Offensive action of this character was therefore forbidden to Great Britain. To use small bodies for it was impolitic; and large bodies she had not to send. To strike a direct blow at France, it was necessary to force her to come out of her ports and fight, and this was to be accomplished only by threatening some external interests of vital importance to her. Such interests of her own, however, France had not. Her merchant shipping, in peace, carried less than one third of her trade, and was at once hurried into her ports when war began. Her West India colonies had indeed been valuable, that of Haïti very much so; but the anarchy of the past four years had annihilated its prosperity. There remained only to strike at her communications, through neutrals, with the outside world, and this was to be accomplished by the same means as most surely conduced to the defence of all parts of the British empire—by taking up positions off the French coast, and drawing the lines as closely as the exigencies of the sea and the law of nations would permit. If possible, in order to stop commerce by neutral vessels, a blockade of the French coast, similar to that of the Southern Confederacy by the United States, would have been the most suitable measure to adopt; but the conditions were very different. The weather on the coast of the Southern States is much more moderate; the heaviest gales blow along shore, whereas, in the Bay of Biscay, they blow dead on shore; and there was almost everywhere good, sometimes even sheltered, anchorage, which was not generally to be had on the coast of France. Finally, while steam certainly helps both parties, the inside and the out, the latter profits the more by it, for he can keep in with the shore to a degree, and for a length of time, impossible to the sailing ship; the necessity of gaining an offing before a gale comes on, and the helpless drifting during its continuance, not existing for the steamer.
Despite, therefore, the decisions of the courts, that a blockade was not technically removed when the ships maintaining it were driven off by weather; a blockade of the whole French coast does not seem to have been contemplated by the British ministry. Its offensive measures against French commerce were consequently limited to the capture of property belonging to French subjects, wherever found afloat, even under neutral flags; and to the seizure of all contraband goods destined to France, to whomsoever they belonged. Both these were conceded to be within the rights of a belligerent by the United States and Great Britain; but the latter now endeavored to stretch the definition of contraband to a degree that would enable her to increase the pressure upon France. She claimed that naval stores were included in the category—a position the more plausible at that time because, the French merchant ships being unable to go to sea, the stores must be for the navy—and further, that provisions were so. Though these arguments were hotly contested by neutrals, the British navy was strong enough to override all remonstrances; and the dearth of provisions did force the Brest fleet out in 1794, and so led directly to the first great naval battle of the war.
It cannot be considered a satisfactory result, nor one evincing adequate preparation, that the Channel fleet, to which belonged the protection of the approaches to the Channel—the great focus of British trade—to which also was assigned the duty of watching Brest, the chief French arsenál on the Atlantic, did not get to sea till July 14, and then only to the number of fifteen ships-of-the-line. A French fleet of similar size had sailed from Brest six weeks before, on the 4th of June, and taken a position in Quiberon Bay, off the coast of La Vendée, to intercept assistance to the insurgents of that province. The command of the Channel fleet was given to Lord Howe, an officer of very high character for activity and enterprise in previous wars, but now in his sixty-eighth year. Age had in no sense dulled his courage, which was as steadfast and well-nigh as impassive as a rock, nor impaired his mental efficiency; but it may be permitted to think that time had exaggerated and hardened a certain formal, unbending precision of action which distinguished him, and that rigid uniformity of manœuvre had become exalted in his eyes from a means to an end. This quality, however, joined to an intimate knowledge of naval tactics, eminently fitted him for the hard and thankless task of forming into a well-drilled whole the scattered units of the fleet, which came to him unaccustomed, for the most part, to combined action.
Lord Howe brought also to his command a strong predisposition, closely allied with the methodical tendency just noted, to economize his fleet, by keeping it sparingly at sea and then chiefly for purposes of drill and manœuvre. Its preservation in good condition was in his eyes a consideration superior to taking up the best strategic position; and he steadily resisted the policy of continuous cruising before the ports whence the enemy must sail, alleging that the injury received in heavy winter weather, while the French lay at anchor inside, would keep the British force constantly inferior. The argument, though plausible and based on undoubted facts, does not justify the choice of a position clearly disadvantageous with reference to intercepting the enemy. War presents constantly a choice of difficulties, and when questions of material come in conflict with correct strategic disposition they must give way. The place for the British fleet, as reflection shows and experience proved, was before the hostile arsenals; or, allowably, if such a position could be found, in a port flanking the route along which the enemy must pass. For the Channel fleet no such port offered; and in keeping it at Spithead, far in rear of the French point of departure, Howe exposed himself to the embarrassment of their getting away while he remained in ignorance of the fact until too late to intercept, and with imperfect knowledge in what direction to follow. The only solution of the difficulty that the British government should have adopted was to maintain a reserve of ships, large enough to keep the necessary numbers of efficient vessels cruising in the proper station. The experience gained by such constant practice, moreover, improved the quality of the men more than it injured the ships. Historically, good men with poor ships are better than poor men with good ships; over and over again the French Revolution taught this lesson, which our own age, with its rage for the last new thing in material improvement, has largely dropped out of memory.
The embarrassment arising from the British fleet being in a Channel port received singular, perhaps even exceptional, illustration in the French expedition against Ireland in 1796. It has been said that that expedition would have succeeded in landing its force had it had steam; it would be more just to say that it would never have come so near succeeding had the British fleet been cruising in the station which strategic considerations would prescribe. [69] There is also a certain indefinable, but real, deterioration in the morale of a fleet habitually in port, compared with one habitually at sea; the habit of being on the alert and the habit of being at rest color the whole conduct of a military force. This was keenly realized by that great commander, Lord St. Vincent, and concurred with his correct strategic insight to fix his policy of close-watching the enemy's ports. "I will not lie here," he wrote from Lisbon in December, 1796, "a moment longer than is necessary to put us to rights; for you well know that inaction in the Tagus must make us all cowards." [70] Doubtless this practice of lying at anchor in the home ports contributed to the impunity with which French cruisers swept the approaches to the Channel during much of 1793 and 1794.
The policy of Lord Howe combined with the crippled state of the French navy to render the year 1793 barren of striking maritime events in the Atlantic. In the interior of France and on her frontiers, amid many disasters and bloody tyranny, the saving energy of the fierce revolutionary government was making steady headway against the unparalleled difficulties surrounding it. After the ill-judged separation of the British and Austrians in August, the latter had succeeded in reducing Le Quesnoy, which capitulated on the 11th of September; but there their successes ended. Carnot, recently made a member of the Committee of Public Safety and specially charged with the direction of the war, concerted an overwhelming attack upon the British before Dunkirk, and raised the siege on the 9th of September; then, by a similar concentration upon the Austrians, now engaged in besieging Maubeuge, he caused their defeat at the battle of Wattignies, October 16, and forced them to retreat from before the place. In the north-east, both the allies and the French went into winter quarters early in November; but the prestige of a resistance that grew every day more efficient remained with the latter. On the eastern frontier also, after protracted fighting, the year closed with substantial success for them. The Prussians of the allied forces in that quarter retreated from all their advanced positions into Mayence; the Austrians retired to the east bank of the Rhine. Each of the allies blamed the other for the unfortunate issue of the campaign; and the veteran Duke of Brunswick, commanding the Prussians, sent in his resignation accompanied with predictions of continued