay in these words: "The interests of Great Britain are not likely to be affected by the progress of the Russian arms on the borders of the Black Sea." [10] In the vote on this, the minister's majority again fell to eighty, despite the arguments of those who asserted that "the possession of Oczakow by the empress would facilitate not only the acquisition of Constantinople, but of all lower Egypt and Alexandria; which would give to Russia the supremacy in the Mediterranean, and render her a formidable rival to us both as a maritime and commercial power." After making every allowance for party spirit, it is evident that British feeling was only slowly turning into the channels in which it has since run so strongly.

France, under the pressure of her inward troubles, was debarred from taking part with her old allies in the East, and withdrew more and more from all outward action. On the 8th of August, 1788, the king fixed the 1st of May, 1789, as the day for the meeting of the States General; and in November the Notables met for the second time, to consider the constitution and mode of procedure in that body, the representation in it of the Third Estate, and the vote by orders. They were adjourned after a month's session; and the court, contrary to the judgment of the majority among them, proclaimed on the 27th of December, 1788, that the representatives of the Third Estate should equal in number those of the two others combined. No decision was given as to whether the votes should be individual, or by orders.

Oczakow was taken by the Russians on the 17th of December, 1788, and during the following year the Eastern war raged violently both in the Baltic and in southeastern Europe. Turkey was everywhere worsted. Belgrade was taken on the 8th of October by the Austrians, who afterwards occupied Bucharest and advanced as far as Orsova. The Russians reduced Galatz, Bender, and other places. Besides losing territory, the Turks were defeated in several pitched battles. The conduct of the war on their part was much affected by the death of the reigning sultan.

The Swedish war was in its results unimportant, except as a diversion in favor of Turkey. To keep it up as such, subsidies were sent from Constantinople to Stockholm. Great Britain and Prussia were obliged again to threaten Denmark, in 1789, to keep her from aiding Russia. The British minister, speaking for both States, expressed their fixed determination to maintain the balance of power in the North. A defensive alliance was then formed between Russia and Austria on the one hand, and France and Spain on the other. The Bourbon kingdoms pledged themselves to a strict neutrality in the Eastern War as it then existed; but if Russia or Austria were attacked by any other State, they were to be helped,—Austria, by an army of sixty thousand men; Russia, by a fleet of sixteen ships-of-the-line and twelve frigates. The latter provision shows both the kind of attack feared by Russia and the direction of her ambition.

On the 4th of May of this year, 1789, the States General met at Versailles, and the French Revolution thenceforth went on apace. The Bastille was stormed July 14th. In October the royal family were brought forcibly from Versailles to Paris by the mob. The earlier events of the Revolution will hereafter be summarily related by themselves, before going on with the war to which they led. It will here be enough to say that the voice of France was now silent outside her own borders.

In 1790 the Eastern War was practically brought to an end. On the 31st of January a very close treaty of alliance was made between Prussia and the Porte,—the king binding himself to declare war at a set time against both Russia and Austria. The emperor died in February, and was succeeded by his brother Leopold, who was disposed to peace. A convention was soon after held, at which sat ministers of Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, and the United Provinces; the two latter acting as mediators because Prussia had taken such a pronounced attitude of hostility to Austria. A treaty was signed July 27, by which the emperor renounced his alliance with Russia. On September 20, he agreed to an armistice with Turkey; which, after long negotiation, was followed by a definitive peace, concluded August 4, 1791.

The Russian conflict with Turkey languished during the summer of 1790. Active operations began in October, and continued during a season whose severities the Russian could bear better than the Turk. The final blow of the campaign and of the war was the taking of Ismail by Suwarrow, a deed of arms so tremendous and full of horrors that a brief account of its circumstances is allowable even to our subject.

The town, which was looked on as the key of the lower Danube, was surrounded by three lines of wall, each with its proper ditch, and contained a garrison of thirteen thousand. Its population, besides the troops, was about thirty thousand. Owing to the season, December, Suwarrow determined not to attempt a regular siege, but to carry the place by assault, at any cost of life. Batteries were consequently put up in every available place, and as rapidly as possible, in order to prepare for and cover the attack. At five o'clock Christmas morning they all opened together, and, after a furious cannonade of two hours, the Russians moved forward in eight columns. After a three hours struggle the assailants were forced back; but Suwarrow, whose influence over his soldiers was unbounded, ran to the front, and, planting a Russian flag on one of the enemy's works, asked his men if they would leave it behind them. Through his efforts and those of the officers, the troops returned to the charge. The conflict, which must have resolved itself into a multitude of hand-to-hand encounters, lasted till midnight, when, after an eighteen hours fight, the third line of defence was carried and resistance ceased, though bloodshed continued through the night. It was computed at the time that thirty thousand Turks, including women and children, and some twenty thousand Russian soldiers died violent deaths during that Christmas day of 1790. Warlike operations continued during the spring, but preliminaries of peace between Russia and Turkey were signed at Galatz on the 11th of August, 1791.

This put an end to hostilities throughout the East, peace having been made between Russia and Sweden a year before, on August 11, 1790. The time of attack had been well chosen by the Swedish king, and had public opinion in Great Britain approached unanimity, a powerful lever would have been put in her hands to break down the Russian attack on Turkey by supporting the diversion in the North. The Russian and Swedish fleets were so evenly balanced that a small British division would have turned the scale, controlled the Baltic, and kept open the Swedish communications from Finland to their own coast. So far, however, was the nation from being of one mind that, as we have seen, the minister's majority steadily fell, and he probably knew that among those who voted straight, many were far from hearty in his support. Prussia also did not back Sweden as she should have done, after definitely embracing that policy, though she was both disconcerted and angered at the peace for which she had not looked. This irresolution on the part of the allied States limited their action to interposing between Sweden and Denmark, and prevented the results which might reasonably have been expected in the north, and yet more in the east of Europe; but it does not take from the significance of their attitude, nor hide the revolution in British statesmanship which marks the ten years now being treated.

The tendency thus indicated was suddenly, though only temporarily, checked by the Revolution in France. The troubles that had been so long fomenting in that country had, after a short and delusive period of seeming repose, begun again at nearly the very moment that the Eastern War was ending. This will be seen by bringing together the dates at which were happening these weighty events in the East and West.

It was on the 6th of October, 1789, that the king and royal family were brought from Versailles to Paris, unwilling but constrained. After this outbreak of popular feeling, comparative quiet continued through the last months of 1789 and all of 1790, during which were fought in the East the most important battles of the war, both in the Baltic and on the Danube, including the bloody assault of Ismail. During this time, however, Louis XVI. underwent many bitter mortifications, either intended as such, or else unavoidably humiliating to his sense of position. In June, 1791, he fled with his family from Paris to put himself in the care of part of the army stationed in eastern France under the Marquis de Bouillé and believed to be thoroughly trustworthy. Before reaching his destination he was recognized, and brought back to Paris a prisoner. The greeting of the royal family was significant of the change that had passed over the people within a few years, and which their unsuccessful flight had intensified. They were met by perfect silence, while some distance ahead of them rode an officer commanding the bystanders not to uncover. Despite the distrust it felt, the Constituent Assembly went on with the work of framing a constitution in which the king still had a recognized position, and which he formally accepted on the 14th of September, 1791. During that summer, peace was signed between Russia and Turkey, and a meeting was had at Pilnitz between the emperor and the king of Prussia, after which they put out their joint declaration that the situation in which the king of France found himself was an object of common concern to all the rulers of Europe; that "they hoped this common concern would lead them to employ, in conjunction with the two declaring sovereigns, the most efficacious means, relative to their forces, in order to enable the king of France to consolidate in the most perfect liberty, the basis of a monarchical government equally suitable to the rights of sovereigns and the welfare of the French nation." The two princes ended by stating their own readiness to join in such united action with the force necessary to obtain the common end proposed, and that they would, meanwhile, give orders to their troops to be ready to put themselves in a state of activity.

The close coincidence in date of the Declaration of Pilnitz, August 27, 1791, with the Peace of Galatz, signed August 11, is curious enough for passing remark; the one formally opening the new channel of European interest and action, while the other marked the close of the old. The Declaration, however, was in the same line of effort that the new emperor had for some time been following. It met with a somewhat hesitating response. Russia and Sweden agreed to raise an army, which Spain was to subsidize; but Great Britain, under Pitt, declined to meddle in the internal affairs of another state.

The first National or, as it is conveniently called, Constituent Assembly, dissolved after framing a Constitution; and the following day, October 1, 1791, the second Assembly, known as the Legislative, came together. The Declaration of Pilnitz had strongly moved the French people and increased, perhaps unjustly, their distrust of the king. This change of temper was reflected in the Assembly. Strong representations and arguments were exchanged between the ministers of foreign affairs in Austria and France, through the ambassadors at either court; but in truth there was no common ground of opinion on which the new republic and the old empires could meet. The movements on either side were viewed with studied suspicion, and war was finally declared by France against Austria, April 20, 1792. The first unimportant encounters were unfavorable to the French; but more serious danger than that which threatened from without was arising within France itself. The king and the Assembly came into collision through the use by the former of his constitutional power of Veto. The agitation spread to the streets. On the 20th of June a deputation from the mob of Paris appeared before the Assembly, and asked permission for the citizens outside to defile before it, as a demonstration of their support. The extraordinary request was granted; and an immense crowd pressed forward, of people of all ages, armed with weapons of every kind, among which appeared a pike carrying the heart of a bull labelled an "Aristocrat's heart." From the Assembly the crowd went to the Louvre, and thence forced their way through the palace gates into the king's presence. The unhappy Louis bore himself with calm courage, to which perhaps he, at the moment, owed his life; but he submitted to put on the symbolic red cap, and to drink to the nation from a bottle handed him by a drunken rioter.

Little was left in life for a king thus humbled, and his final humiliation was close at hand. Prussia had not long delayed to act in concert with the emperor, after France declared war. On July 26, a month after the strange scene in the Tuileries, was issued an exposition of her reasons for taking arms; and at the same time the Duke of Brunswick, commander-in-chief of the allied armies, put forth a proclamation to the French framed in such violent terms as to stir to the utmost the angry passions of a frantic and excitable race. On the 10th of August the Paris mob again stormed the Tuileries, the king and royal family fled for safety to the hall of the Legislature, the Swiss Guards were killed and the palace gutted. The Assembly then decreed the suspension of the king; and on the 13th of August the royal family was removed to the Temple, the last home on earth for several of them.

On the 2d of September occurred the butcheries known as the September Massacres. To this date and this act is to be referred the great change in British feeling toward the Revolution. On the 20th the battle of Valmy, by some thought decisive of the fate of the Revolution, was won by the French. Though being otherwise far from a battle of the first importance, it led to the retreat of the allied forces and destroyed for a time the hopes of the royalists. Two days after Valmy met the third Assembly, the National Convention of terrible memory. Its first act was to decree the abolition of royalty in France; but the power that swayed the country was passing more and more to the mob of Paris, expressing itself through the clubs of which the Jacobin is the best known. The violence and fanaticism of the extreme republicans and of the most brutal elements of the populace found ever louder voice. On the 19th of November the Convention passed a decree declaring, "in the name of the French nation, that they will grant fraternity and assistance to all people who wish to recover their liberty; and they charge the executive power to send the necessary orders to the generals to give assistance to such people, and to defend those citizens who have suffered, or may suffer, in the cause of liberty." It was denied by the French diplomatists that there was any intention of favoring insurrections or exciting disturbances in any friendly country; but such intention is nevertheless fairly deducible from the words, and when a motion was made to explain that they were not so meant, the Convention refused to consider it. Mr. Fox, the ardent champion of the Revolution in Parliament, spoke of this edict as an insult to the British people.

Meantime the battle of Valmy had been followed by that of Jemappes, fought November 6. On the 14th the French army entered Brussels, and the Austrian Netherlands were rapidly occupied. This was instantly succeeded by a decree, dated November 16, opening the Scheldt, upon the express ground of natural right; the boisterous young republic cutting at one blow the knot which had refused to be untied by the weak hands of Joseph II. Decided action followed, a French squadron entering the river from the sea and forcing its way up, despite the protests of the Dutch officers, in order to take part in the siege of Antwerp. This was a new offence to the British Sea Power, which was yet further angered by a decree of December 15, extending the French system to all countries occupied by their armies. The words of this proclamation were so sweeping that they could scarcely but seem, to those untouched with the fiery passion of the Revolution, to threaten the destruction of all existing social order. The British ministry on the last day of the year 1792 declared that "this government will never see 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." [11]

While the Revolution was thus justifying the fears and accusations of those who foretold that it could not confine itself to the overturn of domestic institutions, but would seek to thrust its beliefs and principles forcibly upon other nations, the leaders were hurrying on the destruction of the king. Arraigned on the 11th of December, 1792, Louis XVI. was brought to trial on the 26th, sentenced to death January 16, and executed January 21, 1793. This deed brought to a decided issue the relations between France and Great Britain, which, from an uncertain and unsatisfactory condition, had become more and more embittered by the course of events ever since the November decree of fraternity. As far back as August 10, when the king was suspended, the British government had recalled its ambassador, who was not replaced; and had persisted in attributing to the French minister in London an ambiguous character, recognizing him only as accredited by the king who had actually ceased to reign—by a government which in fact no longer existed. Points of form were raised with exasperating, yet civil, insolence, as to the position which M. Chauvelin, the minister in question, actually occupied; and his office was not made more pleasant by the failure of his own government to send him new credentials. Papers written by him were returned by Lord Grenville, the foreign minister, because his claim to represent the French republic was not recognized; or, if accepted, they were only received as unofficial.

The letters thus exchanged, under forms so unsatisfactory, were filled with mutual accusations, and arguments marked by the brisk vivacity of the one nation and the cool aggressiveness of the other; but starting as they did from the differing bases of natural rights on the one hand, and established institutions on the other, no agreement was approached. The questions of the Scheldt, of the decree of fraternity, and of that extending the French system to countries occupied by their armies, were thus disputed back and forth; and to them were added the complaints of France against an Alien Act, passed by Parliament, January 4, 1793, laying vexatious restrictions upon the movements of foreigners arriving in Great Britain, or wishing to change their abode if already resident. This act M. Chauvelin rightly believed to be specially aimed at Frenchmen. It sprang from the growing apprehension and change of feeling in England; a change emphasized by a break in the Parliamentary Opposition, a large number of whom, in this same month of January, 1793, definitively took the step in which their great associate, Edmund Burke, had preceded them, broke their party ties, and passed over to the support of Pitt. The latter would seem to have become convinced that war was inevitable; that the question was no longer whether a nation should exercise a right of changing its institutions, but whether a plague should be stamped out before it had passed its borders and infected yet healthy peoples.

Things had come to this state when news reached London of the death sentence of the French king. M. Chauvelin had just received and presented credentials from the republican government. On January 20, the minister informed him that the king, under present circumstances, did not think fit to receive them, adding the irritating words: "As minister of the Most Christian King, you would have enjoyed all the exemptions which the law grants to public ministers, recognized as such; but as a private person you cannot but return to the general mass of foreigners resident in England." [12] On the 24th of January, the execution of Louis XVI. being now known, Lord Grenville wrote to him: "The King can no longer, after such an event, permit your residence here. His Majesty has thought fit to order that you should retire from the kingdom within the space of eight days, and I herewith transmit to you a copy of the order which His Majesty has given me to that effect." [12]

On the 1st of February, 1793, the French republic declared war against Great Britain and Holland. It was already at war with Austria, Prussia and Sardinia; while Russia and Sweden were avowedly unfriendly, and Spain almost openly hostile.