CHAPTER II

EXPEDITIONS, CONVOY, AND THE PRIVATEERS

AUTHORITIES.—See last Chapter; _Memoirs of Forbin and Duguay-Trouin_; Poulain, _La Course au 17^{me} Siècle_.

The second and larger division of the War of the League of Augsburg can be most conveniently dealt with by subjects rather than in chronological order. There were no great campaigns between equal forces of sufficient interest to be taken by themselves. Throughout all these years the overpowering fleets of the Alliance cruised unchecked on the sea, hemming France in, harassing her coast, annihilating her commerce, and rendering assistance to the armies operating against her. Detached squadrons issued from England year after year to attack the French possessions in the New World and defend our own. In the meantime, the efforts of France on the sea were ever more strictly confined to the cruises of her privateers.

The object before the allies when once they had vindicated their superiority on the ocean was to harass the French coast and to co-operate with the armies on shore wherever an opportunity presented itself. The first duty was done with more barbarism than success. In the November of 1693 a futile attack was made on St. Malo by Benbow. Infernal machines, invented by one Meesters, a Dutchman in the English service, were drifted in for the purpose of destroying the shipping. They exploded too soon, and did no harm to the enemy. This attack on St. Malo was both the beginning and the type of a kind of operation we adhered to till the middle of the eighteenth century. Good powder and shot, and the lives of men, were thrown away in one dab after another at this or the other point on the French coast. It was very rarely that the expedition succeeded in causing any serious destruction to the enemy. When it did, the harm inflicted on France was never enough to cripple her power, though the suffering caused to individuals was no doubt cruel. The English Government hardly ever showed itself capable of understanding that to assail unfortified towns does no good, and that fortified towns must be attacked with sufficient resources. To give more than a mere mention to such enterprises as these here would be to overestimate their importance altogether.

In 1694 this work of harassing the French was taken in hand, with results excellently calculated to show how a fleet ought to act, and how it ought not. Russell was at sea at a reasonably early date, with the intention to watch the Brest fleet and to endeavour to destroy that port itself. If the French fleet remained in the harbour the whole of his force would be needed for the purpose. If, however, Tourville had gone south a detachment might be left to deal with Brest, and Russell could go on. This recognition of the fact that the proper employment of an English fleet was to follow the enemy was perfectly sound in principle. So much cannot be said for the plan of attack on Brest. It might be a very advantageous thing to destroy the great French arsenal, but such a place was certain to be so strongly fortified as to be impregnable to the sudden attack of a mere flying column. Yet no greater force than can be fairly described by the name was put under the command of Tollemache. As a matter of fact the expedition was hopeless, for it had been betrayed to King Louis by some of King William’s servants who were in communication with St. Germain. One of the traitors was the great Marlborough.

As early as the 19th May, Russell learnt that Tourville had already sailed for the south. Before starting in pursuit, the new Admiral of the Fleet was able to deliver one effectual stroke at the enemy. A large French convoy of merchant ships was lying in Berteaume Bay under the protection of one French man-of-war. Russell dispatched a light squadron under Captain Pritchard to destroy it. The work was thoroughly done, and was followed up by the destruction of a number of other vessels going south with provisions to Tourville. Then, on the 5th or 6th June, Russell sailed for the south, leaving Lord Berkeley to carry out the attack on Brest. On the 7th of June Berkeley entered the wide channel between the Pointe St. Mathieu and the Pointe du Raz, called the Iroise. The entrance to the Bay of Brest, named Le Goulet, or Gullet, is on the north-east corner of this channel. It is a narrow passage which leads into the land-locked Bay of Brest. The bay is shut off from the sea by a peninsula running south from the Goulet. The western side of this peninsula, after running due north and south, turns to the west with a curve to the end at the north, and forms the anchorage known as the Roads or Bay of Camaret.

The object of the expedition was to land in Camaret Bay, seize the peninsula on the western side of the harbour, and, using that as a basis of operations, open the entry to the bay to the fleet; and then destroy the arsenal of Brest. The French were on their guard; Camaret Bay was bristling with batteries and lined with troops. To go on was an act of folly, and so Carmarthen, who surveyed the bay, gave Tollemache to understand; but the soldier, though an exceedingly brave man and a good subordinate, was no general, and he was burning to distinguish himself. He urged the naval officers on, and among them he found an ally in Lord Berkeley. The result was that several ships were all but battered to pieces by the French cannon, and Tollemache landed at the southern corner of the bay with a few hundred men—an act of headlong folly which cost him his life, and sacrificed the lives of many others. Then the expedition came away.

There was a kind of wrong-headed magnanimity about the conduct of Tollemache which extorts a certain respect, but the succeeding operations are merely examples of how to combine the greatest possible malignity of intention with a high degree of ineptitude in the execution. Berkeley came back to St. Helens for refreshments, and then returned to the coast of France to take revenge. What he did was morally on a level with the desolation of the Palatinate, for which King Louis had been so bitterly reproached by his enemies, and it had this further disgrace attaching to it, that it was imbecile. The English fleet only bombarded Dieppe and Havre, killing a certain number of women, children, and unarmed men, and burning a few houses. Then it threatened La Hogue and Cherbourg. This done, it came back to St. Helens for refreshments. When invigorated by repose it returned to Dunkirk, and exploded more infernal machines to no purpose.

In 1695 it was the same story. We made a demonstration at St. Malo, then we burnt the little fishing town of Granvelle, and then we achieved another failure at Dunkirk. In the following year these feats were renewed at Calais and elsewhere, till the war died down and was brought to a pause by the truce called the Peace of Ryswick in 1697. When it was resumed, the Admiralty had learnt that these expeditions were forms of waste, and we hear little or nothing of them during the reign of Queen Anne. It is probable that Captain Pritchard did more harm to the enemy by destroying the convoy in Berteaume Bay than was inflicted in all these expeditions, and he did it at a thousandth part of the cost.

More legitimate and fruitful than these attacks on the French coast towns were other operations of the fleet, which may be classed under two heads. First are the cruises of what our ancestors called “The Grand Fleet”—that is to say, movements of great forces representing the bulk of our effective naval power in Europe. Then contemporary to, but apart from them, were the cruises of squadrons, designed to protect our own colonial possessions or menace those of the French. These two kinds of naval operations were so far independent of one another that it is not necessary to tell them together. Again, many of them were so barren in results that it is superfluous to tell them in detail. Yet the mere fact that they took place shows the magnitude, the persistence, and the coherence of our efforts to make full use of the fleet. It has seemed to me most advisable to set them both forth briefly in parallel columns, and give particular accounts of the more notable among them afterwards.

Grand Fleets Small Squadrons

The year of Beachy Head. December 1689 to May 1690.—Captain Lawrence Wright to the West Indies, with ten ships and three small vessels. Contemporary with this cruise was the expedition of Sir W. Phipps from New England against Nova Scotia, then a French colony, and Quebec.

Year of Russell’s first command 12th December 1690 to August in the Channel. 1691.—Captain Ralph Wren to the West Indies. He died of fever, and many of his men with him. The squadron was brought home by Boteler.

Year of La Hogue. In 1692 there was no colonial expedition.

Disaster of Rooke’s convoy. January to August 1693.—Cruise of Sir F. Wheeler to the West Indies, with twelve sail and three fireships.

Russell in Channel. Goes to sea January to September 1695.—Captain in May. Sails for Mediterranean Robert Wilmot to West Indies, with in June. Enters Mediterranean in five ships and one fireship. Wilmot July. Operations on coast of died of fever, and one vessel was Catalonia. Winters at Cadiz. lost for want of hands. Goes up Mediterranean again in March 1695. Returns to England in November of that year.

April 1696 to October 1697.—Cruise of Vice-Admiral Nevil to West Indies. This squadron was almost totally destroyed by fever—only one captain returned.

There was now a break of four years, due to the truce which followed the Peace of Ryswick, 20th September 1697.

Grand Fleets Small Squadrons

1700.—Sir George Rooke sent into No colonial expedition. Baltic to support Charles XII. of Sweden against Denmark.

September 1701.—Benbow to the West Indies, where he died on the 4th November 1702 of wounds received in

## action with Du Casse. The command

passed to Whetstone.

June to November 1702.—Rooke’s July to October 1702.—Sir John Leake cruise to Cadiz, and attack on attacks French in Newfoundland. treasure ships at Vigo, in co-operation with the Dutch.

June to September 1703.—Cruise January to September 1703.—Rear-Admiral of Sir C. Shovell into the Graydon’s cruise into West Indies to Mediterranean. replace Benbow.

January to September No new expedition to colonies. 1704.—Shovell and Rooke in Mediterranean; capture of Gibraltar and battle of Malaga.

April to November 1705.—Shovell April 1705 to December 1706.—Sir and Peterborough; taking of William Whetstone commanding in Barcelona. West Indies. He left in command Kerr.

February to October 1706.—Sir October 1706 to April 1707.—Sir John John Leake in command on coast Jennings in West Indies. of Spain.

1707.—Sir C. Shovell to the March 1707 to November 1709.—Sir Mediterranean. He was wrecked Charles Wager in the West Indies. on the Scilly Isles when returning from this cruise, 23rd October 1707.

March to October 1708.—Sir John Leake to the Mediterranean.

1708 to October 1709.—Sir George September 1710.—Captain George Martin Byng left behind by Leake, takes Port Royal, and Nova Scotia winters at Minorca, taken by from the French. Stanhope. He returned with convoy in October 1709, leaving Whitaker with a squadron. Whitaker was succeeded by Baker, and then by Norris, till war ended.

April to October 1711.—Disastrous expedition under Sir Hovenden Walker against Quebec.

These two lists are not exhaustive. They do not include minor operations against the French coast in the Channel, nor do they mention all the subordinate parts of the colonial expeditions. It is also necessary to bear in mind that the Grand Fleets were the fleets of the allies, not of England alone. The Dutch always contributed a part of the strength, and their share of the common force was nowise inferior in spirit, or skill, to ours. In one of the elements which go to make efficiency they were not rarely superior. Their health was too often better, since, to the deep discredit of British administrations of that time, we did not on the average feed our men as well as the Dutch. The colonial expeditions were our own, and the work was done at an awful cost of life by disease.

In these circumstances the cruises of the allied Grand Fleets could only be the successive exercises of an overwhelming superiority, directed against an enemy whose resistance must needs be passive, with rare and fitful efforts at retaliation. Year after year the great combined naval armaments of England and Holland sailed south in the spring. Before the Peace of Ryswick (1697) they went once to aid the Spaniards, who were contending feebly against the French in Catalonia. After the renewal of the war, they went repeatedly to aid the Hapsburg pretender, who was endeavouring to drive the Bourbon King of Spain, Philip V., from the throne he occupied by right of inheritance and the will of Charles II., the last of the Austrian dynasty. They also served to cover the movements of English and Dutch commerce by mewing up the only fleet which Louis XIV. endeavoured to maintain in Toulon. Incidentally they enabled us to secure what Cromwell had hoped for, and what our Charles II. endeavoured to obtain by his marriage treaty—namely, a port of war near the Mediterranean, where an English fleet could keep its stores, repair damages, and find a safe anchorage without being dependent on the goodwill of an ally.

The interest of a conflict between strength and weakness cannot be in proportion to the importance of its results. These campaigns must therefore (considerations of space being also of much weight) “speak by their foreman”; by the typical examples. None seem more representative than the first great cruise into the Mediterranean in 1694, and that expedition of ten years later which put us in possession of Gibraltar.

It has been said above that the Grand Fleet had gone to sea in the spring of 1694 under the command of Russell. He was also the chief of the “commission for executing the office of Lord High Admiral”—and therefore combined the whole civil and military authority in his own person. The fleet consisted of fifty-two English and forty-one Dutch ships of the line, with their attendant fireships and small craft, when all were collected at St. Helens. When he was sure that the French had no fleet in Brest to assist in the defence, the admiral returned to St. Helens on the 23rd May, and sailed with his whole force on the 29th. On the 6th June the force designed to carry out the already mentioned raid on Brest was detached, and Russell sailed for the south in pursuit of the French with thirty English and twenty-two Dutch. He was off the Rock of Lisbon on the 25th June. Here he was reinforced by ships both English and Dutch, and his force was raised to sixty-three. A little later he was burdened by the co-operation of nine very inefficient Spaniards.

In July Russell entered the Mediterranean, to the great relief of the palsied Spanish Government, now trembling in impotence before the French army of invasion in Catalonia and the French fleet in the Mediterranean. The enemy retired as the allies worked their way slowly up the coast and finally took refuge in the roadstead of Hyères, to the east of Toulon. Russell and his Dutch colleagues were then able to cover the Spanish forces in Catalonia and the Spanish coast trade from French attack. As autumn approached, they prepared to return; but King William wisely came to the decision that there was no better way of protecting English and Dutch naval interests at home than by keeping the French fleet shut in the Mediterranean. Russell therefore received orders to winter in Cadiz. He had to struggle with the unreasonable requests of the Spanish Government, which expected its allies to do everything for it, and could itself do little or nothing. Yet, as they were well supplied with money, stores, and even artificers from home, the allies passed the winter abroad at no greater cost than would have been incurred in their own ports.

In the spring of 1695, English troops were sent out under Brigadier Stewart, and a Dutch contingent under the Count of Nassau. The allies, after delays attributed to the dilatory preparations of the Spaniards, moved up the coast, and reached Barcelona on the 19th July. Stimulated by Russell, the Spanish viceroy of Catalonia resolved to take the offensive against the French, who were in possession of the northern part of the principality. It was decided to besiege Palamos, a coast town just south of Cape San Sebastian. English and Dutch soldiers were landed to aid the Spaniards, who for their part signally failed to keep the promises they had made to supply tents and tools for work in the trenches. Yet the siege, which began on the 9th of August, was making fair progress, when it was suddenly broken up by the decision of Russell himself. The Duke of Vendôme, who commanded the French army in Catalonia, put false information in his way, to the effect that a French fleet of sixty-five sail was fitting for sea at Toulon. Hereupon Russell re-embarked his soldiers, advised the Spanish viceroy to renounce all hope of retaking Palamos, and sailed to find the French. This measure has been praised, in view of the danger that the fleet from Toulon might have interfered with the siege. Yet if Russell was confident of his capacity to meet King Louis’s ships in battle—and if he was not it was a gross blunder to form the siege at all, and another to sail for the purpose of meeting a superior fleet—he had it in his power to force on an action by pressing the attack, and waiting till the enemy came to interrupt him. By sailing in response to a mere rumour, he enabled the French to effect their purpose of raising the siege at no cost. Moreover, he did not secure the battle he sought. The French having nothing to gain by an action, did not indulge him with a meeting. The weather proved stormy, and in the end the allies returned in September to Cadiz without Palamos, and without a battle. Russell then sailed for home, and reached England after a prosperous voyage early in November, leaving behind him a squadron under the command of Rear-Admiral David Mitchell. The impotent conclusion of the attack on Palamos leaves us in some doubt whether Russell was not rather a fortunate than a spirited man. Yet his continuance abroad for a year and a half, his wintering at Cadiz, and his two cruises in the Mediterranean, did serve to prove that the allies had clearly gained the upper hand at sea. They could not have remained for so long, nor have cruised undisturbed, if the French had been in a position to use their fleet.

The end of these operations was somewhat tame. Sir David Mitchell had been left with sixteen ships of the line of the middle and lower rates. On the 15th October Sir George Rooke arrived from England with a squadron, and the total force of the allies was raised to thirty sail, exclusive of the small craft. Information, no more accurate than the false report which drew Russell away from Palamos, led Rooke to believe that a powerful French fleet was coming to sea. He took refuge in Cadiz harbour, and there spent the winter. Sir David Mitchell was once sent out in search of some French vessels said to be lying in Lagos Bay, but they were not found, and the allies were otherwise quiescent. Meanwhile, King Louis was indeed preparing to make an attack, or rather a double attack, on King William. During the early days of 1696 Sir John Fenwick’s assassination plot was hatching in England, to the knowledge and with the approval of the French sovereign and the exiled King James. Troops were collected at Calais to be pushed over so soon as the murder of King William was known to have been achieved. In the meanwhile a fleet of fifty-one sail was being prepared at Toulon with considerable difficulty, partly through the penury of the French Government, partly because of the pertinacity of its sailors in resisting or evading service. The object of this armament was to provide a force which should be at hand to take advantage of the confusion expected to ensue on the violent death of King William. It is known to all that this complicated scheme of combined murder and military operations broke down. Fenwick’s plot was revealed to the Government. The great ships which had come home with Russell in the autumn were hurried to sea in February, and the French coast was patrolled and orders were sent to Rooke to return at once.

These orders reached him at a time when his mind was much exercised by reports of the approach of the French fleet from Toulon. He put to sea in the early days of March. The enemy had already sailed under the command of Châteaurenault. It is one more illustration of the rather modest standard of efficiency expected from the ship of the time, that to send a fleet to sea so early as March was counted hazardous. The result went to show that the estimate was not wholly unjust. Both fleets were scattered in a storm, and suffered damage. They returned to port, but again put to sea so soon as their injuries were made good. Rooke, who had the start, reached home on the 22nd April. Châteaurenault ran into Brest about a fortnight later—not unobserved, but unopposed. This escape of his fleet was added to the list of naval miscarriages of which Parliament was constantly complaining. Rooke and Mitchell were called to account, but no blame appears to have been thought to attach to them. Indeed, the error lay mainly in the Government. It ought to have kept a more powerful force in the Straits if it wished to prevent the French from leaving the Mediterranean. Fenwick’s plot was the last resolute effort made by the enemy against the Government established by the Revolution. Peace was becoming an absolute necessity for France, and it was made at Ryswick in 1697.

For a brief space both sides took breath, and then the struggle began again—the main cause being the resolution of the allies to prevent Louis XIV. from establishing a grandson of his own on the Spanish throne on terms which would practically have annexed the vast possessions of the Spanish monarchy to the crown of France. England was drawn into the struggle with reluctance, and was in fact only provoked to fight when the French King, subordinating his duties as a sovereign to his feelings as a gentleman, recognised the son of the exiled James II. as King of England.

The accession of Queen Anne brought one change to the government of the navy. It had been the intention of King William in the last days of his rule to re-establish a Lord High Admiral. The Earl of Pembroke was chosen for the place, and the admirals who were to act as his advisers were named. By the king’s death all commissions were annulled, but his intention was carried out, though with a change of persons. The office of Lord High Admiral was revived in favour of the queen’s husband, Prince George of Denmark, who was provided with a council. Some fault was found with the legality of this measure, but it passed without serious opposition—thanks to the popularity of the queen, and the fact that public attention was turned elsewhere.

The war, though essentially a continuation of the former struggle, was begun, in so far at least as the naval side of it was concerned, in somewhat changed conditions. A grandson of King Louis now sat on the throne of Spain. It was the object of the allies, by whom, however, he had been at first recognised, to compel him to resign. Therefore it was sure that he would be their enemy to the extent of his power. An inevitable consequence of this change was that the allied English and Dutch fleets could no longer rely on being allowed to use Spanish ports. One of the earliest measures taken by the Queen’s Government was to send an officer, Captain Loades, to Cadiz to bring away the naval stores kept there for the use of our ships serving in the Straits and the Mediterranean. It shows to what an extent we had made use of this port, that the stores left there amounted to more than Loades could stow in the vessels with him. He was therefore compelled to sell part of them to the Spaniards at a loss. Two hulks belonging to us, and used for the purpose of “heaving down,” that is, lightening, and pulling on one side ships which it was necessary to clean when they returned foul from a cruise, were towed out to sea and sunk. An experience of this kind must have quickened our desire to obtain possession of a port entirely our own.

Though Philip V. had been accepted by the Spaniards as their king, a party in favour of the Hapsburg dynasty was known to exist, and to be strong in the coast provinces. So upon the outbreak of the war in 1702, a fleet of fifty sail, of which thirty were English and twenty were Dutch, was sent to Cadiz under Rooke, carrying with it a strong force of soldiers under the Duke of Ormonde. It cleared the Channel on the 21st July, and after looking into Corunna went on to the south. On the 12th August it left Lisbon, which, since the Spanish ports were shut to us, and the King of Portugal was among the allies, had become our house of call and store magazine, as it had been in the Commonwealth wars. Very shortly the fleet was before Cadiz. The work to be done required, above all things, tact. It was the duty of the expedition to assail the Spaniards in so far as they were the armed supporters of King Philip V., but to propitiate them in so far as they were the potential supporters of the Hapsburg party. The chiefs so managed matters that they took no effectual steps against the armed forces of King Philip, while they allowed grievous wrong to be inflicted on the people of the country. Cadiz was bombarded to the injury of the inhabitants. Meanwhile the Puerto de Santa Maria, on the other side of the bay, was occupied by the English and Dutch, who applied themselves to drunkenness, the rape of women, and deliberate insults to the Roman Catholic religion—three kinds of violence exquisitely adapted to excite the scorn and hatred of the people of Andalusia. After a month and a little more of wrangling with one another, the chiefs, who could agree on nothing else, agreed to come away.

On the way home, information was received that several Spanish treasure galleons returning from America under protection of a French squadron commanded by Châteaurenault had put into Vigo. Here was a definite object offering a plain aim both to public spirit and private greed. Dissensions ceased. Sailor and soldier united in vigorous co-operation. There is a spacious outer bay at Vigo, and a convenient, though smaller, inner anchorage reached through a narrow entry. A boom had been laid across this, and the French and Spaniards were anchored within. On the 12th October, the allies, led by Admiral Hopson, dashed at the boom while soldiers landed for the purpose turned the fortifications on shore. The French warships and Spanish galleons were either destroyed by the allies or by their own crews. The Government treasure had been disembarked and was far inland, but a good deal of miscellaneous pillage no doubt fell to the squadron and the troops. On the 19th the expedition sailed away, and reached England on the 7th November. Its doings added another chapter to the dreary history of parliamentary debates on “naval miscarriages.”

In 1703 a Grand Fleet went out to the Mediterranean under command of Cloudesley Shovell. It swept the coasts of Spain and Provence, endeavouring to quicken the Hapsburg party in Spain and to send help to the Protestants of the Cevennes, who were in revolt against King Louis—with no success in either case. But the following year saw operations of another order, forming a fruitful campaign—movements of large hostile armaments over a great area, a balance of forces, and a clash of conflict leaving permanent results.

At the close of 1703 the Archduke Charles, the Hapsburg claimant of the Spanish throne, was brought over to this country by Rooke from Holland. It was the purpose of the Government to send him south with such a force as would enable him to vindicate his rights. After delays caused by bad weather he sailed under the protection of Rooke on the 12th February 1704. The English admiral had with him only ten sail of the line, five English and five Dutch, but was accompanied by a swarm of transports and trading ships. He did not reach Lisbon till the 25th February. On the 2nd March reinforcements reached him under command of Sir John Leake, and on the 9th he went to sea in order to cruise for the outgoing Spanish trading fleet bound to the West Indies, which he did not meet though he took several other prizes. Orders were sent him to proceed up the Mediterranean for the purpose of forwarding the Hapsburg cause and aiding the coast towns of our ally the Duke of Savoy. Rooke left Lisbon with thirty-seven sail, but no troops, and was off Cape St. Vincent on the 29th April. He now went on to the Mediterranean. On the 8th May he was off Cape Palos, north-east of the Spanish port of Carthagena. Here a small squadron of French ships was seen and chased. They were on their way to Cadiz. Complaints were made that though they were overtaken they were not attacked, and strong blame was thrown on Captain Andrew Leake for the failure. On the 10th the detached squadron rejoined the admiral, and on the 19th the fleet was off Barcelona. The Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt, who was with Rooke, had been governor of the province for King Charles II., and he was convinced, rightly enough as subsequent events proved, that the sympathies of the townsmen were with the Hapsburg cause. He wished to make an effort to induce them to rise, but Barcelona was held for King Philip by a strong garrison under the command of Don Francisco de Velasco, a man of rigorous character. The Catalans, like our own ancestors whether Whig or Jacobite, were too prudent to rise against regular soldiers till they were assured of solid support. This Rooke could not give. He had no troops with him, and he held himself bound to go on to the Riviera to aid the Duke of Savoy. A few hundred English and Dutch marines were landed, but no movement followed in the town, and they were re-embarked. Rooke therefore left the coast of Catalonia, and steered towards Provence.

The French fleet had left Brest early in May. It consisted of twenty-three vessels, under the command of the Count of Toulouse, a bastard son of the king’s, and a simple-minded honest man of no great faculty. The strain on the French king’s resources had not allowed him to equip great fleets in 1702 and 1703, but the events of those years showed him that an effort must be made. In 1704 he ordered squadrons to be prepared both in Brest and Toulon. The object was to unite them in the Mediterranean, where they could cut short further intrigues with the insurgent Huguenots, and give both moral and material support to his grandson in Spain. The English Government was aware of the preparations, and in April a strong fleet was collected in the Channel under Shovell. He had orders to retire up Channel, bringing with him the store ships loaded for the squadron at Lisbon, if the enemy came on in great force. If, however, he heard that Toulouse had gone to the Mediterranean, he was to follow with not more than twenty-two sail, taking care to leave a sufficient force for the protection of trade in the home waters. On the 12th May Shovell obtained information that the French had gone south, and he therefore detached Sir Stafford Fairborn with light ships to Kinsale to act as a trade guard, and followed the enemy to the coast of Portugal.

The Count of Toulouse had a long start, and was nearing the neighbourhood of Rooke by the time Shovell reached Lisbon. In the latter days of May the position was this. On the 25th Rooke was joined by frigate, with the news that a French fleet had passed the Rock of Lisbon steering to the south. The frigate passed through the enemy at sea, and knew that they had entered the Mediterranean. Rooke also learnt from other sources that the towns of the Duke of Savoy were in no danger. A council of war was held, and it was resolved to return to the Straits. If the French fleet was met on the way it was to be engaged. The Count of Toulouse, with twenty-three sail of the line, was cutting across the route of the allies and heading for Toulon. Another French squadron was getting ready in that port somewhat tardily. Shovell was still distant, but was making his way out to join and put himself under the orders of Rooke. All these forces were converging by devious routes to a final clash of battle.

Important events were to take place before they met. On the 27th of May the ships of Toulouse were sighted by the look-out vessels of Rooke’s fleet. But the abounding caution of the commanders of that generation was shown once more. The average speed of the French ships was better than that of the allies, yet it would have been possible to bring them to action by ordering all the ships to sail at their best rate of speed in a “general chase,” when the quickest of the allies could have overtaken the slowest of the French. But to do this appeared dangerous to the flag officers of 1704, since it might subject them to attack in detail, and they pursued in a body, regulating their speed by that of the slowest sailer among them. Thus the Count of Toulouse kept and improved his lead. On the 29th the allies were within ninety miles of Toulon. Then, fearing that all the French forces would unite and put them at a disadvantage, they returned down the Mediterranean. On the 14th June Rooke and Shovell united their forces in the Straits.

So far nothing very brilliant had been done, and the escape of Toulouse with his far inferior fleet was even discreditable to the allies. But now strong pressure was put on Rooke and his colleagues to act. Hitherto the conduct of the naval war had been of a somewhat peddling order. The buccaneering achievement at Vigo stood alone as a feat of any brilliancy. In the beginning of the war the failure of an officer named Munden (brother of him who retook St. Helena from the Dutch) to stop some French ships at Corunna, and his acquittal by a somewhat complacent court martial, had roused fierce anger in the country. There had since been a shameful business in the West Indies. The nation was becoming thoroughly tired of “naval miscarriages,” and the ministry was resolute that something should be done. Something doable lay at the very hand of the allied fleet. After hesitation, and discussions in the inevitable councils of war, it was resolved to make an attempt on Gibraltar, which Cromwell had indicated as a good post for us to hold half a century before. Though Rooke only acted under pressure, his conduct now compares very favourably with that of Russell in 1695. If he was slow and very cautious, at least he was resolute and exact. He did not allow the mere wind of the French fleet at Toulon to draw him off, but stood on guard with the bulk of his force, and sent in a squadron under George Byng to bombard the town, while a body of marines was landed under command of the Prince of Hesse, on the neck of the peninsula, to cut the garrison off from relief, at any rate, by small parties. Gibraltar even then was strong. Its fortification mounted a hundred guns, but its garrison of 150 men was ridiculously inadequate. On the 23rd the bombardment took place—the Spaniards making such reply as was possible to 150 men. The mole was swept by the fire of the ships’ guns, and then stormed by the sailors. An explosion, either deliberately caused by the Spaniards, or produced by one of our own men who dropped a light into a magazine, did considerable harm to the stormers, and for a moment there was a panic. But the Spaniards were too few to take advantage of the chance, or indeed to man the walls. Next day the governor promised to surrender, and the town was delivered on the 25th. The total loss of the allies was 60 killed and 217 wounded, nearly twice the number of the Spanish garrison, and almost all English. They shed their blood honourably and profitably in adding this noble fortress to the “patrimony of St. George”—happier men than the thousands of their comrades who perished miserably in these wars, fever stricken in filthy ships, rotten with scurvy, starved, or poisoned by bad food.

Gibraltar newly taken, and shattered by the attack, was not as yet capable of serving as a port of war for the fleet. Not even water could be found in sufficient quantities. Twelve hundred marines were landed to form a garrison capable of repelling any sudden attack from the land, and a magazine was made up out of the stores of the ships. Then the allies stood over to Tetuan, and sought for provisions and water among the Moors. On the 9th August they had obtained what they wanted, when the captain of the =Centurion=, who had been on the watch to the eastward, came in with the news that the French fleet was at hand. Though the course to be followed in the event of such a foreseen occurrence as this might have been maturely considered already, a council of war had to be held. It was decided to work up towards the enemy, and give battle. If the Count of Toulouse, who, being to the eastward, had the weather-gage in the easterly wind blowing at the time, had been well advised, he would have forced on battle at once. But he manœuvred to avoid action, and even fell back towards Malaga. This gave the allies time to re-embark half the marines they had landed at Gibraltar. The meeting of the fleets was delayed till the 13th August. By that date the allies had got to windward of the French who were now between them and the fortress. Both fleets were heading to the south. At ten o’clock in the morning the allied line bore down on the French. Sir Cloudesley Shovell and Leake led the van. Rooke commanded in the centre with Dilkes and Wishart. The Dutch formed the rear of the line. In number of guns and ships the two fleets were fairly equal, but the allies were short handed, and in want of ammunition. The course of the battle presented little of interest. Van was opposed to van, centre to centre, and rear to rear. They hammered each other with their guns, and the valour shown was great. Sir John Leake, if his Life is to be trusted, did wish to do more than fire and be fired into. He commanded the leading squadron in the allied line and was opposed to the French admiral, the Marquis de Villette Mursay. The French officer’s ship, the _Intrépide_, caught fire in the poop, and he bore out of the line to extinguish the flames. This movement was understood as a signal by the ships of his squadron, and they followed him to leeward. Leake now wished to pursue and break through the French line, but that fatal article in the Fighting Instructions, which prescribed the maintenance of one order throughout the action, interfered. He was told to remain where he was—and was reduced to be a spectator of the rest of the action, which took the form of a persevering exchange of blows between the centre and rear divisions of the two fleets. They separated at four in the afternoon, both much damaged. The battle of Malaga was one of the most bloody ever fought at sea. Nearly 3000 men fell in the allied line, and the loss of the French, who however only acknowledged 1500, cannot well have been much less. On their side, too, an extraordinary number of officers of distinction were slain.

For two days the fleets remained near one another. The wind shifted to the west, and gave the French the weather-gage, but they made no use of it to renew the battle. In the allied line many ships already depleted by the bombardment of the 23rd July, and the drafts made upon them to supply the Prince of Hesse with a magazine, had fired away almost all their powder. Some had run short in the action. They were prepared to accept battle if it was forced upon them, with the resolution to board the enemy, and settle it with cold steel since they could not use their guns. But in their hearts they were relieved—and no shame to them, and no credit to him—when Toulouse filed away northward to Toulon. Then they returned to Gibraltar Bay, where they remained till the 24th of August. The marines drawn from the garrison were again landed and damages made good as far as might be. On that day Rooke sailed. On the 26th he told off a squadron to remain on the coast of Portugal with Leake, and sailed with his battered ships and sorely tried crews for England, which he reached on the 25th September.

Gibraltar having been taken was to be held, and as it was not yet sufficiently settled to be able to rely for long on its own strength, its salvation depended on Leake’s squadron. Sir John was hardly a great commander, yet from the day that he relieved Londonderry his conduct was always marked by a certain alacrity in action. During the winter of 1704-05, he stood by Gibraltar loyally and with energy. The Spaniards had collected an army to retake the town, and early in October the Prince of Hesse called for help. Leake came at once from Lagos with stores and encouragement. On hearing that a French naval force was approaching, he put to sea. Uncertainty as to the strength of the enemy and some damage received by bad weather induced him to return to Lisbon to refit, but he was back reinforced by the 29th October and had the deserved good luck to capture three French warships. Leake now remained by Gibraltar till the 21st December. On both these visits his guns relieved the pressure on the town by firing into the camp of the besiegers. Then he again went back to Lisbon. During his absence a French squadron under M. de Pointis arrived to form a blockade. On the 10th March, Leake was back again, and this time he destroyed five Frenchmen including the flagship in Gibraltar Bay. The remainder of Pointis’ ships fled to Toulon. Leake now remained till March. The besieging army broke up its camp in despair, and Gibraltar was safe. Leake was able to sail for England and reached it in April. As Gibraltar had been taken, so it was saved by the fleet, for the sake of which we hold it, and on which in the last resort it depends.

It is a striking coincidence that the year of the taking of Gibraltar was also the year of Blenheim. The superiority passed to the allies on land as well as on sea. Henceforth the French king could do less and less with his navy. Year after year the Grand Fleets poured out of the Channel in spring, and swept like a great tidal wave round the coasts of the Peninsula, and into the Gulf of Lyons. They made the capture of Barcelona, and its relief, possible. It was they who enabled General Stanhope to take Port Mahon which, together with Gibraltar, remained in our hands at the end of the war. They kept the Hapsburg cause alive in Spain for a space. Yet their operations present only a repetition of similar incidents, and enforce always the same lessons: that where the road lies over the sea, the ships only can stop it for an invader, or open it for invasion—an obvious but apparently an easily forgotten truth.

Writing in 1704, Josiah Burchett, the Secretary of the Admiralty, had occasion to acknowledge the ill success of an expedition sent to the West Indies during the reign of King William; “but,” he went on, “when had we an opportunity, or at least when was there any attempt made by us from the beginning of the last war, to this very time, where the advantage proved in any degree equal to the charge and inconveniences that did attend it? The injuries we did to the French when Sir Francis Wheeler commanded in the West Indies were inconsiderable, and what have our successes been before and after that expedition? I doubt it was found that our squadrons came home in a much worse condition than when they set forth, both as to men, and all other circumstances; and not having the good fortune to do any sensible injuries to our enemy, they (_i.e._ the enemy) had the satisfaction of knowing what inconveniences we involved ourselves in.” The cruises carried out after 1704 might be summed up in much the same terms. As we were then engaged against the Spaniards as well as the French, a change was made in the scope of our operations. The peculiar character of Spanish trade with the new world, in which the most valuable portion of the home-coming cargoes was the bullion brought from the mines of Mexico and Peru, gave us an opportunity to achieve one success of a kind highly profitable to the officers and men engaged. In 1709, Sir Charles Wager captured a treasure ship, and he also inflicted loss on her companion ships, which was most injurious to the Spaniards. But this action stands almost apart in a long series of cruises of little interest, and no important result.

The nature of these operations can be shown by a brief account of the first. When the war began in 1689 it was felt that the French plantations in America, and more especially those in Hispaniola, represented a portion of the enemy’s resources which it was desirable to diminish. The English officers in America were ordered to molest the French to the utmost of their ability. In order that they might be the better able to perform this duty they were reinforced by a squadron from Europe. It consisted of one third rate, seven fourth rates, one fifth rate, and of two fireships, and was commanded by Captain Lawrence Wright, an officer of some five-and-twenty years’ standing, who had been in the West Indies before. His orders were to ship the Duke of Bolton’s regiment of foot at Plymouth, and to sail for the Leeward Islands, that is the more northerly of the Lesser Antilles which stretch from the Virgin Islands to Dominica. Here he was to co-operate with Colonel Codrington, the governor, whose headquarters were at Antigua. The governor was to add what forces he could, and attacks were then to be made upon the French. Elaborate directions were given to Wright—that he was to be guided by a council of war, to act in so far as operations on shore were concerned, under the general direction of the military officers, to spare what sailors he could for operations on land, and not to send ships from his squadron without consent of the governor and council, lest the islands should be “exposed to insults.”

Thus directed, and with these limited powers, Captain Wright sailed from Plymouth on the 8th March 1690 with a number of merchant ships under his protection. Storms scattered the convoy immediately after it left the Channel, but it arrived safe at Madeira on the 2nd of April. On the 11th May it reached Barbadoes. Though only two months had passed since the squadron had left England, and it had stopped at Madeira, the crews were so sickly, presumably from scurvy, that Captain Wright was compelled to land many of his men to be cured, and could not sail till the 27th May. On the 30th of the month he reached Antigua. Colonel Codrington joined him with some soldiers, and a series of buccaneering operations was begun against the French at St. Christopher, and St. Eustatius to the west of Antigua, and at no great distance. Men were landed, forts taken, plantations plundered and burnt, negroes carried off. No attempt was made to hold the French islands, and this form of purely destructive warfare went on till about the middle of July. The hurricane months (July, August, and September) were now upon them, both sailors and soldiers were sickly, and the expedition returned to Antigua. Wright went out to Barbadoes, and there remained till the 6th October. The island lies out of the usual track of the hurricane, and that danger is considered to be “all over” in October, though there have been some notable and destructive exceptions to these rules.

On the 6th October, Wright again sailed to join Codrington at Antigua, and a plan was laid for attacking the French island of Guadaloupe. It is to be noted that Wright’s crews having been sorely diminished by sickness, he had been compelled to press sailors from the merchant ships at Barbadoes. While the English squadron was collected for the purpose of attacking St. Christopher, the French privateers sailing from Hispaniola, Martinique and Guadaloupe, had been very busy. They were known to have captured numbers of our merchant ships, and the trade was threatened with ruin. Some of them cruised at their ease within sight of the shore at Barbadoes, taking the small vessels employed to bring from Virginia the bacon and maize which were the provisions needed for the negro slaves. There was even danger of famine. At Antigua, Wright was called off by orders to sail for England, and did actually come back as far as Barbadoes. Here, however, counter-orders were sent him to remain, and promises of reinforcements. In January of 1691 store ships, and one man-of-war, reached him. This addition to his force, small as it was, was yet welcome, for he had been compelled to detach vessels on convoy service, doubtless in answer to the loud outcries of the merchants. In February he again joined Codrington, and the scheme of attacking Guadaloupe was resumed. On the 27th of that month, Marie Galante, a little outlying island just south of Guadaloupe, was raided with the usual details of plunder and arson. Then a landing was effected on Guadaloupe, but in May these unworthy operations were brought to an end by the report that a French squadron had reached Martinique from Europe, and was coming on. At once the troops were re-embarked, not without signs of panic, and a council of war decided to return to Barbadoes. Wright and Codrington had come to open quarrel. At Barbadoes the naval chiefs health broke down. He resigned his command, and sailed for home. Some of the ships followed him with a convoy. Others remained in the West Indies.

Wright, who left Barbadoes amid a chorus of jeers and accusations of cowardice, may fairly be considered to have had hard measure. He was never again employed at sea, though he held some dock-yard posts. There is nothing to show that he was a man to rise above adverse circumstances, but the bare narrative of the events of the cruise given above is his best excuse. Let us look at the facts, bearing meanwhile in mind that what is to be said of them applies in different degrees, but always to some extent, to every expedition we sent to the West Indies from the beginning of the war in 1689 down to the peace of Utrecht. In the first place the material force given to the commander was inadequate to the work he had to do. It was not sufficient to capture the principal French posts, yet he was ordered to make attacks on the enemy’s territory. The inevitable result was that, while he had his ships concentrated for miserable burning and plundering raids, the French privateers cruised unchecked. The blame for this rests mainly on the Government. It repeated in the West Indies the very mistake of ordering attacks on coast towns with insufficient forces, which as we have seen it was also making in the Channel. Then these material forces, too weak in themselves to begin with, suffered from causes serious enough to have paralysed greater powers. It was a brutal and greedy generation, callously indifferent to the well-being of the men. The younger Hawkins, and Lancaster—the captain of the East India Company—had shown how to keep crews healthy on long voyages even in the tropics. We had the example of the Dutch to guide us. Yet the chiefs of the navy allowed their men to rot from scurvy and perish by fever, not from want of knowledge, which they could have acquired at once if they had looked for it, but from mere hardness of heart and selfishness. The destruction of life by disease in our fleets was everywhere great, and in the West Indies it was enormous. Of the superior officers who sailed with Admiral Nevill in 1696-1697 only one captain lived to return home. The pestiferous squalor of the lower deck avenged the sailors. At the close of Captain R. Wilmot’s expedition of 1695 one vessel was lost on the reefs of Florida, from sheer want of men to handle her sails. The sailors followed the example set them, and were affected by the spirit of their time. They found consolation for the hardships of life afloat in excesses on shore. Burchett assures us that the harbours of the West Indies were more fatal to the men than the sea.

In this atmosphere, as of a town smitten by plague where men hasten to enjoy while they can, sailors and soldiers were sent to plunder. Each soon began to suspect the other of attempting to defraud, and the passions of disappointed gamblers were added to the professional rivalry of men who in that generation were rarely honest enough to subordinate their passions to the general good of “the king’s service.” The fierce feuds of sailor and soldier flamed up in these expeditions, but the case of Admiral Benbow shows that a British admiral of that generation could not always rely on loyal and honest support even from his subordinates. Add to this, that jarring soldier and sailor elements were constantly called upon to combine in councils, and that they were both subjected to a vague check by the governors and councils of the islands. In such conditions effective operations were not possible.

While the Grand Fleets were cruising, often unopposed and never effectually checked by the French, while the colonial expeditions sailed year after year to fail, or at the best to achieve half successes, by their own defects rather than from the strength of their enemy, the allies suffered severely at sea from the enterprise of the corsairs who won for France nearly all the glory and profit she gained from these naval wars. This side of the struggle is of peculiar, indeed it may be said to be of contemporary, interest. French writers are fond of dwelling on the success of their privateers in the later seventeenth, and early eighteenth centuries. They argue that it proves their national aptitude for swift destructive attacks on trade, and draw the deduction that if ever war breaks out again between them and us, they must revert to the methods of the men who, if they could not disturb the movements of the great allied fleets, did at least make the conflict costly to English and Dutch commerce. It is their belief that if they can only do what those adventurers did on a somewhat larger scale, then England, which is far more dependent on trade than she then was, and is now under the obligation to import large quantities of food, which was not then the case, will find her superiority in fleets of no avail. We are looking then at what concerns us directly when we turn our attention to the doings of the French corsairs between 1689 and 1712.

Owing to a combination of circumstances the _guerrillero_, or partisan war of the sea, was then conducted in exceptionally favourable conditions. When they have been detailed, and the results reached have been summed up, we shall be in a position to judge how far those conditions, favourable as they were to the corsairs, were also of advantage to our enemy. This failure of the French fleet had a double effect. French coasting trade conducted in small vessels, fitted to hug the shore and take refuge under coast batteries, went on, disturbed, but not destroyed. But French oversea commerce was almost wholly suspended. Thus numbers of men were thrown out of employment, and the shipowners were driven to look elsewhere for profit. Both were inevitably turned to privateering. We had seen the same consequence ensue in Elizabeth’s reign, when the Spanish war interrupted our chief oversea trade. Again, so soon as the great fleets had no longer to be manned for cruising, the king had a strong motive to find other employment for his sailors and his officers. Therefore he allowed them to go on privateering voyages, and even hired out his vessels for the purpose or entered into partnership with the owners. Here again our own Elizabethan precedent was closely, if unconsciously, followed. Similar causes produced similar results, and as Elizabeth became the partner of “adventurers” on plundering expeditions to the West Indies, or to Cadiz, so King Louis entered into contracts with his _armateurs_ for similar ventures. Finally, the French leaders of that generation were of much the same stamp as our Elizabethans. M. de Pointis, the Chevalier de Saint Pol, the Count de Forbin, Jean Bart, and Duguay-Trouin were the French equivalents of Raleigh, Cumberland, Drake, Frobisher, and Hawkins. Some of them won their way to social position, and the royal service, by good fighting in the privateers. Others were king’s officers lent for the work.

While Tourville kept the sea, the share of the privateers in the war was small, and the harm they did very trifling in comparison to the injury inflicted on the Smyrna convoy by the French fleet in 1693. Only a part of their total later activity in the war directly concerned us. Jean Bart, a Fleming of the Flemish town of Dunkirk, cruised mainly against the Dutch in the North Seas. The two greatest single achievements of the French privateers, the capture of Carthagena by M. de Pointis in the reign of King William (1697), and the capture of Rio de Janeiro by Duguay-Trouin in the reign of Queen Anne (1711), were directed against the Spaniards and the Portuguese respectively. They were very similar to Drake’s raid on the West Indies in 1585. The Dunkirk privateers preyed on our commerce after their town had become French, as they had done while it formed part of the Low Country possessions of the King of Spain. We blockaded it with indifferent success. Other ports also sent out their corsairs. Our chief interest is with the Breton town of St. Malo, and with the activity of its hero Réné Duguay-Trouin. He used other ports, Dunkirk or Rochelle occasionally, and Brest often. He co-operated with other men, notably with the Count of Forbin, but St. Malo was his headquarters and also the typical corsair town, while he was the central dominating figure of the corsair war. Jean Bart died in the middle of the conflict. Forbin had other activities. Saint Pol, Nesmond, and many more who could be named, were subordinate. Following the scheme of this book, I take him as the characteristic illuminative example.

The Breton town of St. Malo stands on the northern coast of the Duchy towards the eastern end, and close to Normandy. It is on the eastern end and at the mouth of the Rance. At that time it was still an island, not yet turned into a peninsula by a causeway. It was surrounded by ancient mediæval walls of less extent than the present fortifications. The population were seamen, traders in peace, corsairs in war. There were local leaders, burgesses not counted as nobles, but in the odd old French phrase “living nobly” as merchants and shipowners, not by retail trade, nor manual labour. The approach to the Rance is dangerous, through reefs and over a bar, but there is good anchorage inside. The privateers of St. Malo had been recognised as a useful force, and their organisation had been controlled by the crown since the fifteenth century. It had been finally fixed by Colbert. The captains sailed with a recognised commission and large powers, extending even to life and death, for the maintenance of discipline. The crews were recruited by free enlistment, and received wages, which might go to fifteen crowns for the _course_ or cruise of four months. Custom, embodied in royal ordinances, regulated the division of the prize. After payment of legal expenses, and of ten per cent. to the Admiralty of Brittany (a separate office from the Admiralty of France), two-thirds belonged to the owner, and the remaining third was divided among the officers on a fixed scale, while the men were rewarded at discretion by gifts in addition to their wages. When the king lent the ship he took a fifth of the prize, after the deduction of legal expenses, and admiral’s fees. The adventurers who helped to fit the vessel out, with their officers and the crew, divided the remainder.

Among the _armateurs_, merchants, and shipowners of St. Malo “living nobly,” the family of Trouin had a conspicuous place. Luc Trouin de la Barbinais, father of the corsair, had himself served against the Dutch and Spaniards. Réné, who afterwards added Duguay to his name to distinguish himself from his elder brother, was a younger son of a large household. His parents had intended him for a priest, and he had some schooling from the Jesuits at Rouen. But he was not made for the church. When the war opened in 1689 he was seventeen years old, and his family allowed him to follow his natural bent. He began his career as a volunteer in one of the ships of the firm. These were light craft, provided with guns, but relying mainly on their large crews. It was not their interest to destroy their prize, so whether she was a small warship (a large one they would naturally avoid) or a merchant vessel, their method was always the same, namely, to run alongside, or to run the bowsprit over the waist of their opponent, and to carry her at a rush. A very short apprenticeship was considered enough for one of the owners’ family. In his second year the young Réné was already in command of a light cruiser. In 1692 he captured an English convoy. In 1693 he cruised at the mouth of the Channel in the _Hercule_, 30, and took two rich English prizes. In 1694 he commanded the _Diligente_, 36, and after some success was captured by an English squadron. He was carried as prisoner to Plymouth, but escaped by the help of a pretty shop girl who had a lover among the gaolers. At that time he was in peril of severe treatment, for he had broken the laws of war, out of bravado, by firing a derisive shot at a heavy English vessel before hoisting his own flag and sailing off. After his escape his brother gave him the _Francois_, 48. In this vessel he took part in the capture of an English convoy protected by two men-of-war, the =Sanspareil= and the =Boston=. Here we have to note that a change—a very significant change—came over the corsair war about this time.

In the first three years of the war the privateers cruised alone, picking up what straggling merchant ships they met. But the allies answered by sending their trade under protection of warships in convoys. It therefore became necessary to make the attack with forces capable of overcoming the guard. So the corsairs began to cruise in well-appointed squadrons of four, six, or ten ships, in part commonly supplied by the king. These forces flew at far higher game than the straggling merchant ship. Their course was identical with that following in the ensuing century by Hawke, when he assailed Desherbiers de l’Etenduère, namely, to fall upon the warships first. When the French were in sufficient numbers both to throw a superior force on the men-of-war, and to spare vessels to capture the merchant ships at once, they did so; when this was not the case they disposed of the armed guard. They made no attempt to form a precise order themselves, but swept down on the guardships of the convoy, attacking always by two or more against one, and overpowering their enemy in detail. The protecting English and Dutch ships made many gallant fights, but they showed little readiness to meet attack by counter-attack. It was their custom to form a line and wait to be assailed. This passive attitude left the Frenchman free to make his arrangements as he pleased. Duguay-Trouin, and his colleagues, still relied much upon large crews, and upon boarding. Yet an alert, well-handled ship could often avoid being grappled. For instance, we often hear how a French corsair swept down on the side of some Englishman or Dutchman, but failed to grapple because the wary opponent had “thrown all aback,” that is to say, had pulled the yards round so as to present the front of the sails to the wind. This would stop his motion, and begin to make him move backwards. If now the attacking ship, which by the necessity of the case would be going with the impetus of high speed, ranged up alongside she might miss her aim, or the large iron hooks called grappling-irons, which she threw out to take hold of her prey, might not get fixed; or again they might, but the ropes to which they are fastened broke under the strain of the diverging masses. Then the assailant would shoot ahead, and the vessel attacked would have a chance to cross her path, and sweep her with a broadside. In order to have something more than the boarders to rely on, the corsairs increased the size of their vessels and broadsides, till they sailed with ships of fifty-six guns. Still the favourite method of the corsairs was to rush to close quarters, on both sides at once when they could, and throw an irresistible force of boarders on the enemy’s deck.

Many hot fights of this kind took place in both divisions of the war. One of the most desperate was fought in 1697 between Duguay-Trouin and the Dutch Bilbao convoy under Baron Wassenaer. The years from 1693 to 1697 were, on the whole, at least in so far as we were concerned, the most profitable to the corsairs. Our navy was still staggering from the administrative vices of King Charles’s reign, and the Government was hampered by financial embarrassments. The merchants complained that the protection was insufficient, and was supplied late, so that they lost the season, and the market, and were put to heavy expense while waiting for their guard. Officials replied that they did what they could, and accused the merchant captains of bringing misfortunes on themselves by leaving the protection of the warships, to hurry on as they neared home. There was truth on both sides. It is certain that merchant skippers both then, and for long afterwards, were often tempted to run risks by the hope of getting in early, and well ahead of competitors in the market. Yet the constant successes of the privateers show that the navy was not well handled.

We renewed the war in more favourable conditions, and with a better experience. On the whole, the corsairs had far less success. Nevertheless, even in this period, Duguay-Trouin hit us some shrewd blows. In 1705 he took a large English man-of-war, the =Elisabeth=. In 1707 he sailed in combination with Forbin, at the head of a squadron of twelve vessels. Their orders were to intercept a convoy of military stores which the English Government was sending to Spain under the protection of three large men-of-war, the =Devonshire=, 80, the =Cumberland=, 80, and the =Royal Oak=, 74, with the =Chester= and the =Ruby= of 50 guns. It was met, and scattered off the Lizard on the 10th October after very hard fighting. The English captains fought most bravely, but no more can be said in their favour. Though our squadron was outnumbered it contained three vessels far superior in strength to any among the French. Moreover, they were divided when the action was begun by Duguay-Trouin who rushed straight at us. Yet Captain Richard Edwards who commanded did not attempt to do more than present a defensive barrier between the merchant ships and the oncoming French, who were thus able to concentrate as they pleased, and crush him in detail. As a captain he did his duty manfully, fighting his ship, the =Cumberland=, till she was dismasted, and unable to resist further. The =Chester= and =Ruby= were also taken. The =Devonshire= fought till evening, when she blew up with the loss of all her crew, except three, and of three hundred soldiers she was carrying out to Spain. While this fierce conflict was in progress, the transports and merchant ships made their escape, and most of them reached Lisbon.

Here we might leave Duguay-Trouin, for his later services did not greatly concern us. Yet it belongs to our story to record that in the following year he cruised with ten ships, hired by, or belonging to, himself and his brothers. No prize was met, and the expense of keeping so many vessels at sea to no purpose nearly brought the house of Trouin to ruin. This fact in his career supplies an opportunity for summing up the corsair war. It brought him, we see, fame but not profit, and it may be added that this is what it did for France. Looking at it as a whole we note that it gives no support to the often-renewed contention, that attacks by cruisers on sea-borne trade can of themselves bring a maritime power to submission. The work, often tried, has never been better done, and we may feel sure never will be better done than by Duguay-Trouin, and the men he represents here. Yet we see that it did not stop the march of the Grand Fleets of the allies for a day, nor did it ever dam up the main stream of their commerce. Again, the achievements of this famous corsair do by no means prove that single ships, however swift, can destroy commerce. It was while trying to prey on our shipping single-handed that Duguay-Trouin became a prisoner at Plymouth. Precisely the same experience befell Jean Bart, and Forbin at Portsmouth. Their successes were gained in well-appointed squadrons able to meet the shock of battle. The moral of the story is that a maritime power can always defeat the attacks of single ships on its trade by giving convoy. The protecting squadron can only be overpowered by a force like itself, and we come at once to operations of war far beyond the power of the mere corsair or commerce destroyer who relies on his speed only. Success in these operations must finally fall to whichever side possesses the most numerous, and the best-appointed squadrons.

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