The Influence of sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire 1793-1812, vol I

Fortunately, amid the conflicting claims of diverse interests, the path of military wisdom was perfectly clear to one understanding its principles. St. Vincent might be agitated by apprehensions; but he knew what he must do, and did it. To get his own fleet together and at the same time prevent the allies from uniting theirs, was the first thing; and the point of concentration indicated for this purpose should be one that would cover Minorca, if he arrived before it was reduced. For Sicily, Malta, and all to the eastward, he must trust to the transcendent abilities of Nelson and his "band of brothers." 264 On the 12th, after two days of hurried preparations, the British fleet sailed from Gibraltar. On the 20th it reached Minorca, found it still safe, and was joined by Duckworth's division, raising the force to twenty ships-of-the-line. St. Vincent here received information that the French had on the 12th been seen north of Minorca, heading for Toulon. 265 Sending this news to Nelson he sailed on the 22d in pursuit; but learning that the Spaniards after Keith's departure had left Cadiz, as he had expected, he decided to cruise off Cape San Sebastian on the Spanish coast. Seventeen sail of Spaniards had indeed reached Cartagena on the 20th; but in the passage from Cadiz eleven had been partly or totally dismasted, and this circumstance was sufficient excuse for not proceeding to a junction, to which the policy of their court was but little inclined.

On the 30th of May St. Vincent heard that the French had sailed again from Toulon, but for what purpose was not known. As it might follow the course of Bonaparte's expedition, east of Corsica, and fall upon Sicily and Malta, he sent Duckworth with four ships to Nelson at Palermo, and four hours later was joined by the first detachment of five sail-of-the-line from the Channel, 266 of whose nearness he doubtless had some intimation before parting with Duckworth. With twenty-one sail he now stood south-west toward Barcelona, then north-east for Toulon. On the 2d of June, when seventy miles from this port, his health gave way altogether. He turned over the command to Keith and departed to Port Mahon.

Keith continued steering to the northward and eastward. On the 5th of June he was joined by a small cruiser, which had seen the French fleet in Vado Bay the day before. Bruix had reached Toulon May 14, and sailed again on the 26th, taking with him twenty-two ships; the others being left in port for repairs. He steered east, carrying supplies and a few recruits for the army of Italy. On the 4th of June he had anchored in Vado Bay. A detachment from the fleet threw the supplies into Genoa, and it would seem that Bruix there had an interview with General Moreau, then commanding the army of Italy. On the 6th, 267 turning short round, he doubled on his tracks, following close along the coast of Piedmont and Provence to avoid the British, 268 passed again in sight of Toulon to obtain information,269 and from there pushed on to Cartagena, where he anchored on the 22d; thus making with the Spanish fleet the junction which had been frustrated before Cadiz.

On the same day that Bruix turned, Lord Keith, who had also passed close along the French coast between Cannes and Nice, 270 standing to the eastward, reached as far as Monaco. Then the wind shifted to the eastward, and he wrote as follows to Nelson: "Soon after I despatched the 'Telegraph'" (the vessel which saw the French in Vado Bay) "last night, the wind came fresh from the east, which is of course a fair wind for the enemy, if bound towards you" (by the east of Corsica) "and a foul wind for me to follow them, which is unfortunate; for, if my information was just, I had no doubt of overtaking them before they had left the coast of Italy; … but the defenceless state of Minorca, without a fleet, the great force prepared (at Cartagena) to attack it, added to my having so far exceeded my orders already, will oblige me to relinquish the pursuit, and return to the protection of that island. But I have detached to your lordship the 'Bellerophon' and 'Powerful' (seventy-fours), which I hope will arrive in time, as I am confident the French are not thirty leagues hence at this moment." 271

Being close in with the shore with an east wind, Keith could only stand off on the port tack, and it would appear that he still clung to the hope of a shift favorable for reaching Bruix; for on the 8th he was sixty miles south of Monaco, 272 not on the route for Minorca. There he received from St. Vincent, who, though relinquishing the immediate command of the fleet, retained that of the station, pressing orders to take a position off the Bay of Rosas. This was evidently intended to block the junction of the two fleets, though St. Vincent could not have known Bruix's purpose to return. Keith did not obey the order; but seems under its influence to have abandoned definitively his hope of overtaking the French, for he made sail for Minorca, and arrived there on the 12th. 273 Had he obeyed St. Vincent he could scarcely have failed to meet Bruix, for at the moment of receiving his letter the two fleets were hardly sixty miles apart, and both would have passed within sight of Cape San Sebastian, the natural landfall of vessels going from Toulon to Cartagena.

Keith remained at Minorca but a few days, during which St. Vincent turned over to him the command of the station as well as of the fleet. 274 He sailed again on the 15th for Toulon; but the British had completely lost trace of the French from the time that they surrendered the touch of them obtained on the 5th of the month. From the 15th of June to the 6th of July 275 was passed groping blindly in the seas between Minorca, Toulon, and Genoa. On the latter date Keith regained Minorca, and there found the twelve ships-of-the-line which Bridport had detached from Ireland on the 1st of June, and which seem to have reached Port Mahon about the 17th of that month. 276 Scarcely an hour after his arrival, 277 information was received of the French having entered Cartagena. The ships that had accompanied Keith on the recent three weeks' cruise had to fill with water; but on the 10th he started for the Straits of Gibraltar with thirty-one ships-of-the-line, on a stern chase—proverbially a long chase—after the allies, known to be bound to the westward.

The latter, however, had a long start. Bruix, aware of the reluctance of the Spaniards, and secretly informed that in case of attack they could not be depended upon, hurried them away after a week's waiting, in virtue of stringent orders wrung from Madrid by the persistence of the French ambassador. On the 29th of June he sailed, having sixteen Spanish ships-of-the-line in company. On the 7th of July, just as Keith reached Minorca from his profitless cruise off Toulon, the allies were passing the Straits; and it happened, somewhat singularly, that the old Earl of St. Vincent, who had seen them pass Gibraltar, bound in, had arrived in a frigate twenty-four hours before,—just in time to hear their guns as they went out. They entered Cadiz on the 11th of July, the day after Keith sailed in pursuit from Minorca. On the 21st, still numbering forty sail, they sailed from Cadiz, and on the 30th Keith with his thirty-one passed the Straits, after a moment's delay at Gibraltar. The British pressed their chase, and, despite its long start, came off Brest barely twenty-four hours after the French and Spaniards, who entered the port on the 13th of August. Lord Keith then went on to Torbay. The news of the junction of the French and Spaniards, and of their entering the Atlantic, had preceded him, and caused a renewal of the excitement about intended invasion to which Great Britain at this epoch was always prone. The arrival of the large force under his command restored confidence; but although, in conjunction with the Channel fleet, there were now as many as fifty-six ships-of-the-line assembled in Torbay, some time elapsed before the country would part with any of them, while so many enemies lay in Brest. Keith did not return to the Mediterranean until December, the chief command there being exercised by Nelson during his absence.

The exact aims of the French in this cruise, which from the inefficiency of their officers and seamen was as hazardous in its undertaking as it proved barren of results, have never been precisely ascertained. This uncertainty is probably due to the fact that the Directory itself was not clear as to what could be accomplished, and that Bruix had somewhat unlimited powers, based upon his confidential knowledge of the views of the government. It would seem that the first object, both in importance and in order, was a junction with the Spaniards in Cadiz. This being frustrated by Keith's division and by Bruix's distrust of the efficiency of his captains, the opportunities for offensive action, offered by the scattered condition of the British ships, were neglected in favor of going to Toulon; for Bruix seems to have neither felt nor betrayed any doubt as to his course. "The Brest squadron had such a game to play at Malta and Sicily," wrote St. Vincent to the First Lord, "that I trembled for the fate of our ships employed there, and for the latter island. Your lordship made a better judgment by fixing their operations to the coast of Genoa." 278 As a matter of fact, this is true; but as a question of military forecast, St. Vincent was perfectly right, and the action of the French can only be explained on the ground of distrust of their navy, or by the old faulty policy—traditional in all French governments, republican, royal, or imperial—of preferring ulterior objects to the destruction of the enemy's ships.

That the relief or re-enforcement of Bonaparte was intended seems improbable; although both St. Vincent and Nelson entertained this suspicion, upon which the latter acted. M. Thiers, indeed, finds Bruix's cruise inexplicable on any other supposition, but he does not assert the fact. 279 The feelings of the Directory towards that general were not strictly benevolent, and the ships carried neither troops nor supplies of importance; but the destruction of Nelson's scattered detachments, coupled as that might have been with the victualling of Malta, would have been a most worthy object, and one of very probable fulfilment. It is noteworthy that Nelson received his first news of Bruix's approach on the 12th of May, at Palermo, and on the 14th the French admiral entered Toulon. Now the distance from Gibraltar to Toulon is only one hundred and fifty miles less than that from Gibraltar to Palermo. Nelson could not have collected his ships in time to present a united front; and even could he, his whole force did not exceed ten or twelve to the enemy's twenty-four. As it was, Bruix's adventure, though daring in conception and active in execution, resulted merely in bringing back to France sixteen Spanish ships-of-the-line to be hostages for the continuance of the Spanish alliance, tottering under the adverse events of 1799; and this possibly was the great purpose of the Directory. If so, the excursion was political rather than military; and hence an opportunity, of a kind which, when rightly improved, has always been most pregnant of military consequences—concentration opposed to dispersion—remains to us merely an impressive lesson of what might have been, but was not. "Your lordship," wrote Nelson four years later to St. Vincent, "knows what Admiral Bruix might have done had he done his duty." 280 "The cruise of Admiral Bruix," says Captain Chevalier, 281 "was well conceived, but failed through the weakness of our allies and the inexperience of our own officers and crews.... The Spanish squadron brought to Brest, the gage of an alliance then very tottering, was the only result of this campaign. It is impossible to have any illusion as to the extent of the services rendered by the fleet on the coast of Italy. A division of frigates would have done as much."

The conduct of the British admirals in the Mediterranean, caught at so serious a disadvantage through no fault of their own, deserves to be considered. Dispersed in a fashion that was perfectly proper and efficient under the previous conditions, the arrival of Bruix imposed concentration, with a consequent enforced abandonment of some positions. St. Vincent's first step was to order Nelson to concentrate in the neighborhood of Sicily, while he himself drew Keith and Duckworth together at Minorca. This effected, the British would present two squadrons; one of twenty ships-of-the-line in the west, centring about Minorca; the other, four hundred miles distant, of fifteen or sixteen ships, 282 gathered off the west end of Sicily to dispute the passage to Malta and Alexandria. This smaller division thus seems to have been much exposed; but, independently of its greatly superior efficiency to the French, it must be remembered that St. Vincent, as soon as he reached Minorca, knew that Nelson was in no immediate danger, for the French had given him the go-by and gone to Toulon. Cruising therefore off Cape San Sebastian, to intercept the junction of the Spaniards to the French, he was in constant touch of Minorca, barely one hundred miles distant, and, at the same time, was as near to Nelson as were the French in Toulon, whether they went east or west of Corsica. Being only one hundred and twenty miles from Toulon, and in such a position that a wind fair for the French to sail was also fair to bring his lookouts down to him, he could hope to overtake them,—if not in time to save Nelson, yet with the certainty of finding the French so badly handled that they could scarcely escape him. He no doubt reasoned as did Nelson to the ministry just before Trafalgar: "I ventured without any fear [to predict] that if Calder [with eighteen ships] got fairly alongside their twenty-seven or twenty-eight sail, by the time the enemy had beat our fleet soundly, they would do us no harm this year." 283 Save Malta, which could not have maintained the twenty thousand men in their fleet for a month and was otherwise barren of resources, the French would have had no port to fall back on and would have been lost to the republic. 284 Had St. Vincent cruised off Cartagena, where the Spaniards were, he would have been in better position to check them, but he would have uncovered both Minorca and Nelson to the French; both being nearer to Toulon than to Cartagena. Not only so, but Cartagena being three hundred miles farther from Toulon than Cape San Sebastian is, the British lookout ships would have had all that greater distance to go to their admiral, who, when found, would then be further from his chief points of interest than when off the Cape. As soon, however, as St. Vincent learned that the French had gone east from Toulon, being relieved from any immediate apprehension concerning the Spaniards, he re-enforced Nelson with four ships, raising his squadron to sixteen British against a possible French twenty-four.

It was during the week following the detachment to Nelson that St. Vincent left the fleet, and that Keith made the false move which has been so severely blamed. It appears to the author, from all the information accessible to him, that Keith took this step wholly independent of St. Vincent's special orders, which are alleged as controlling him. He acted in deference, partly, to the general orders given before turning over the command, and partly to his own views of the situation. 285 These seem to have differed from those of St. Vincent, who laid most stress on disabling the enemy's fleets; whereas Keith was dominated by the fear of losing Minorca. This feeling led him to deviate from the order to cruise off the Gulf of Rosas, as it also led him soon after, on two occasions, to direct Nelson to detach ships for the defence of the island; which Nelson, with very doubtful propriety, refused to do. 286 Minorca, in this case, very appositely illustrates the embarrassment of a fleet upon which an important seaport wholly depends for security. In the present instance the beating of the French fleet and the protection of Minorca introduced two apparently divergent motives, which became personified in St. Vincent and his lieutenant. The former saw the best protection to the island to be in beating the fleet; Keith subordinated the latter to the former. With St. Vincent agreed Nelson's simple but accurate view of naval strategy: "I consider the best defence for his Sicilian Majesty's dominions is to place myself alongside the French." 287 Keith, on the other hand, in a somewhat later letter, expresses almost pathetically the embarrassment caused by his inferior strategic insight. "It is very hard I cannot find these vagabonds in some spot or other, and that I am so shackled with this defenceless island." 288 Properly every seaport should be able to hold out for a length of time, longer or shorter, according to its importance, entirely independent of the fleet. The latter will then be able to exert its great faculty, its mobility, unfettered by considerations of what is happening at the port. For so long the latter is safe; meanwhile the fleet may be absent. The best coast-defence is a navy; not because fortifications are not absolutely necessary, but because beating the enemy's fleet is the best of all defences.

After the vain pursuit of Admiral Bruix, Lord Keith brought his fleet into Torbay on the 17th of August. On the 18th Earl St. Vincent landed at Portsmouth, thus formally quitting the Mediterranean command, which he had held for three years and nine months. Four days afterwards, on the 22d of August, 1799, Bonaparte secretly embarked at Alexandria to return into France.

After the Syrian campaign the French army had re-entered Cairo on the 14th of June. On the 11th of July Sir Sidney Smith, with his two ships, anchored in Aboukir Bay, accompanying, or being accompanied by, a Turkish fleet of thirteen ships-of-the-line with a hundred other sail of frigates and transports. Embarked on board the latter were troops variously estimated at from ten to thirty thousand men. 289 On the 15th Bonaparte, at Cairo, learned that his anticipations of an attack by sea, during the fine season, had been realized. He promptly ordered Desaix to evacuate upper Egypt for the security of Cairo, and rapidly drew together in the neighborhood of Alexandria the detachments in lower Egypt. This concentration was effected on the 19th, but by that time the Turks had landed and stormed the Castle of Aboukir, which fell on the 16th. On the 25th the French attacked the enemy on the peninsula of Aboukir, and the same scene that had witnessed the destruction of Brueys's squadron a year before now saw the entire overthrow of the Mahometan army. All who had landed were either killed, driven into the sea and drowned, or taken prisoners. Among the latter was the Turkish commander-in-chief.

After the defeat flags of truce passed between Bonaparte and the British commodore, through which the former received English newspapers up to the 10th of June. 290 By them he learned the victorious advance of the second coalition, and the defeats of the French in Germany and Italy. His resolution was speedily taken to return to France. It has been disputed whether this was a sudden determination not before entertained, as asserted by his secretary Bourrienne; or whether it represents a purpose gradually and naturally formed. Napoleon himself in later years attributed his decision to information obtained from Phélippeaux in the trenches before Acre; when the combatants, separated by but a few yards, often exchanged words. 291 It is, however, certain that the thought had long been familiar to him; for, in a letter to the Directory as early as October 7, 1798, he had announced his intention of returning to Europe in certain very probable contingencies. 292 The same message was repeated a few months later. 293 In truth his keen military sagacity, resembling the most delicate yet most highly cultivated intuitions, had divined the misfortunes awaiting France at the time he learned by the Ragusan ship that Naples had declared war and that all 294 the powers were arming. During his own Italian campaign, even after the British had left the Mediterranean, his mind had been preoccupied with the danger from Naples; and he foresaw in Egypt the disasters that must result from an ex-centric movement of the French army in that quarter, if followed by any reverses in upper Italy. Bourrienne tells a story which illustrates vividly the superstitious vein in his character, as well as the foreboding of evil that he had carried with him into Syria. While before Acre, news was received that a Nile boat named the "Italy," in the employ of the French army, had after a gallant defence been blown up by her crew to avoid capture by the Arabs. The incident and the name made a strong impression upon Bonaparte. "My friend," said he to Bourrienne, "Italy is lost to France. All is over; my presentiments never deceive me;" nor could any argument rid his mind of this conviction, dependent rather upon his instinctive perceptions than upon a slight and fortuitous coincidence. 295 So, when he read Sidney Smith's gazettes, he cried again: "My presentiment did not deceive me! Italy is lost!" 296

Admiral Ganteaume was directed to prepare rapidly two of the frigates which had fallen to France in her share of the spoil of Venice; and the persons intended to accompany the general were quietly notified. After the defeat of the Turks at Aboukir, Sidney Smith had resumed the blockade of Alexandria; but on the 9th of August he withdrew to Cyprus, probably for water. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Bonaparte sailed, and after a tedious passage landed at Fréjus on the 9th of October. One month later the Directory was overthrown and the supreme power in France passed into Bonaparte's hands.

Thus ended, so far at least as the great designer was concerned, Bonaparte's Oriental Expedition; an undertaking which has been freely stigmatized as a dream, marked by the eccentricities of its author's genius, not by his usual keen intelligence. A dream it was, it is true; but not for its Eastern impossibilities, nor for its wide flights of imagination, the faculty which Bonaparte possessed in so eminent a degree, without which he never could have conceived his extraordinary policy, and to which he usually joined a width and depth of practical wisdom which balanced his imagination and made possible the realizing of his visions. That it was no dream to rouse and combine the nations of the East under the headship of one man, witness the careers of the adventurers who there, from age to age, have risen to empire; and who certainly were not superior in genius, nor as leaders of men, to the great Corsican. Witness, too, the motley host which he gathered under one standard, from all the highly organized nations of continental Europe, for that other great Eastern expedition in which he wrecked his fortunes. The Egyptian enterprise and all its brilliant hopes definitively failed at Acre, in the march against Turkey through Syria; and it failed,—why? Because a British seaman, by his command of the sea and his support to the garrison, maintained the possession of a place, to advance beyond which, unsubdued, would entail ruin. Forty years later an army, not of the superb soldiers of the French revolution, but of native Egyptians, led by Ibrahim Pasha, whom none will equal to Napoleon, undertook the same march, captured Acre, and had progressed victoriously into the heart of Asia Minor when the British navy again interfered and called a halt. How came it that a naval captain, with two ships-of-the-line and a few small vessels, controlled absolutely the far east of the Mediterranean? Because in Aboukir Bay, nine months before, Nelson had destroyed the French fleet. That magnificent battle not only signalized the genius for war of the British admiral, but proclaimed aloud the existence of a power destined ever, and in all parts, to clip the wings of the coming emperor. The Eastern enterprise of Bonaparte failed, not because of miscalculations as to what was possible in that far East, which Western people so ill can understand; but because he, to the end of his career, was never able rightly to appreciate the conditions of naval warfare. His perfect military insight was not mistaken in affirming that the principles of war upon the sea must be the same as upon land; it was by the failure to comprehend the circumstances to which the principles must be applied—the failure to realize the possibilities and the limitations of the naval warfare of his day—that the general and the emperor were alike led into fatal miscalculations. The Nile and Trafalgar, each the grave of a great conception, proclaimed the same cause and the same effect; underlying each was the inability of Napoleon to understand what ships could do and what they could not, according to the conditions of the sea and the capacity of the seamen.