PART II

SEA POWER IN HISTORY

15. A NATION EXHAUSTED BY ISOLATION[41]

_France under Louis XIV_

The peace signed at Ryswick in 1697 was most disadvantageous to France; she lost all that had been gained since the Peace of Nimeguen, nineteen years before, with the single important exception of Strasburg. All that Louis XIV had gained by trick or force during the years of peace was given up. Immense restitutions were made to Germany and to Spain. In so far as the latter were made in the Netherlands, they were to the immediate advantage of the United Provinces, and indeed of all Europe as well as of Spain. To the two sea nations the terms of the treaty gave commercial benefits, which tended to the increase of their own sea power and to the consequent injury of that of France.

France had made a gigantic struggle; to stand alone as she did then, and as she has since done more than once, against all Europe is a great feat. Yet it may be said that as the United Provinces taught the lesson that a nation, however active and enterprising, cannot rest upon external resources alone, if intrinsically weak in numbers and territory, so France in its measure shows that a nation cannot subsist indefinitely off itself, however powerful in numbers and strong in internal resources.

It is said that a friend once found Colbert looking dreamily from his windows, and on questioning him as to the subject of his meditations, received this reply: “In contemplating the fertile fields before my eyes, I recall those which I have seen elsewhere; what a rich country is France!” This conviction supported him amid the many discouragements of his official life, when struggling to meet the financial difficulties arising from the extravagance and wars of the king; and it has been justified by the whole course of the nation’s history since his days. France is rich in natural resources as well as in the industry and thrift of her people. But neither individual nations nor men can thrive when severed from natural intercourse with their kind; whatever the native vigor of constitution, it requires healthful surroundings, and freedom to draw to itself from near and from far all that is conducive to its growth and strength and general welfare. Not only must the internal organism work satisfactorily, the processes of decay and renewal, of movement and circulation, go on easily, but, from sources external to themselves, both mind and body must receive healthful and varied nourishment. With all her natural gifts France wasted away because of the want of that lively intercourse between the different parts of her own body and constant exchange with other people, which is known as commerce, internal or external. To say that war was the cause of these defects is to state at least a partial truth; but it does not exhaust the matter. War, with its many acknowledged sufferings, is above all harmful when it cuts a nation off from others and throws it back upon itself. There may indeed be periods when such rude shocks have a bracing effect, but they are exceptional, and of short duration, and they do not invalidate the general statement. Such isolation was the lot of France during the later wars of Louis XIV, and it well-nigh destroyed her; whereas to save her from the possibility of such stagnation was the great aim of Colbert’s life.

War alone could not entail it, if only war could be postponed until the processes of circulation within and without the kingdom were established and in vigorous operation. They did not exist when he took office; they had to be both created and firmly rooted in order to withstand the blast of war. Time was not given to accomplish this great work, nor did Louis XIV support the schemes of his minister by turning the budding energies of his docile and devoted subjects into paths favorable to it. So when the great strain came upon the powers of the nation, instead of drawing strength from every quarter and through many channels, and laying the whole outside world under contribution by the energy of its merchants and seamen, as England has done in like straits, it was thrown back upon itself, cut off from the world by the navies of England and Holland, and the girdle of enemies which surrounded it upon the continent. The only escape from this process of gradual starvation was by an effectual control of the sea; the creation of a strong sea power which should ensure free play for the wealth of the land and the industry of the people. For this, too, France had great natural advantages in her three seaboards, on the Channel, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean; and politically she had had the fair opportunity of joining to her own maritime power that of the Dutch in friendly alliance, hostile or at least wary toward England. In the pride of his strength, conscious of absolute control in his kingdom, Louis cast away this strong reinforcement to his power, and proceeded to rouse Europe against him by repeated aggressions. In the period which we have just considered, France justified his confidence by a magnificent, and upon the whole successful, maintenance of his attitude against all Europe; she did not advance, but neither did she greatly recede. But this display of power was exhausting; it ate away the life of the nation, because it drew wholly upon itself and not upon the outside world, with which it could have been kept in contact by the sea. In the war that next followed, the same energy is seen, but not the same vitality; and France was everywhere beaten back and brought to the verge of ruin. The lesson of both is the same; nations, like men, however strong, decay when cut off from the external activities and resources which at once draw out and support their internal powers. A nation, as we have already shown, cannot live indefinitely off itself, and the easiest way by which it can communicate with other peoples and renew its own strength is the sea.

16. THE GROWTH OF BRITISH SEA POWER[42]

_England after the Peace of Utrecht, 1715_

While England’s policy thus steadily aimed at widening and strengthening the bases of her sway upon the ocean, the other governments of Europe seemed blind to the dangers to be feared from her sea growth. The miseries resulting from the overweening power of Spain in days long gone by seemed to be forgotten; forgotten also the more recent lesson of the bloody and costly wars provoked by the ambition and exaggerated power of Louis XIV. Under the eyes of the statesmen of Europe there was steadily and visibly being built up a third overwhelming power, destined to be used as selfishly, as aggressively, though not as cruelly, and much more successfully than any that had preceded it. This was the power of the sea, whose workings, because more silent than the clash of arms, are less often noted, though lying clearly enough on the surface. It can scarcely be denied that England’s uncontrolled dominion of the seas, during almost the whole period chosen for our subject, was by long odds the chief among the military factors that determined the final issue.[43] So far, however, was this influence from being foreseen after Utrecht, that France for twelve years, moved by personal exigencies of her rulers, sided with England against Spain; and when Fleuri came into power in 1726, though this policy was reversed, the navy of France received no attention, and the only blow at England was the establishment of a Bourbon prince, a natural enemy to her, upon the throne of the two Sicilies in 1736. When war broke out with Spain in 1739, the navy of England was in numbers more than equal to the combined navies of Spain and France; and during the quarter of a century of nearly uninterrupted war that followed, this numerical disproportion increased. In these wars England, at first instinctively, afterward with conscious purpose under a government that recognized her opportunity and the possibilities of her great sea power, rapidly built up that mighty colonial empire whose foundations were already securely laid in the characteristics of her colonists and the strength of her fleets. In strictly European affairs her wealth, the outcome of her sea power, made her play a conspicuous part during the same period. The system of subsidies, which began half a century before in the wars of Marlborough and received its most extensive development half a century later in the Napoleonic wars, maintained the efforts of her allies, which would have been crippled, if not paralyzed, without them. Who can deny that the government which with one hand strengthened its fainting allies on the continent with the life-blood of money, and with the other drove its own enemies off the sea and out of their chief possessions, Canada, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Havana, Manila, gave to its country the foremost rôle in European politics; and who can fail to see that the power which dwelt in that government, with a land narrow in extent and poor in resources, sprang directly from the sea? The policy in which the English government carried on the war is shown by a speech of Pitt, the master-spirit during its course, though he lost office before bringing it to an end. Condemning the Peace of 1763, made by his political opponent, he said: “France is chiefly, if not exclusively, formidable to us as a maritime and commercial power. What we gain in this respect is valuable to us, above all, through the injury to her which results from it. You have left to France the possibility of reviving her navy.” Yet England’s gains were enormous; her rule in India was assured, and all North America east of the Mississippi in her hands. By this time the onward path of her government was clearly marked out, had assumed the force of a tradition, and was consistently followed. The war of the American Revolution was, it is true, a great mistake, looked at from the point of view of sea power; but the government was led into it insensibly by a series of natural blunders. Putting aside political and constitutional considerations, and looking at the question as purely military or naval, the case was this: The American colonies were large and growing communities at a great distance from England. So long as they remained attached to the mother-country, as they then were enthusiastically, they formed a solid base for her sea power in that part of the world; but their extent and population were too great, when coupled with the distance from England, to afford any hope of holding them by force, _if_ any powerful nations were willing to help them. This “if,” however, involved a notorious probability; the humiliation of France and Spain was so bitter and so recent that they were sure to seek revenge, and it was well known that France in particular had been carefully and rapidly building up her navy. Had the colonies been thirteen islands, the sea power of England would quickly have settled the question; but instead of such a physical barrier they were separated only by local jealousies which a common danger sufficiently overcame. To enter deliberately on such a contest, to try to hold by force so extensive a territory, with a large hostile population, so far from home, was to renew the Seven Years’ War with France and Spain, and with the Americans, against, instead of for, England. The Seven Years’ War had been so heavy a burden that a wise government would have known that the added weight could not be borne, and have seen it was necessary to conciliate the colonists. The government of the day was not wise, and a large element of England’s sea power was sacrificed; but by mistake, not willfully; through arrogance, not through weakness.

This steady keeping to a general line of policy was doubtless made specially easy for successive English governments by the clear indications of the country’s conditions. Singleness of purpose was to some extent imposed. The firm maintenance of her sea power, the haughty determination to make it felt, the wise state of preparation in which its military element was kept, were yet more due to that feature of her political institutions which practically gave the government, during the period in question, into the hands of a class,—a landed aristocracy. Such a class, whatever its defects otherwise, readily takes up and carries on a sound political tradition, is naturally proud of its country’s glory, and comparatively insensible to the sufferings of the community by which that glory is maintained. It readily lays on the pecuniary burden necessary for preparation and for endurance of war. Being as a body rich, it feels those burdens less. Not being commercial, the sources of its own wealth are not so immediately endangered, and it does not share that political timidity which characterizes those whose property is exposed and business threatened,—the proverbial timidity of capital. Yet in England this class was not insensible to anything that touched her trade for good or ill. Both houses of Parliament vied in careful watchfulness, over its extension and protection, and to the frequency of their inquiries a naval historian attributes the increased efficiency of the executive power in its management of the navy. Such a class also naturally imbibes and keeps up a spirit of military honor, which is of the first importance in ages when military institutions have not yet provided the sufficient substitute in what is called _esprit-de-corps_. But although full of class feeling and class prejudice, which made themselves felt in the navy as well as elsewhere, their practical sense left open the way of promotion to its highest honors to the more humbly born; and every age saw admirals who had sprung from the lowest of the people. In this the temper of the English upper class differed markedly from that of the French. As late as 1789, at the outbreak of the Revolution, the French Navy List still bore the name of an official whose duty was to verify the proofs of noble birth on the part of those intending to enter the naval school.

Since 1815, and especially in our own day, the government of England has passed very much more into the hands of the people at large. Whether her sea power will suffer therefrom remains to be seen. Its broad basis still remains in a great trade, large mechanical industries, and an extensive colonial system. Whether a democratic government will have the foresight, the keen sensitiveness to national position and credit, the willingness to ensure its prosperity by adequate outpouring of money in times of peace, all of which are necessary for military preparation, is yet an open question. Popular governments are not generally favorable to military expenditure, however necessary, and there are signs that England tends to drop behind.

17. RESULTS OF THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR[44]

Nevertheless, the gains of England were very great, not only in territorial increase, nor yet in maritime preponderance, but in the prestige and position achieved in the eyes of the nations, now fully opened to her great resources and mighty power. To these results, won by the sea, the issue of the continental war offered a singular and suggestive contrast. France had already withdrawn, along with England, from all share in that strife, and peace between the other parties to it was signed five days after the Peace of Paris. The terms of the peace was simply the _status quo ante bellum_. By the estimate of the King of Prussia, one hundred and eighty thousand of his soldiers had fallen or died in this war, out of a kingdom of five million souls, while the losses of Russia, Austria, and France aggregated four hundred and sixty thousand men. The result was simply that things remained as they were.[45] To attribute this only to a difference between the possibilities of land and sea war is of course absurd. The genius of Frederick, backed by the money of England, had proved an equal match for the mismanaged and not always hearty efforts of a coalition numerically overwhelming.

What does seem a fair conclusion is, that States having a good seaboard, or even ready access to the ocean by one or two outlets, will find it to their advantage to seek prosperity and extension by the way of the sea and of commerce, rather than in attempts to unsettle and modify existing political arrangements in countries where a more or less long possession of power has conferred acknowledged rights, and created national allegiance or political ties. Since the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the waste places of the world have been rapidly filled; witness our own continent, Australia, and even South America. A nominal and more or less clearly defined political possession now generally exists in the most forsaken regions, though to this statement there are some marked exceptions; but in many places this political possession is little more than nominal, and in others of a character so feeble that it cannot rely upon itself alone for support or protection. The familiar and notorious example of the Turkish Empire, kept erect only by the forces pressing upon it from opposing sides, by the mutual jealousies of powers that have no sympathy with it, is an instance of such weak political tenure; and though the question is wholly European, all know enough of it to be aware that the interest and control of the sea powers is among the chief, if not the first, of the elements that now fix the situation; and that they, if intelligently used, will direct the future inevitable changes. Upon the western continents the political condition of the Central American and tropical South American States is so unstable as to cause constant anxiety about the maintenance of internal order, and seriously to interfere with commerce and with the peaceful development of their resources. So long as—to use a familiar expression—they hurt no one but themselves, this may go on; but for a long time the citizens of more stable governments have been seeking to exploit their resources, and have borne the losses arising from their distracted condition. North America and Australia still offer large openings to immigration and enterprise; but they are filling up rapidly, and as the opportunities there diminish, the demand must arise for a more settled government in those disordered States, for security to life and for reasonable stability of institutions enabling merchants and others to count upon the future. There is certainly no present hope that such a demand can be fulfilled from the existing native materials; if the same be true when the demand arises, no theoretical positions, like the Monroe Doctrine, will prevent interested nations from attempting to remedy the evil by some measure, which, whatever it may be called, will be a political interference. Such interferences must produce collisions, which may be at times settled by arbitration, but can scarcely fail at other times to cause war. Even for a peaceful solution, that nation will have the strongest arguments which has the strongest organized force.

It need scarcely be said that the successful piercing of the Central American Isthmus at any point may precipitate the moment that is sure to come sooner or later. The profound modification of commercial routes expected from this enterprise, the political importance to the United States of such a channel of communication between her Atlantic and Pacific seaboards, are not, however, the whole nor even the principal part of the question. As far as can be seen, the time will come when stable governments for the American tropical States must be assured by the now existing powerful and stable States of America or Europe. The geographical position of those States, the climatic conditions, make it plain at once that sea power will there, even more than in the case of Turkey, determine what foreign State shall predominate,—if not by actual possession, by its influence over the native governments. The geographical position of the United States and her intrinsic power give her an undeniable advantage; but that advantage will not avail if there is a great inferiority of organized brute-force, which still remains the last argument of republics as of kings.

Herein lies to us the great and still living interest of the Seven Years’ War. In it we have seen and followed England, with an army small as compared with other States, as is still her case to-day, first successfully defending her own shores, then carrying her arms in every direction, spreading her rule and influence over remote regions, and not only binding them to her obedience, but making them tributary to her wealth, her strength, and her reputation. As she loosens the grasp and neutralizes the influence of France and Spain in regions beyond the sea, there is perhaps seen the prophecy of some other great nation in days yet to come, that will incline the balance of power in some future sea war, whose scope will be recognized afterward, if not by contemporaries, to have been the political future and the economical development of regions before lost to civilization; but that nation will not be the United States if the moment find her indifferent, as now, to the empire of the seas.

The direction then given to England’s efforts, by the instinct of the nation and the fiery genius of Pitt, continued after the war, and has profoundly influenced her subsequent policy. Mistress now of North America, lording it in India, through the company whose territorial conquests had been ratified by native princes, over twenty millions of inhabitants,—a population larger than that of Great Britain and having a revenue respectable alongside of that of the home government,—England, with yet other rich possessions scattered far and wide over the globe, had ever before her eyes, as a salutary lesson, the severe chastisement which the weakness of Spain had allowed her to inflict upon that huge disjointed empire. The words of the English naval historian of that war, speaking about Spain, apply with slight modifications to England in our own day.

“Spain is precisely that power against which England can always contend with the fairest prospect of advantage and honor. That extensive monarchy is exhausted at heart, her resources lie at a great distance, and whatever power commands the sea, may command the wealth and commerce of Spain. The dominions from which she draws her resources, lying at an immense distance from the capital and from one another, make it more necessary for her than for any other State to temporize, until she can inspire with activity all parts of her enormous but disjointed empire.”[46]

It would be untrue to say that England is exhausted at heart; but her dependence upon the outside world is such as to give a certain suggestiveness to the phrase.

This analogy of positions was not overlooked by England. From that time forward up to our own day, the possessions won for her by her sea power have combined with that sea power itself to control her policy. The road to India—in the days of Clive a distant and perilous voyage on which she had not a stopping-place of her own—was reinforced as opportunity offered by the acquisition of St. Helena, of the Cape of Good Hope, of the Mauritius. When steam made the Red Sea and Mediterranean route practicable, she acquired Aden, and yet later has established herself at Socotra. Malta had already fallen into her hands during the wars of the French Revolution; and her commanding position, as the corner-stone upon which the coalitions against Napoleon rested, enabled her to claim it at the Peace of 1815. Being but a short thousand miles from Gibraltar, the circles of military command exercised by these two places intersect. The present day has seen the stretch from Malta to the Isthmus of Suez, formerly without a station, guarded by the cession to her of Cyprus. Egypt, despite the jealousy of France, has passed under English control. The importance of that position to India, understood by Napoleon and Nelson, led the latter at once to send an officer overland to Bombay with the news of the battle of the Nile and the downfall of Bonaparte’s hopes. Even now, the jealousy with which England views the advance of Russia in Central Asia is the result of those days in which her sea power and resources triumphed over the weakness of D’Aché and the genius of Suffren, and wrenched the peninsula of India from the ambition of the French.

“For the first time since the Middle Ages,” says M. Martin, speaking of the Seven Years’ War, “England had conquered France single-handed almost without allies, France having powerful auxiliaries. She had conquered solely by the superiority of her government.”

Yes! but by the superiority of her government using the tremendous weapon of her sea power. This made her rich and in turn protected the trade by which she had her wealth. With her money she upheld her few auxiliaries, mainly Prussia and Hanover, in their desperate strife. Her power was everywhere that her ships could reach, and there was none to dispute the sea to her. Where she would she went, and with her went her guns and her troops. By this mobility her forces were multiplied, those of her enemies distracted. Ruler of the seas, she everywhere obstructed its highways. The enemies’ fleets could not join; no great fleet could get out, or if it did, it was only to meet at once, with uninured officers and crews, those who were veterans in gales and warfare. Save in the case of Minorca, she carefully held her own sea bases and eagerly seized those of the enemy. What a lion in the path was Gibraltar to the French squadrons of Toulon and Brest! What hope for French succor to Canada, when the English fleet had Louisburg under its lee?

The one nation that gained in this war was that which used the sea in peace to earn its wealth, and ruled it in war by the extent of its navy, by the number of its subjects who lived on the sea or by the sea, and by its numerous bases of operations scattered over the globe. Yet it must be observed that these bases themselves would have lost their value if their communications remained obstructed. Therefore the French lost Louisburg, Martinique, Pondicherry; so England herself lost Minorca. The service between the bases and the mobile force, between the ports and the fleets, is mutual.[47] In this respect the navy is essentially a light corps; it keeps open the communications between its own ports, it obstructs those of the enemy; but it sweeps the sea for the service of the land, it controls the desert that man may live and thrive on the habitable globe.

18. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY FORMALISM IN NAVAL TACTICS[48]

Tourville,[49] though a brilliant seaman, thus not only typified an era of transition, with which he was contemporary, but fore-shadowed the period of merely formal naval warfare, precise, methodical, and unenterprising, emasculated of military virility, although not of mere animal courage. He left to his successors the legacy of a great name, but also unfortunately that of a defective professional tradition. The splendid days of the French Navy under Louis XIV passed away with him,—he died in 1701; but during the long period of naval lethargy on the part of the state, which followed, the French naval officers, as a class, never wholly lost sight of professional ideals. They proved themselves, on the rare occasions that offered, before 1715 and during the wars of Hawke and Rodney, not only gallant seamen after the pattern of Tourville, but also exceedingly capable tacticians, upon a system good as far as it went, but defective on Tourville’s express lines, in aiming rather at exact dispositions and defensive security than at the thorough-going initiative and persistence which confounds and destroys the enemy. “War,” to use Napoleon’s phrase, “was to be waged without running risks.” The sword was drawn, but the scabbard was kept ever open for its retreat.

The English, in the period of reaction which succeeded the Dutch wars, produced their own caricature of systematized tactics. Even under its influence, up to 1715, it is only just to say they did not construe naval skill to mean anxious care to keep one’s own ships intact. Rooke, off Malaga, in 1704, illustrated professional fearlessness of consequences as conspicuously as he had shown personal daring in the boat attack at La Hogue; but his plans of battle exemplified the

## particularly British form of inefficient naval action. There was no

great difference in aggregate force between the French fleet and that of the combined Anglo-Dutch under his orders. The former, drawing up in the accustomed line of battle, ship following ship in a single column, awaited attack. Rooke, having the advantage of the wind, and therefore the power of engaging at will, formed his command in a similar and parallel line a few miles off, and thus all stood down together, the ships maintaining their line parallel to that of the enemy, and coming into action at practically the same moment, van to van, center to center, rear to rear. This ignored wholly the essential maxim of all intelligent warfare, which is so to engage as markedly to outnumber the enemy at a point of main collision. If he be broken there, before the remainder of his force come up, the chances all are that a decisive superiority will be established by this alone, not to mention the moral effect of partial defeat and disorder. Instead of this, the impact at Malaga was so distributed as to produce a substantial equality from one end to the other of the opposing fronts. The French, indeed, by strengthening their center relatively to the van and rear, to some extent modified this condition in the particular instance; but the fact does not seem to have induced any alteration in Rooke’s dispositions. Barring mere accident, nothing conclusive can issue from such arrangements. The result accordingly was a drawn battle, although Rooke says that the fight, which was maintained on both sides “with great fury for three hours, ... was the sharpest day’s service that I ever saw;” and he had seen much,—Beachy Head, La Hogue, Vigo Bay, not to mention his own great achievement in the capture of Gibraltar.

This method of attack remained the ideal—if such a word is not misnomer in such a case—of the British Navy, not merely as a matter of irreflective professional acceptance, but laid down in the official “Fighting Instructions.”[50] It cannot be said that these err on the side of lucidity; but their meaning to contemporaries in this particular respect is ascertained, not only by fair inference from their contents, but by the practical commentary of numerous actions under commonplace commanders-in-chief. It further received authoritative formulation in the specific finding of the Court-Martial upon Admiral Byng, which was signed by thirteen experienced-officers. “Admiral Byng should have caused his ships to tack together, and should immediately have borne down upon the enemy; his van steering for the enemy’s van, his rear for its rear, each ship making for the one opposite to her in the enemy’s line, under such sail as would have enabled the worst sailer to preserve her station in the line of battle.”[51] Each phrase of this opinion is a reflection of an article in the Instructions. The line of battle was the naval fetish of the day; and, be it remarked, it was the more dangerous because in itself an admirable and necessary instrument, constructed on principles essentially accurate. A standard wholly false may have its error demonstrated with comparative ease; but no servitude is more hopeless than that of unintelligent submission to an idea formally correct, yet incomplete. It has all the vicious misleading of a half-truth unqualified by appreciation of modifying conditions; and so seamen who disdained theories, and hugged the belief in themselves as “practical,” became _doctrinaires_ in the worst sense.

19. THE NEW TACTICS[52]

_Rodney and De Guichen, April 17, 1780_

Despite his brilliant personal courage and professional skill, which in the matter of tactics was far in advance of his contemporaries in England, Rodney, as a commander-in-chief, belongs rather to the wary, cautious school of the French tacticians than to the impetuous, unbounded eagerness of Nelson. As in Tourville we have seen the desperate fighting of the seventeenth century, unwilling to leave its enemy, merging into the formal, artificial—we may almost say trifling—parade tactics of the eighteenth, so in Rodney we shall see the transition from those ceremonious duels to an action which, while skillful in conception, aimed at serious results. For it would be unjust to Rodney to press the comparison to the French admirals of his day. With a skill that De Guichen recognized as soon as they crossed swords, Rodney meant mischief, not idle flourishes. Whatever incidental favors fortune might bestow by the way, the objective from which his eye never wandered was the French fleet,—the organized military force of the enemy on the sea. And on the day when Fortune forsook the opponent who had neglected her offers, when the conqueror of Cornwallis failed to strike while he had Rodney at a disadvantage, the latter won a victory[53] which redeemed England from the depths of anxiety, and restored to her by one blow all those islands which the cautious tactics of the allies had for a moment gained, save only Tobago.

[Illustration: RODNEY & GUICHEN APRIL 17, 1780.]

De Guichen and Rodney met for the first time on the 17th of April, 1780, three weeks after the arrival of the latter. The French fleet was beating to windward in the channel between Martinique and Dominica, when the enemy was made in the south-east. A day was spent in maneuvering for the weather-gage, which Rodney got. The two fleets being now well to leeward of the islands (see Plate), both on the starboard tack heading to the northward and the French on the lee bow of the English, Rodney, who was carrying a press of sail, signalled to his fleet that he meant to attack the enemy’s rear and center with his whole force; and when he had reached the position he thought suitable, ordered them to keep away eight points (90°) together (A, A, A). De Guichen, seeing the danger of the rear, wore his fleet all together and stood down to succor it. Rodney, finding himself foiled, hauled up again on the same tack as the enemy, both fleets now heading to the southward and eastward.[54] Later, he again made signal for battle, followed an hour after, just at noon, by the order (quoting his own despatch), “for every ship to bear down and steer for her opposite in the enemy’s line.” This, which sounds like the old story of ship to ship, Rodney explains to have meant her opposite at the moment, not her opposite in numerical order. His own words are: “In a slanting position, that my leading ships might attack the van ships of the enemy’s center division, and the whole British fleet be opposed to only two thirds of the enemy” (B, B). The difficulty and misunderstanding which followed seem to have sprung mainly from the defective character of the signal book. Instead of doing as the admiral wished, the leading ships (a) carried sail so as to reach their supposed station abreast their numerical opposite in the order. Rodney stated afterward that when he bore down the second time, the French fleet was in a very extended line of battle; and that, had his orders been obeyed, the center and rear must have been disabled before the van could have joined.

There seems every reason to believe that Rodney’s intentions throughout were to double on the French, as asserted. The failure sprang from the signal book and tactical inefficiency of the fleet; for which he, having lately joined, was not answerable. But the ugliness of his fence was so apparent to De Guichen, that he exclaimed, when the English fleet kept away the first time, that six or seven of his ships were gone; and sent word to Rodney that if his signals had been obeyed he would have had him for his prisoner.[55] A more convincing proof that he recognized the dangerousness of his enemy is to be found in the fact that he took care not to have the lee-gage in their subsequent encounters. Rodney’s careful plans being upset, he showed that with them he carried all the stubborn courage of the most downright fighter; taking his own ship close to the enemy and ceasing only when the latter hauled off, her foremast and mainyard gone, and her hull so damaged that she could hardly be kept afloat.

20. SEA POWER IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION[56]

_Graves and De Grasse off the Chesapeake_

[Preliminary to the events narrated, the general naval situation was as follows: The main British and French fleets, under Rodney and De Grasse, respectively, were in the West Indies, while a small British division was under Graves at New York, and a French squadron under De Barras was based on Newport, R. I. The squadrons on the American coast had met in a desultory action off the Virginia capes on March 16, 1781, after which the French commander had returned to Newport and left the British in control.—EDITOR.]

The way of the sea being thus open and held in force, two thousand more English troops sailing from New York reached Virginia on the 26th of March, and the subsequent arrival of Cornwallis in May raised the number to seven thousand. The operations of the contending forces during the spring and summer months, in which Lafayette commanded the Americans, do not concern our subject. Early in August, Cornwallis, acting under orders from Clinton, withdrew his troops into the peninsula between the York and James rivers, and occupied Yorktown.

Washington and Rochambeau had met on the 21st of May, and decided that the situation demanded that the effort of the French West Indian fleet, when it came, should be directed against either New York or the Chesapeake. This was the tenor of the despatch found by De Grasse at Cap Français,[57] and meantime the allied generals drew their troops toward New York, where they would be on hand for the furtherance of one object, and nearer the second if they had to make for it.

In either case the result, in the opinion both of Washington and of the French government, depended upon superior sea power; but Rochambeau had privately notified the admiral that his own preference was for the Chesapeake as the scene of the intended operations, and moreover the French government had declined to furnish the means for a formal siege of New York.[58] The enterprise therefore assumed the form of an extensive military combination, dependent upon ease and rapidity of movement, and upon blinding the eyes of the enemy to the real objective,—purposes to which the peculiar qualities of a navy admirably lent themselves. The shorter distance to be traversed, the greater depth of water and easier pilotage of the Chesapeake, were further reasons which would commend the scheme to the judgment of a seaman; and De Grasse readily accepted it, without making difficulties or demanding modifications which would have involved discussion and delay.

Having made his decision, the French admiral acted with great good judgment, promptitude, and vigor. The same frigate that brought despatches from Washington was sent back, so that by August 15 the allied generals knew of the intended coming of the fleet. Thirty-five hundred soldiers were spared by the governor of Cap Français, upon the condition of a Spanish squadron anchoring at the place, which De Grasse procured. He also raised from the governor of Havana the money urgently needed by the Americans; and finally, instead of weakening his force by sending convoys to France, as the court had wished, he took every available ship to the Chesapeake. To conceal his coming as long as possible, he passed through the Bahama Channel, as a less frequented route, and on the 30th of August anchored in Lynnhaven Bay, just within the capes of the Chesapeake, with twenty-eight ships-of-the-line. Three days before, August 27, the French squadron at Newport, eight ships-of-the-line with four frigates and eighteen transports under M. de Barras, sailed for the rendezvous; making, however, a wide circuit out to sea to avoid the English. This course was the more necessary as the French siege-artillery was with it. The troops under Washington and Rochambeau[59] had crossed the Hudson on the 24th of August, moving toward the head of Chesapeake Bay. Thus the different armed forces, both land and sea, were converging toward their objective, Cornwallis.

The English were unfortunate in all directions. Rodney, learning of De Grasse’s departure, sent fourteen ships-of-the-line under Admiral Hood to North America, and himself sailed for England in August, on account of ill health. Hood, going by the direct route, reached the Chesapeake three days before De Grasse, looked into the bay, and finding it empty went on to New York. There he met five ships-of-the-line under Admiral Graves, who, being senior officer, took command of the whole force and sailed on the 31st of August for the Chesapeake, hoping to intercept De Barras before he could join De Grasse. It was not till two days later that Sir Henry Clinton was persuaded that the allied armies had gone against Cornwallis, and had too far the start to be overtaken.

[Illustration: GRAVES AND DE GRASSE _5th Sept. 1781_ OFF CHESAPEAKE BAY]

Admiral Graves was painfully surprised, on making the Chesapeake, to find anchored there a fleet which from its numbers could only be an enemy’s. Nevertheless, he stood in to meet it, and as De Grasse got under way, allowing his ships to be counted, the sense of numerical inferiority—nineteen to twenty-four—did not deter the English admiral from attacking. The clumsiness of his method, however, betrayed his gallantry; many of his ships were roughly handled, without any advantage being gained.[60] De Grasse, expecting De Barras, remained outside five days, keeping the English fleet in play without coming to action; then returning to port he found De Barras safely at anchor. Graves went back to New York, and with him disappeared the last hope of succor that was to gladden Cornwallis’s eyes. The siege was steadily endured, but the control of the sea made only one issue possible, and the English forces were surrendered October 19, 1781. With this disaster the hope of subduing the colonies died in England. The conflict flickered through a year longer, but no serious operations were undertaken.

... The defeat of Graves and subsequent surrender of Cornwallis did not end the naval operations in the western hemisphere. On the contrary, one of the most interesting tactical feats and the most brilliant victory of the whole war were yet to grace the English flag in the West Indies; but with the events at Yorktown the patriotic interest for Americans closes. Before quitting that struggle for independence, it must again be affirmed that its successful ending, at least at so early a date, was due to the control of the sea,—to sea power in the hands of the French, and its improper distribution by the English authorities. This assertion may be safely rested on the authority of the one man who, above all others, thoroughly knew the resources of the country, the temper of the people, the difficulties of the struggle, and whose name is still the highest warrant for sound, quiet, unfluttered good sense and patriotism.

The keynote to all Washington’s utterances is set in the “Memorandum for concerting a plan of operations with the French army,” dated July 15, 1780, and sent by the hands of Lafayette:

“The Marquis de Lafayette will be pleased to communicate the following general ideas to Count de Rochambeau and the Chevalier de Ternay, as the sentiments of the underwritten:

“I. _In any operation, and under all circumstances, a decisive naval superiority is to be considered as a fundamental principle, and the basis upon which every hope of success must ultimately depend._”

This, however, though the most formal and decisive expression of Washington’s views, is but one among many others equally distinct.

21. THE FRENCH NAVY DEMORALIZED BY THE REVOLUTION[61]

... The seamen and the navy of France were swept away by the same current of thought and feeling which was carrying before it the whole nation; and the government, tossed to and fro by every wave of popular emotion, was at once too, weak and too ignorant of the needs of the service to repress principles and to amend defects which were fatal to its healthy life.

It is particularly instructive to dwell upon this phase of the revolutionary convulsions of France, because the result in this comparatively small, but still most important, part of the body politic was so different from that which was found elsewhere. Whatever the mistakes, the violence, the excesses of every kind, into which this popular rising was betrayed, they were symptomatic of strength, not of weakness,—deplorable accompaniments of a movement which, with all its drawbacks, was marked by overwhelming force.

It was the inability to realize the might in this outburst of popular feeling, long pent up, that caused the mistaken forecasts of many statesmen of the day; who judged of the power and reach of the movement by indications—such as the finances, the condition of the army, the quality of the known leaders—ordinarily fairly accurate tests of a country’s endurance, but which utterly misled those who looked to them only and did not take into account the mighty impulse of a whole nation stirred to its depths. Why, then, was the result so different in the navy? Why was it so weak, not merely nor chiefly in quantity, but in quality? and that, too, in days so nearly succeeding the prosperous naval era of Louis XVI. Why should the same throe which brought forth the magnificent armies of Napoleon have caused the utter weakness of the sister service, not only amid the disorders of the Republic, but also under the powerful organization of the Empire?

The immediate reason was that, to a service of a very special character, involving special exigencies, calling for special aptitudes, and consequently demanding special knowledge of its requirements in order to deal wisely with it, were applied the theories of men wholly ignorant of those requirements,—men who did not even believe that they existed. Entirely without experimental knowledge, or any other kind of knowledge, of the conditions of sea life, they were unable to realize the obstacles to those processes by which they would build up their navy, and according to which they proposed to handle it. This was true not only of the wild experiments of the early days of the Republic; the reproach may fairly be addressed to the great emperor himself, that he had scarcely any appreciation of the factors conditioning efficiency at sea; nor did he seemingly ever reach any such sense of them as would enable him to understand why the French navy failed. “Disdaining,” says Jean Bon Saint-André, the Revolutionary commissioner whose influence on naval organization was unbounded, “_disdaining_, through calculation and reflection, _skillful evolutions_, perhaps our seamen will think it more fitting and useful to try those boarding actions in which the Frenchman was always conqueror, and thus astonish Europe by new prodigies of valor.”[62] “Courage and audacity,” says Captain Chevalier, “had become in his eyes the only qualities necessary to our officers.” “The English,” said Napoleon, “will become very small when France shall have two or three admirals willing to die.”[63] So commented, with pathetic yet submissive irony, the ill-fated admiral, Villeneuve, upon whom fell the weight of the emperor’s discontent with his navy: “Since his Majesty thinks that nothing but audacity and resolve are needed to succeed in the naval officer’s calling, I shall leave nothing to be desired.”[64]

... In truth men’s understandings, as well as their _morale_ and beliefs, were in a chaotic state. In the navy, as in society, the _morale_ suffered first. Insubordination and mutiny, insult and murder, preceded the blundering measures which in the end destroyed the fine _personnel_ that the monarchy bequeathed to the French republic. This insubordination broke out very soon after the affairs of the Bastille and the forcing of the palace at Versailles; that is, very soon after the powerlessness of the executive was felt. Singularly, yet appropriately, the first victim was the most distinguished flag-officer of the French navy.[65]

During the latter half of 1789 disturbances occurred in all the seaport towns; in Havre, in Cherbourg, in Brest, in Rochefort, in Toulon. Everywhere the town authorities meddled with the concerns of the navy yards and of the fleet, discontented seamen and soldiers, idle or punished, rushed to the town halls with complaints against their officers. The latter, receiving no support from Paris, yielded continually, and things naturally went from bad to worse.

22. HOWE’S VICTORY OF JUNE 1, 1794[66]

[Prior to the engagement, the French fleet had met and was convoying to port 180 vessels from America with food-stuffs of which France was then in dire need. The British fleet encountered the French 400 miles west of Ushant on May 28, and in the four days of maneuvering and pursuit which followed, Howe displayed marked energy and tactical skill. Though the French fleet was defeated in the ensuing battle, it covered the escape of the convoy.—EDITOR.]

The French admiral on the evening of the 29th saw that he now must fight, and at a disadvantage; consequently, he could not hope to protect the convoy. As to save this was his prime object, the next best thing was to entice the British out of its path. With this view he stood away to the north-west; while a dense fog coming on both favored his design and prevented further encounter during the two ensuing days, throughout which Howe continued to pursue. In the evening of May 31 the weather cleared, and at daybreak the next morning the enemies were in position, ready for battle, two long columns of ships, heading west, the British twenty-five, the French again twenty-six through the junction of the four vessels mentioned. Howe now had cause to regret his absent six, and to ponder Nelson’s wise saying, “Only numbers can annihilate.”

This time for maneuvering was past. Able tactician as he personally was, and admirable as had been the direction of his efforts in the two days’ fighting, Howe had been forced in them to realize two things, namely, that his captains were, singly, superior in seamanship, and their crews in gunnery, to the French; and again, that in the ability to work together as a fleet the British were so deficient as to promise very imperfect results, if he attempted any but the simplest formation. To such, therefore, he resorted; falling back upon the old, unskillful, sledge-hammer fashion of the British navy. Arranging his ships in one long line, three miles from the enemy, he made them all go down together, each to attack a specified opponent, coming into action as nearly as might be at the same instant. Thus the French, from the individual inferiority of the units of their fleet, would be at all points over-powered. The issue justified the forecast; but the manner of performance was curiously and happily marked by Howe’s own peculiar phlegm. There was a long summer day ahead for fighting, and no need for hurry. The order was first accurately formed, and canvas reduced to proper proportions. Then the crews went to breakfast. After breakfast, the ships all headed for the hostile line, under short sail, the admiral keeping them in hand during the approach as an infantry officer dresses his company. Hence the shock from end to end was so nearly simultaneous as to induce success unequalled in any engagement conducted on the same primitive plan.

Picturesque as well as sublime, animating as well as solemn, on that bright Sunday morning, was this prelude to the stern game of war about to be played: the quiet summer sea stirred only by a breeze sufficient to cap with white the little waves that ruffled its surface; the dark hulls gently rippling the water aside in their slow advance, a ridge of foam curling on either side of the furrow ploughed by them in their onward way; their massive sides broken by two, or at times three, rows of ports, whence, the tompions drawn, yawned the sullen lines of guns, behind which, unseen, but easily realized by the instructed eye, clustered the groups of ready seamen who served each piece. Aloft swung leisurely to and fro the tall spars, which ordinarily, in so light a wind, would be clad in canvas from deck to truck, but whose naked trimness now proclaimed the deadly purpose of that still approach. Upon the high poops, where floated the standard of either nation, gathered round each chief the little knot of officers through whom commands were issued and reports received, the nerves along which thrilled the impulses of the great organism, from its head, the admiral, through every member to the dark lowest decks, nearly awash, where, as farthest from the captain’s own oversight, the senior lieutenants controlled the

## action of the ships’ heaviest batteries.

On board the _Queen Charlotte_, Lord Howe, whose burden of sixty-eight years had for four days found no rest save what he could snatch in an arm-chair, now, at the prospect of battle, “displayed an animation,” writes an eye-witness, “of which, at his age, and after such fatigue of body and mind, I had not thought him capable. He seemed to contemplate the result as one of unbounded satisfaction.” By his side stood his fleet-captain, Curtis, of whose service among the floating batteries, and during the siege of Gibraltar, the governor of the fortress had said, “He is the man to whom the king is chiefly indebted for its security;” and Codrington, then a lieutenant, who afterwards commanded the allied fleets at Navarino. Five ships to the left, Collingwood, in the _Barfleur_, was making to the admiral whose flag she bore the remark that stirred Thackeray: “Our wives are now about going to church, but we will ring about these Frenchmen’s ears a peal which will drown their bells.” The French officers, both admirals and captains, were mainly unknown men, alike then and thereafter. The fierce flames of the Revolution had swept away the men of the old school, mostly aristocrats, and time had not yet brought forward the very few who during the Napoleonic period showed marked capacity. The commander-in-chief, Villaret-Joyeuse, had three years before been a lieutenant. He had a high record for gallantry, but was without antecedents as a general officer. With him, on the poop of the _Montagne_, which took her name from Robespierre’s political supporters, stood that anomalous companion of the generals and admirals of the day, the Revolutionary commissioner, Jean Bon Saint-André, about to learn by experience the practical working of the system he had advocated, to disregard all tests of ability save patriotism and courage, depreciating practice and skill as unnecessary to the valor of the true Frenchman.

As the British line drew near the French, Howe said to Curtis, “Prepare the signal for close action.” “There is no such signal,” replied Curtis. “No,” said the admiral, “but there is one for closer action, and I only want that to be made in case of captains not doing their duty.” Then closing a little signal book he always carried, he continued to those around him, “Now, gentlemen, no more book, no more signals. I look to you to do the duty of the _Queen Charlotte_ in engaging the flagship. I don’t want the ships to be bilge to bilge, but if you can lock the yardarms, so much the better; the battle will be the quicker decided.” His purpose was to go through the French line, and fight the _Montagne_ on the far side. Some doubted their succeeding, but Howe overbore them. “That’s right, my lord!” cried Bowen, the sailing-master, who looked to the ship’s steering. “The _Charlotte_ will make room for herself.” She pushed close under the French ship’s stern, grazing her ensign, and raking her from stern to stem with a withering fire, beneath which fell three hundred men. A length or two beyond lay the French _Jacobin_. Howe ordered the _Charlotte_ to luff, and place herself between the two. “If we do,” said Bowen, “we shall be on board one of them.” “What is that to you, sir?” asked Howe quickly. “Oh!” muttered the master, not inaudibly. “D—n my eyes if I care, if you don’t. I’ll go near enough to singe some of our whiskers.” And then, seeing by the _Jacobin’s_ rudder that she was going off, he brought the _Charlotte_ sharp round, her jib boom grazing the second Frenchman as her side had grazed the flag of the first.

From this moment the battle raged furiously from end to end of the field for nearly an hour,—a wild scene of smoke and confusion, under cover of which many a fierce ship duel was fought, while here and there men wandered, lost, in a maze of bewilderment that neutralized their better judgment. An English naval captain tells a service tradition of one who was so busy watching the compass, to keep his position in the ranks, that he lost sight of his antagonist, and never again found him. Many a quaint incident passed, recorded or unrecorded, under that sulphurous canopy. A British ship, wholly dismasted, lay between two enemies, her captain desperately wounded. A murmur of surrender was somewhere heard; but as the first lieutenant checked it with firm authority, a cock flew upon the stump of a mast and crowed lustily. The exultant note found quick response in hearts not given to despair, and a burst of merriment, accompanied with three cheers, replied to the bird’s triumphant scream. On board the _Brunswick_, in her struggle with the _Vengeur_, one of the longest and fiercest fights the sea has ever seen, the cocked hat was shot off the effigy of the Duke of Brunswick, which she bore as a figure-head. A deputation from the crew gravely requested the captain to allow the use of his spare chapeau, which was securely nailed on, and protected his grace’s wig during the rest of the action. After this battle with the ships of the new republic, the partisans of monarchy noted with satisfaction that, among the many royal figures that surmounted the stems of the British fleet, not one lost his crown. Of a harum-scarum Irish captain are told two droll stories. After being hotly engaged for some time with a French ship, the fire of the latter slackened, and then ceased. He called to know if she had surrendered. The reply was, “No.” “Then,” shouted he, “d—n you, why don’t you fire?” Having disposed of his special antagonist without losing his own spars, the same man kept along in search of new adventures, until he came to a British ship totally dismasted and otherwise badly damaged. She was commanded by a captain of rigidly devout piety. “Well, Jemmy,” hailed the Irishman, “you are pretty well mauled; but never mind, Jemmy, whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.”

The French have transmitted to us less of anecdote, nor is it easy to connect the thought of humor with those grimly earnest republicans and the days of the Terror. There is, indeed, something unintentionally funny in the remark of the commander of one of the captured ships to his captors. They had, it was true, dismasted half the French fleet, and had taken over a fourth; yet he assured them it could not be considered a victory, “but merely a butchery, in which the British had shown neither science nor tactics.” The one story, noble and enduring, that will ever be associated with the French on the 1st of June is in full keeping with the temper of the times and the enthusiasm of the nation. The seventy-four-gun ship _Vengeur_, after a three hours’ fight, yardarm to yardarm, with the British _Brunswick_, was left in a sinking state by her antagonist, who was herself in no condition to help. In the confusion, the _Vengeur’s_ peril was for some time not observed; and when it was, the British ships that came to her aid had time only to remove part of her survivors. In their report of the event the latter said: “Scarcely had the boats pulled clear of the sides, when the most frightful spectacle was offered to our gaze. Those of our comrades who remained on board the _Vengeur du Peuple_, with hands raised to heaven, implored, with lamentable cries, the help for which they could no longer hope. Soon disappeared the ship and the unhappy victims it contained. In the midst of the horror with which this scene inspired us all, we could not avoid a feeling of admiration mingled with our grief. As we drew away, we heard some of our comrades still offering prayers for the welfare of their country. The last cries of these unfortunates were, ‘Vive la République!’ They died uttering them.” Over a hundred Frenchmen thus went down.

Seven French ships were captured, including the sunk _Vengeur_. Five more were wholly dismasted, but escaped,—a good fortune mainly to be attributed to Howe’s utter physical prostration, due to his advanced years and the continuous strain of the past five days. He now went to bed, completely worn out. “We all got round him,” wrote an officer, Lieutenant Codrington, who was present; “indeed, I saved him from a tumble, he was so weak that from a roll of the ship he was nearly falling into the waist. ‘Why, you hold me up as if I were a child,’ he said good-humoredly.” Had he been younger, there can be little doubt that the fruits of victory would have been gathered with an ardor which his assistant, Curtis, failed to show.

23. NELSON’S STRATEGY AT COPENHAGEN[67]

[In 1800 Russia, Sweden, and Denmark, under the manipulation of Napoleon, formed a “League of Armed Neutrality” to resist British restrictions on their trade with France. To reinforce diplomatic pressure, Great Britain sent against the league a fleet of twenty ships, of which Nelson was second in command under Sir Hyde Parker. Throughout the campaign, writes Mahan, Nelson “lifted and carried on his shoulders the dead weight of his superior.”—EDITOR.]

The fleet sailed from Yarmouth on the 12th of March, 1801; and on the 19th, although there had been some scattering in a heavy gale, nearly all were collected off the Skaw, the northern point of Jutland at the entrance of the Kattegat. The wind being north-west was fair for going to Copenhagen, and Nelson, if in command, would have advanced at once with the ambassador on board. “While the negotiation is going on,” he said, “the Dane should see our flag waving every moment he lifted his head.” As it was, the envoy went forward with a frigate alone and the fleet waited. On the 12th it was off Elsineur, where the envoy rejoined, Denmark having rejected the British terms.

[Illustration: THE BALTIC AND ITS APPROACHES.]

This amounted to an acceptance of hostilities, and it only remained to the commander-in-chief to act at once; for the wind was favorable, an advantage which at any moment might be lost. On this day Nelson addressed Parker a letter, summing up in a luminous manner the features of the situation and the different methods of action. “Not a moment should be lost in attacking,” he said; “we shall never be so good a match for them as at this moment.” He next hinted, what he had probably already said, that the fleet ought to have been off Copenhagen, and not at Elsineur, when the negotiation failed. “Then you might instantly attack and there would be scarcely a doubt but the Danish fleet would be destroyed, and the capital made so hot that Denmark would listen to reason and its true interest.” Since, however, the mistake of losing so much time had been made, he seeks to stir his superior to lose no more. “Almost the safety, certainly the honor, of England is more entrusted to you than ever yet fell to the lot of any British officer; ... never did our country depend so much on the success of any fleet as of this.”

Having thus shown the necessity for celerity, Nelson next discussed the plan of operations. Copenhagen is on the east side of the island of Zealand, fronting the coast of Sweden, from which it is separated by the passage called the Sound. On the west the island is divided from the other parts of Denmark by the Great Belt. The navigation of the latter being much the more difficult, the preparations of the Danes had been made on the side of the Sound, and chiefly about Copenhagen itself. For half a mile from the shore in front of the city, flats extend, and in the Sound itself, at a distance of little over a mile, is a long shoal called the Middle Ground. Between these two bodies of shallow water is a channel, called the King’s, through which a fleet of heavy ships could sail, and from whose northern end a deep pocket stretches toward Copenhagen, forming the harbor proper. The natural point of attack therefore appears to be at the north; and there the Danes had erected powerful works, rising on piles out of the shoal water off the harbor’s mouth and known as the Three-Crown Batteries. Nelson, however, pointed out that not only was this head of the line exceedingly strong, but that the wind that was fair to attack would be foul to return; therefore a disabled ship would have no escape but by passing through the King’s Channel. Doing so she would have to run the gantlet of a line of armed hulks, which the Danes had established as floating batteries along the inner edge of the channel—covering the front of Copenhagen—and would also be separated from her fleet. Nor was this difficulty, which may be called tactical, the only objection to a plan that he disparaged as “taking the bull by the horns.” He remarked that so long as the British fleet remained in the Sound, without entering the Baltic, the way was left open for both the Swedes and the Russians, if released by the ice, to make a junction with the Danes. Consequently, he advised that a sufficiently strong force of the lighter ships-of-theline should pass outside the Middle Ground, despite the difficulties of navigation, which were not insuperable, and come up in rear of the city. There they would interpose between the Danes and their allies, and be in position to assail the weaker part of the hostile order. He offered himself to lead this detachment.

This whole letter of March 24, 1801,[68] possesses peculiar interest; for it shows with a rare particularity, elicited by the need he felt of arousing and convincing his superior, Nelson’s clear discernment of the decisive features of a military situation. The fame of this great admiral has depended less upon his conduct of campaigns than upon the renowned victories he won in the actual collision of fleet with fleet; and even then has been mutilated by the obstinacy with which, despite the perfectly evident facts, men have persisted in seeing in them nothing but dash,—heart, not head. Throughout his correspondence, it is true, there are frequent traces of the activity of his mental faculties and of the general accuracy of his military conclusions; but ordinarily it is from his actions that his reasonings and principles must be deduced. In the present case we have the views he held and the course he evidently would have pursued clearly formulated by himself; and it cannot but be a subject of regret that the naval world should have lost so fine an illustration as he would there have given of the principles and conduct of naval warfare. He concluded his letter with a suggestion worthy of Napoleon himself, and which, if adopted, would have brought down the Baltic Confederacy with a crash that would have resounded throughout Europe. “Supposing us through the Belt with the wind first westerly, would it not be possible to go with the fleet, or detach ten ships of three and two decks, with one bomb and two fireships, to Revel, to destroy the Russian squadron at that place? I do not see the great risk of such a detachment, and with the remainder to attempt the business at Copenhagen. The measure may be thought bold, but I am of opinion the boldest are the safest; and our country demands a most vigorous exertion of her force, directed with judgment.”

Committed as the Danes were to a stationary defense, this recommendation to strike at the soul of the confederacy evinced the clearest perception of the key to the situation, which Nelson himself summed up in the following words: “I look upon the Northern League to be like a tree, of which Paul was the trunk and Sweden and Denmark the branches. If I can get at the trunk and hew it down, the branches fall of course; but I may lop the branches and yet not be able to fell the tree, and my power must be weaker when its greatest strength is required”[69]—that is, the Russians should have been attacked before the fleet was weakened, as it inevitably must be, by the battle with the Danes. “If we could have cut up the Russian fleet,” he said again, “that was my object.” Whatever Denmark’s wishes about fighting, she was by her continental possessions tied to the policy of Russia and Prussia, either of whom could overwhelm her by land. She dared not disregard them. The course of both depended upon the czar; for the temporizing policy of Prussia would at once embrace his withdrawal from the league as an excuse for doing the same. At Revel were twelve Russian ships-of-the-line, fully half their Baltic fleet, whose destruction would have paralyzed the remainder and the naval power of the empire. To persuade Parker to such a step was, however, hopeless. “Our fleet would never have acted against Russia and Sweden,” wrote Nelson afterwards, “although Copenhagen would have been burned; for Sir Hyde Parker was determined not to leave Denmark hostile in his rear;”[70] a reason whose technical accuracy under all the circumstances was nothing short of pedantic, and illustrates the immense distance between a good and accomplished officer, which Parker was, and a genius whose comprehension of rules serves only to guide, not to fetter, his judgment.

Although unable to rise equal to the great opportunity indicated by Nelson, Sir Hyde Parker adopted his suggestion as to the method and direction of the principal attack upon the defenses of Copenhagen. For this, Nelson asked ten ships-of-the-line and a number of smaller vessels, with which he undertook to destroy the floating batteries covering the front of the city. These being reduced, the bomb vessels could be placed so as to play with effect upon the dockyard, arsenals, and the town, in case further resistance was made.

[The fleet entered the Sound and anchored off Copenhagen on March 26. On April 2 Nelson attacked from the southward as he had suggested, and after a hard-fought battle forced a fourteen weeks’ armistice which practically secured the British aims, since it gave opportunity to proceed against Sweden and Russia. Nelson was given chief command on May 5, and two days later sailed for Revel, but the death of the Czar Paul had already brought a favorable change in Russia’s policy and made further action unnecessary.—EDITOR.]

24. ENGLAND’S FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE[71]

[After the Copenhagen campaign, for a brief period in 1801, Nelson commanded the naval defense forces in the Channel. When, after two years of peace, hostilities were renewed in 1803, he sailed in the _Victory_ to take command in the Mediterranean. During the following years of the war, “The British squadrons, hugging the French coasts and blocking the French arsenals, were the first line of defense, covering British interests from the Baltic to Egypt, the British colonies in the four quarters of the globe, and the British merchantmen which whitened every sea.”[72]—EDITOR.]

Meanwhile that period of waiting from May, 1803, to August, 1805, when the tangled net of naval and military movements began to unravel, was a striking and wonderful pause in the world’s history. On the heights above Boulogne, and along the narrow strip of beach from Étaples to Vimereux, were encamped one hundred and thirty thousand of the most brilliant soldiery of all time, the soldiers who had fought in Germany, Italy, and Egypt, soldiers who were yet to win, from Austria, Ulm and Austerlitz, and from Prussia, Auerstadt and Jena, to hold their own, though barely, at Eylau against the army of Russia, and to overthrow it also, a few months later, on the bloody field of Friedland. Growing daily more vigorous in the bracing sea air and the hardy life laid out for them, they could on fine days, as they practised the varied maneuvers which were to perfect the vast host in embarking and disembarking with order and rapidity, see the white cliffs fringing the only country that to the last defied their arms. Far away, Cornwallis off Brest, Collingwood off Rochefort, Pellew off Ferrol, were battling the wild gales of the Bay of Biscay, in that tremendous and sustained vigilance which reached its utmost tension in the years preceding Trafalgar, concerning which Collingwood wrote that admirals need to be made of iron, but which was forced upon them by the unquestionable and imminent danger of the country. Farther distant still, severed apparently from all connection with the busy scene at Boulogne, Nelson before Toulon was wearing away the last two years of his glorious but suffering life, fighting the fierce north-westers of the Gulf of Lyon and questioning, questioning continually with feverish anxiety, whether Napoleon’s object was Egypt again or Great Britain really. They were dull, weary, eventless months, those months of watching and waiting of the big ships before the French arsenals. Purposeless they surely seemed to many, but they saved England. The world has never seen a more impressive demonstration of the influence of sea power upon its history. Those far distant, storm-beaten ships, upon which the Grand Army never looked, stood between it and the dominion of the world. Holding the interior positions they did, before—and therefore between—the chief dockyards and detachments of the French navy, the latter could unite only by a concurrence of successful evasions, of which the failure of any one nullified the result. Linked together as the various British fleets were by chains of smaller vessels, chance alone could secure Bonaparte’s great combination, which depended upon the covert concentration of several detachments upon a point practically within the enemy’s lines. Thus, while bodily present before Brest, Rochefort, and Toulon, strategically the British squadrons lay in the Straits of Dover barring the way against the Army of Invasion.

The Straits themselves, of course, were not without their own special protection. Both they and their approaches, in the broadest sense of the term, from the Texel to the Channel Islands, were patrolled by numerous frigates and smaller vessels, from one hundred to a hundred and fifty in all. These not only watched diligently all that happened in the hostile harbors and sought to impede the movements of the flat-boats, but also kept touch with and maintained communication between the detachments of ships-of-the-line. Of the latter, five off the Texel watched the Dutch navy, while others were anchored off points of the English coast with reference to probable movements of the enemy. Lord St. Vincent, whose ideas on naval strategy were clear and sound, though he did not use the technical terms of the art, discerned and provided against the very purpose entertained by Bonaparte, of a concentration before Boulogne by ships drawn from the Atlantic and Mediterranean. The best security, the most advantageous strategic positions, were doubtless those before the enemy’s ports; and never in the history of blockades has there been excelled, if ever equalled, the close locking of Brest by Admiral Cornwallis, both winter and summer, between the outbreak of war and the battle of Trafalgar. It excited not only the admiration but the wonder of contemporaries.[73] In case, however, the French at Brest got out, so the prime minister of the day informed the speaker of the House, Cornwallis’s rendezvous was off the Lizard (due north of Brest), so as to go for _Ireland, or follow the French up Channel_, if they took either direction. _Should the French run for the Downs_, the five sail of the line at Spithead would also follow them; and Lord Keith (in the Downs) would in addition to his six, and six block ships, have also the North Sea fleet at his command.[74] Thus provision was made, in case of danger, for the outlying detachments to fall back on the strategic center, gradually accumulating strength, till they formed a body of from twenty-five to thirty heavy and disciplined ships-of-the-line, sufficient to meet all probable contingencies.

Hence, neither the Admiralty nor British naval officers in general shared the fears of the country concerning the peril from the flotilla. “Our first defense,” wrote Nelson in 1801, “is close to the enemy’s ports; and the Admiralty have taken such precautions, by having such a respectable force under my orders, that I venture to express a well-grounded hope that the enemy would be annihilated before they get ten miles from their own shores.”[75]

25. THE BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR[76]

[While Napoleon’s plans for control of the Channel underwent many changes, the movements actually carried out were as follows: On March 27, Villeneuve with eighteen ships left Toulon and sailed for the West Indies, arriving at Martinique May 12, where he was to be joined by the Brest fleet. Baffled at first by head winds and uncertainty as to the enemy’s destination, Nelson reached Barbados twenty-three days later.

Learning of his arrival, Villeneuve at once sailed for Europe, on June 9, again followed, four days later by Nelson. The brig _Curieux_, despatched by Nelson to England on the 12th, sighted the enemy fleet and reported its approach to the Admiralty, thus enabling Calder to meet Villeneuve in an indecisive action on July 22 off Ferrol, Spain. Nelson steered for Gibraltar, and thence, having learned that Villeneuve was to the northward, for the Channel, where on August 15 he left his ships with the Channel fleet under Cornwallis.

[Illustration: NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN.]

The French now had twenty-one ships at Brest and twenty-nine under Villeneuve at Ferrol, while Cornwallis stood between with thirty-four or thirty-five. An effective French combination was still possible, especially as Cornwallis made the cardinal error of dividing his fleet. Accordingly, Villeneuve, under an imperative summons from Napoleon, left Ferrol on August 13; but, with his ships demoralized by their long cruise, with head winds, and disturbed by false reports from a Danish merchantman regarding the British strength, the French admiral two days later turned for Cadiz. Here he was watched by Collingwood; and on September 28 Nelson, after three weeks in England, took command of the blockading fleet. “Thus ended, and forever,” writes Mahan, “Napoleon’s profoundly conceived and laboriously planned scheme for the invasion of England. If it be sought to fix a definite moment which marked the final failure of so vast a plan, that one may well be chosen when Villeneuve made signal to bear up for Cadiz.”[77] On August 25 the Boulogne army broke camp and marched against the Austrian forces advancing toward the Rhine.—EDITOR.]

The importance attached by the emperor to his project was not exaggerated. He might, or he might not, succeed; but, if he failed against Great Britain, he failed everywhere. This he, with the intuition of genius, felt; and to this the record of his after history now bears witness. To the strife of arms with the great Sea Power succeeded the strife of endurance. Amid all the pomp and circumstance of the war which for ten years to come desolated the Continent, amid all the tramping to and fro over Europe of the French armies and their auxiliary legions, there went on unceasingly that noiseless pressure upon the vitals of France, that compulsion, whose silence, when once noted, becomes to the observer the most striking and awful mark of the working of Sea Power. Under it the resources of the Continent wasted more and more with each succeeding year; and Napoleon, amid all the splendor of his imperial position, was ever needy. To this, and to the immense expenditures required to enforce the Continental System, are to be attributed most of those arbitrary acts which made him the hated of the peoples, for whose enfranchisement he did so much. Lack of revenue and lack of credit, such was the price paid by Napoleon for the Continental System, through which alone, after Trafalgar, he hoped to crush the Power of the Sea. It may be doubted whether, amid all his glory, he ever felt secure after the failure of the invasion of England. To borrow his own vigorous words, in the address to the nation issued before he joined the army, “To live without commerce, without shipping, without colonies, subjected to the unjust will of our enemies, is to live as Frenchmen should not.” Yet so had France to live throughout his reign, by the will of the one enemy never conquered.

On the 14th of September, before quitting Paris, Napoleon sent Villeneuve orders to take the first favorable opportunity to leave Cadiz, to enter the Mediterranean, join the ships at Cartagena, and with this combined force move upon southern Italy. There, at any suitable point, he was to land the troops embarked in the fleet to reinforce General St. Cyr, who already had instructions to be ready to attack Naples at a moment’s notice.[78] The next day these orders were reiterated to Decrès, enforcing the importance to the general campaign of so powerful a diversion as the presence of this great fleet in the Mediterranean; but, as “Villeneuve’s excessive pusillanimity will prevent him from undertaking this, you will send to replace him Admiral Rosily, who will bear letters directing Villeneuve to return to France and give an account of his conduct.”[79] The emperor had already formulated his complaints against the admiral under seven distinct heads.[80] On the 15th of September, the same day the orders to relieve Villeneuve were issued, Nelson, having spent at home only twenty-five days, left England for the last time. On the 28th, when he joined the fleet off Cadiz, he found under his command twenty-nine ships-of-the-line, which successive arrivals raised to thirty-three by the day of the battle; but, water running short, it became necessary to send the ships, by divisions of six, to fill up at Gibraltar. To this cause was due that only twenty-seven British vessels were present in the

## action,—an unfortunate circumstance; for, as Nelson said, what the

country wanted was not merely a splendid victory, but annihilation; “numbers only can annihilate.”[81] The force under his command was thus disposed: the main body about fifty miles west-south-west of Cadiz, seven lookout frigates close in with the port, and between these extremes, two small detachments of ships-of-the-line,—the one twenty miles from the harbor, the other about thirty-five. “By this chain,” he wrote, “I hope to have constant communication with the frigates.”

“_The Nelson Touch_”[82]

At 6 P.M. of Saturday, September 28, the _Victory_ reached the fleet, then numbering twenty-nine of the line; the main body being fifteen to twenty miles west of Cadiz, with six ships close in with the port. The next day was Nelson’s birthday—forty-seven years old. The junior admirals and the captains visited the commander-in-chief, as customary, but with demonstrations of gladness and confidence that few leaders have elicited in equal measure from their followers. “The reception I met with on joining the fleet caused the sweetest sensation of my life. The officers who came on board to welcome my return, forgot my rank as commander-in-chief in the enthusiasm with which they greeted me. As soon as these emotions were past, I laid before them the plan I had previously arranged for attacking the enemy; and it was not only my pleasure to find it generally approved, but clearly perceived and understood.” To Lady Hamilton he gave an account of this scene which differs little from the above, except in its greater vividness. “I believe my arrival was most welcome, not only to the commander of the fleet, but also to every individual in it; and, when I came to explain to them the ‘_Nelson touch_,’ it was like an electric shock. Some shed tears, all approved—‘It was new—it was singular—it was simple!’ and, from admirals downwards, it was repeated—‘It must succeed, if ever they will allow us to get at them! You are, my Lord, surrounded by friends whom you inspire with confidence.’ Some may be Judas’s; but the majority are certainly much pleased with my commanding them.” No more joyful birthday levee was ever held than that of this little naval court. Besides the adoration for Nelson personally, which they shared with their countrymen in general, there mingled with the delight of the captains the sentiment of professional appreciation and confidence, and a certain relief, noticed by Codrington, from the dry, unsympathetic rule of Collingwood, a man just, conscientious, highly trained, and efficient, but self-centered, rigid, uncommunicative; one who fostered, if he did not impose, restrictions upon the intercourse between the ships, against which he had inveighed bitterly when himself one of St. Vincent’s captains. Nelson, on the contrary, at once invited cordial social relations with the commanding officers. Half of the thirty-odd were summoned to dine on board the flagship the first day, and half the second. Not till the third did he permit himself the luxury of a quiet dinner chat with his old chum, the second in command, whose sterling merits, under a crusty exterior, he knew and appreciated. Codrington mentions also an incident, trivial in itself, but illustrative of that outward graciousness of manner, which, in a man of Nelson’s temperament and position, is rarely the result of careful cultivation, but bespeaks rather the inner graciousness of the heart that he abundantly possessed. They had never met before, and the admiral, greeting him with his usual easy courtesy, handed him a letter from his wife, saying that being entrusted with it by a lady, he made a point of delivering it himself, instead of sending it by another.

The “Nelson Touch,” or Plan of Attack, expounded to his captains at the first meeting, was afterwards formulated in an Order, copies of which were issued to the fleet on the 9th of October. In this “Memorandum,” which was doubtless sufficient for those who had listened to the vivid oral explanation of its framer, the writer finds the simplicity, but not the absolute clearness, that they recognized. It embodies, however, the essential ideas, though not the precise method of execution, actually followed at Trafalgar, under conditions considerably different from those which Nelson probably anticipated; and it is not the least of its merits as a military conception that it could thus, with few signals and without confusion, adapt itself at a moment’s notice to diverse circumstances. This great order not only reflects the ripened experience of its author, but contains also the proof of constant mental activity and development in his thought; for it differs materially in detail from the one issued a few months before to the fleet, when in pursuit of Villeneuve to the West Indies.

MEMORANDUM

(Secret) Victory, off CADIZ, 9th October, 1805.

Thinking it almost impossible to bring a Fleet of forty Sail of the Line into a Line of Battle in variable winds, thick weather, and other circumstances which must occur, without such a loss of time that the opportunity would probably be lost of bringing the Enemy to Battle in such a manner as to make the business decisive, I have therefore made up my mind to keep the Fleet in that position of sailing (with the exception of the First and Second in Command) that the Order of Sailing is to be the Order of Battle, placing the Fleet in two Lines of sixteen Ships each, with an Advanced Squadron of eight of the fastest sailing Two-decked Ships, which will always make, if wanted, a Line of twenty-four Sail, on whichever Line the Commander-in-Chief may direct.

The Second in Command will, after my intentions are made known to him, have the entire direction of his Line to make the attack upon the Enemy, and to follow up the blow until they are captured or destroyed.

If the Enemy’s Fleet should be seen to windward in Line of Battle, and that the two Lines and the Advanced Squadron can fetch them, they will probably be so extended that their Van could not succor their Rear.

I should therefore probably make the Second in Command’s signal to lead through, about their twelfth Ship from their Rear, (or wherever he could fetch, if not able to get so far advanced); my Line would lead through about their Center, and the Advanced Squadron to cut two or three or four Ships ahead of their Center, so as to ensure getting at their Commander-in-Chief, on whom every effort must be made to capture.

The whole impression of the British Fleet must be to overpower from two or three Ships ahead of their Commander-in-Chief, supposed to be in the Center, to the Rear of their Fleet. I will suppose twenty Sail of the Enemy’s Line to be untouched, it must be some time before they could perform a maneuver to bring their force compact to attack any part of the British Fleet engaged, or to succor their own Ships, which indeed would be impossible without mixing with the Ships engaged.

Something must be left to chance; nothing is sure in a Sea Fight beyond all others. Shot will carry away the masts and yards of friends as well as foes; but I look with confidence to a Victory before the Van of the Enemy could succor their Rear, and then that the British Fleet would most of them be ready to receive their twenty Sail of the Line, or to pursue them, should they endeavor to make off.

If the Van of the Enemy tacks, the Captured Ships must run to leeward of the British Fleet; if the Enemy wears, the British must place themselves between the Enemy and the Captured, and disabled British Ships; and should the Enemy close, I have no fears as to the result.

The Second in Command will in all possible things direct the movements of his Line, by keeping them as compact as the nature of the circumstances will admit. Captains are to look to their particular Line as their rallying point. But, in case Signals can neither be seen or perfectly understood, no Captain can do very wrong if he places his Ship alongside that of an Enemy.

Of the intended attack from to windward, the Enemy in Line of Battle ready to receive an attack,

↙ Wind.[83]

B = British.[83] ————— E = Enemy.[83] —————————— ———————B

——————————E——————————

The divisions of the British Fleet will be brought nearly within gun shot of the Enemy’s Center. The signal will most probably then be made for the Lee Line to bear up together, to set all their sails, even steering sails, in order to get as quickly as possible to the Enemy’s Line, and to cut through, beginning from the 12 Ship from the Enemy’s Rear. Some Ships may not get through their exact place, but they will always be at hand to assist their friends; and if any are thrown round the Rear of the Enemy, they will effectually complete the business of twelve Sail of the Enemy.

Should the Enemy wear together, or bear up and sail large, still the twelve Ships composing, in the first position, the Enemy’s Rear, are to be the object of attack of the Lee Line, unless otherwise directed from the Commander-in-Chief, which is scarcely to be expected, as the entire management of the Lee Line, after the intentions of the Commander-in-Chief is signified, is intended to be left to the judgment of the Admiral commanding that Line.

The remainder of the Enemy’s Fleet, 34 Sail, are to be left to the management of the Commander-in-Chief who will endeavor to take care that the movements of the Second in Command are as little interrupted as is possible.

NELSON AND BRONTÉ.

After a statement of general considerations, and a frank attribution of full powers to the second in command for carrying out his part, Nelson lays down the manner of attack from to leeward. This condition not obtaining at Trafalgar, the plan cannot be contrasted with the performance of that day. Upon this follows a luminous enunciation of the general idea, namely, Collingwood’s engaging the twelve rear ships, which underlies the method prescribed for each attack—from to leeward and to windward. Of the latter Nelson fortunately gives an outline diagram, which illustrates the picture before his own mind, facilitating our comprehension of his probable expectations, and allowing a comparison between them and the event as it actually occurred. It is not to the discredit, but greatly to the credit, of his conception, that it was susceptible of large modification in practice while retaining its characteristic idea.

Looking at his diagram, and following his words, it will be seen that the British lines are not formed perpendicularly to that of the enemy (as they were at Trafalgar), but parallel to it. Starting from this disposition, near the enemy and abreast his center, the lee line of sixteen ships was to bear up _together_, and advance in line, not in column (as happened at Trafalgar); their object being the twelve rear ships of the enemy. This first move stands by itself; the action of the weather line, and of the reserve squadron still farther to windward, are held in suspense under the eye of the commander-in-chief, to take the direction which the latter shall prescribe as the struggle develops. The mere menace of such a force, just out of gunshot to windward, would be sufficient to prevent any extensive maneuver of the unengaged enemies. Nelson doubtless had in mind the dispositions, more than a century old, of Tourville and De Ruyter, by which a few ships, spaced to windward of an enemy’s van, could check its tacking, because of the raking fire to which they would subject it. Unquestionably, he would not have kept long in idle expectancy twenty-four ships, the number he had in mind; but clearly also he proposed to hold them until he saw how things went with Collingwood. Thus much time would allow, granting the position he assumed and a reasonable breeze. His twenty-four to windward held an absolute check over the supposed thirty-four unengaged, of the enemy.

The attack as planned, therefore, differed from that executed (1) in that the lee line was not to advance in column, but in line, thereby dispersing the enemy’s fire, and avoiding the terrific concentration which crushed the leaders at Trafalgar; and (2) in that the weather squadrons were not to attack simultaneously with the lee, but after it had engaged, in order to permit the remedying of any mishap that might arise in delivering the crucial blow. In both these matters of detail the plan was better than the modification; but the latter was forced upon Nelson by conditions beyond his control.[84]

_The Battle_

Napoleon’s commands to enter the Mediterranean reached Villeneuve on September 27. The following day, when Nelson was joining his fleet, the admiral acknowledged their receipt, and submissively reported his intention to obey as soon as the wind served. Before he could do so, accurate intelligence was received of the strength of Nelson’s force, which the emperor had not known. Villeneuve assembled a council of war to consider the situation, and the general opinion was adverse to sailing; but the commander-in-chief, alleging the orders of Napoleon, announced his determination to follow them. To this all submitted. An event, then unforeseen by Villeneuve, precipitated his action.

Admiral Rosily’s approach was known in Cadiz some time before he could arrive. It at first made little impression upon Villeneuve, who was not expecting to be superseded. On the 11th of October, however, along with the news that his successor had reached Madrid, there came to him a rumor of the truth. His honor took alarm. If not allowed to remain afloat, how remove the undeserved imputation of cowardice which he knew had by some been attached to his name. He at once wrote to Decrès that he would have been well content if permitted to continue with the fleet in a subordinate capacity; and closed with the words, “I will sail to-morrow, if circumstances favor.”

The wind next day was fair, and the combined fleets began to weigh. On the 19th eight ships got clear of the harbor, and by ten A.M. Nelson, far at sea, knew by signal that the long-expected movement had begun. He at once made sail toward the Straits of Gibraltar to bar the entrance of the Mediterranean to the allies. On the 20th, all the latter, thirty-three ships-of-the-line accompanied by five frigates and two brigs, were at sea, steering with a south-west wind to the northward and westward to gain the offing needed before heading direct for the Straits. That morning Nelson, for whom the wind had been fair, was lying to off Cape Spartel to intercept the enemy; and learning from his frigates that they were north of him, he stood in that direction to meet them.

During the day the wind shifted to west, still fair for the British and allowing the allies, by going about, to head south. It was still very weak, so that the progress of the fleets was slow. During the night both maneuvered; the allies to gain, the British to retain, the position they wished. At daybreak of the 21st they were in presence, the French and Spaniards steering south in five columns; of which the two to windward, containing together twelve ships, constituted a detached squadron of observation under Admiral Gravina. The remaining twenty-one formed the main body, commanded by Villeneuve. Cape Trafalgar, from which the battle took its name, was on the south-eastern horizon, ten or twelve miles from the allies; and the British fleet was at the same distance from them to the westward.

Soon after daylight Villeneuve signalled to form line of battle on the starboard tack, on which they were then sailing, heading south. In performing this evolution Gravina with his twelve ships took post in the van of the allied fleet, his own flagship heading the column. It is disputed between the French and Spaniards whether this step was taken by Villeneuve’s order, or of Gravina’s own motion. In either case, these twelve, by abandoning their central and windward position, sacrificed to a great extent their power to reinforce any threatened part of the order, and also unduly extended a line already too long. In the end, instead of being a reserve well in hand, they became the helpless victims of the British concentration.

At eight A.M. Villeneuve saw that battle could not be shunned. Wishing to have Cadiz under his lee in case of disaster, he ordered the combined fleet to wear together. The signal was clumsily executed; but by ten all had gone round and were heading north in inverse order, Gravina’s squadron in the rear. At eleven Villeneuve directed this squadron to keep well to windward, so as to be in position to succor the center, upon which the enemy seemed about to make his chief attack; a judicious order, but rendered fruitless by the purpose of the British to concentrate on the rear itself. When this signal was made, Cadiz was twenty miles distant in the north-north-east, and the course of the allies was carrying them toward it.

Owing to the lightness of the wind Nelson would lose no time in maneuvering. He formed his fleet rapidly in two divisions, each in single column, the simplest and most flexible order of attack, and the one whose regularity is most easily preserved. The simple column, however, unflanked, sacrifices during the critical period of closing the support given by the rear ships to the leader, and draws upon the latter the concentrated fire of the enemy’s line. Its use by Nelson on this occasion has been much criticized. It is therefore to be remarked that, although his orders, issued several days previous to the battle, are somewhat ambiguous on this point, their natural meaning seems to indicate the intention, if attacking from to windward, to draw up with his fleet in two columns parallel to the enemy and abreast his rear. Then the column nearest the enemy, the lee, keeping away together, would advance in line against the twelve rear ships; while the weather column, moving forward, would hold in check the remainder of the hostile fleet. In either event, whether attacking in column or in line, the essential feature of his plan was to overpower twelve of the enemy by sixteen British, while the remainder of his force covered this operation. The destruction of the rear was entrusted to the second in command; he himself with a smaller body took charge of the more uncertain duties of the containing force. “The second in command,” wrote he in his memorable order, “will, after my instructions are made known to him, have the entire direction of his line.”

The justification of Nelson’s dispositions for battle at Trafalgar rests therefore primarily upon the sluggish breeze, which would so have delayed formations as to risk the loss of the opportunity. It must also be observed that, although a column of ships does not possess the sustained momentum of a column of men, whose depth and mass combine to drive it through the relatively thin resistance of a line, and so cut the latter in twain, the results nevertheless are closely analogous. The leaders in either case are sacrificed,—success is won over their prostrate forms; but the continued impact upon one part of the enemy’s order is essentially a concentration, the issue of which, if long enough maintained, cannot be doubtful. Penetration, severance, and the enveloping of one of the parted fragments, must be the result. So, exactly, it was at Trafalgar. It must also be noted that the rear ships of either column, until they reached the hostile line, swept with their broadsides the sea over which enemy’s ships from either flank might try to come to the support of the attacked center. No such attempt was in fact made from either extremity of the combined fleet.

The two British columns were nearly a mile apart and advanced on parallel courses,—heading nearly east, but a little to the northward to allow for the gradual advance in that direction of the hostile fleet. The northern or left-hand column, commonly called the “weather line” because the wind came rather from that side, contained twelve ships, and was led by Nelson himself in the _Victory_, a ship of one hundred guns. The _Royal Sovereign_, of the same size and carrying Collingwood’s flag, headed the right column, of fifteen ships.

To the British advance the allies opposed the traditional order of battle, a long single line, close-hauled,—in this case heading north, with the wind from west-north-west. The distance from one flank to the other was nearly five miles. Owing partly to the lightness of the breeze, partly to the great number of ships, and partly to the inefficiency of many of the units of the fleet, the line was very imperfectly formed. Ships were not in their places, intervals were of irregular width, here vessels were not closed up, there two overlapped, one masking the other’s fire. The general result was that, instead of a line, the allied order showed a curve of gradual sweep, convex toward the east. To the British approach from the west, therefore, it presented a disposition resembling a re-entrant angle; and Collingwood, noting with observant eye the advantage of this arrangement for a cross-fire, commented favorably upon it in his report of the battle. It was, however, the result of chance, not of intention,—due, not to the talent of the chief, but to the want of skill in his subordinates.

[Illustration:

THE ATTACK AT TRAFALGAR

OCTOBER 21, 1805 5 minutes past noon

The French and Spanish ships marked + were taken or destroyed in the

## action.

REFERENCES

A. Santa Ana, Alava’s Flagship B. Bucentaure, Villeneuve’s Flagship P. Principe De Asturias, Gravina’s Flagship R. Redoutable S. Royal Sovereign, Collingwood’s Flagship T. Santisima Trinidad V. Victory, Nelson’s Flagship

Recent investigation has shown that Collingwood’s division was much more nearly parallel to the enemy than is indicated in this diagram, and thus in a formation more closely resembling Nelson’s original plan.—_Editor._ ]

The commander-in-chief of the allies, Villeneuve, was in the _Bucentaure_, an eighty-gun ship, the twelfth in order from the van of the line. Immediately ahead of him was the huge Spanish four-decker, the _Santisima Trinidad_, a Goliath among ships, which had now come forth to her last battle. Sixth behind the _Bucentaure_, and therefore eighteenth in the order, came a Spanish three-decker, the _Santa Ana_, flying the flag of Vice-Admiral Alava. These two admirals marked the right and left of the allied center, and upon them, therefore, the British leaders respectively directed their course,—Nelson upon the _Bucentaure_, Collingwood upon the _Santa Ana_.

The _Royal Sovereign_ had recently been refitted, and with clean new copper easily outsailed her more worn followers. Thus it happened that, as Collingwood came within range, his ship, outstripping the others by three quarters of a mile, entered alone, and for twenty minutes endured, unsupported, the fire of all the hostile ships that could reach her. A proud deed, surely, but surely also not a deed to be commended as a pattern. The first shot of the battle was fired at her by the _Fougueux_, the next astern of the _Santa Ana_. This was just at noon, and with the opening guns the ships of both fleets hoisted their ensigns; the Spaniards also hanging large wooden crosses from their spanker booms.

The _Royal Sovereign_ advanced in silence until, ten minutes later, she passed close under the stern of the _Santa Ana_. Then she fired a double-shotted broadside which struck down four hundred of the enemy’s crew, and, luffing rapidly, took her position close alongside, the muzzles of the hostile guns nearly touching. Here the _Royal Sovereign_ underwent the fire not only of her chief antagonist, but of four other ships; three of which belonged to the division of five that ought closely to have knit the _Santa Ana_ to the _Bucentaure_, and so fixed an impassable barrier to the enemy seeking to pierce the center. The fact shows strikingly the looseness of the allied order, these three being all in rear and to leeward of their proper stations.

For fifteen minutes the _Royal Sovereign_ was the only British ship in close action. Then her next astern entered the battle, followed successively by the rest of the column. In rear of the _Santa Ana_ were fifteen ships. Among these, Collingwood’s vessels penetrated in various directions; chiefly, however, at first near the spot where his flag had led the way, enveloping and destroying in detail the enemy’s center and leading rear ships, and then passing on to subdue the rest. Much doubtless was determined by chance in such confusion and obscurity; but the original tactical plan ensured an ever-whelming concentration upon a limited portion of the enemy’s order. This being subdued with the less loss, because so outnumbered, the intelligence and skill of the various British captains readily compassed the destruction of the dwindling remnant. Of the sixteen ships, including the _Santa Ana_, which composed the allied rear, twelve were taken or destroyed.

Not till one o’clock, or nearly half an hour after the vessels next following Collingwood came into action, did the _Victory_ reach the _Bucentaure_. The latter was raked with the same dire results that befell the _Santa Ana_; but a ship close to leeward blocked the way, and Nelson was not able to grapple with the enemy’s commander-in-chief. The _Victory_, prevented from going through the line, fell on board the _Redoutable_, a French seventy-four, between which and herself a furious

## action followed,—the two lying in close contact. At half-past one Nelson

fell mortally wounded, the battle still raging fiercely.

The ship immediately following Nelson’s came also into collision with the _Redoutable_, which thus found herself in combat with two antagonists. The next three of the British weather column each in succession raked the _Bucentaure_, complying thus with Nelson’s order that every effort must be made to capture the enemy’s commander-in-chief. Passing on, these three concentrated their efforts, first upon the _Bucentaure_, and next upon the _Santisima Trinidad_. Thus it happened that upon the allied commander-in-chief, upon his next ahead, and upon the ship which, though not his natural supporter astern, had sought and filled that honorable post,—upon the key, in short, of the allied order,—were combined under the most advantageous conditions the fires of five hostile vessels, three of them first-rates. Consequently, not only were the three added to the prizes, but also a great breach was made between the van and rear of the combined fleets. This breach became yet wider by the singular conduct of Villeneuve’s proper next astern. Soon after the _Victory_ came into action, that ship bore up out of the line, wore round, and stood toward the rear, followed by three others. This movement is attributed to a wish to succor the rear. If so, it was at best an indiscreet and ill-timed act, which finds little palliation in the fact that not one of these ships was taken.

Thus, two hours after the battle began, the allied fleet was cut in two, the rear enveloped and in process of being destroyed in detail, the _Bucentaure_, _Santisima Trinidad_, and _Redoutable_ practically reduced, though not yet surrendered. Ahead of the _Santisima Trinidad_ were ten ships, which as yet had not been engaged. The inaction of the van, though partly accounted for by the slackness of the wind, has given just cause for censure. To it, at ten minutes before two, Villeneuve made signal to get into action and to wear together. This was accomplished with difficulty, owing to the heavy swell and want of wind. At three, however, all the ships were about, but by an extraordinary fatality they did not keep together. Five with Admiral Dumanoir stood along to windward of the battle, three passed to leeward of it, and two, keeping away, left the field entirely. Of the whole number, three were intercepted, raising the loss of the allies to eighteen ships-of-the-line taken, one of which caught fire and was burned. The approach of Admiral Dumanoir, if made an hour earlier, might have conduced to save Villeneuve; it was now too late. Exchanging a few distant broadsides with enemy’s ships, he stood off to the south-west with four vessels; one of those at first with him having been cut off.

At quarter before five Admiral Gravina, whose ship had been the rear of the order during the battle and had lost heavily, retreated toward Cadiz, making signal to the vessels which had not struck to form around his flag. Five other Spanish ships and five French followed him. As he was withdrawing, the last two to resist of the allied fleet struck their colors.

During the night of the 21st these eleven ships anchored at the mouth of Cadiz harbor, which they could not then enter, on account of a land wind from south-east. At the same time the British and their prizes were being carried shoreward by the heavy swell which had prevailed during the battle; the light air blowing from the sea not enabling them to haul off. The situation was one of imminent peril. At midnight the wind freshened much, but fortunately hauled to the southward, whence it blew a gale all the 22d. The ships got their heads to the westward and drew off shore, with thirteen of the prizes; the other four having had to anchor off Cape Trafalgar. That morning the _Bucentaure_, Villeneuve’s late flagship, was wrecked on some rocks off the entrance to Cadiz; and toward evening the _Redoutable_, that had so nobly supported her, was found to be sinking astern of the British ship that had her in tow. During the night of the 22d she went down with a hundred and fifty of her people still on board. On the 24th the same fate befell the great _Santisima Trinidad_, which had been the French admiral’s next ahead. Thus his own ship and his two supports vanished from the seas.

For several days the wind continued violent from north-west and south-west. On the 23d five of the ships that had escaped with Gravina put out, to cut off some of the prizes that were near the coast. They succeeded in taking two; but as these were battered to pieces, while three of the five rescuers were carried on the beach and wrecked with great loss of life, little advantage resulted from this well-meant and gallant sortie. Two other prizes were given up to their own crews by the British prize-masters, because the latter were not able with their scanty force to save them. These got into Cadiz. Of the remaining British prizes, all but four either went ashore or were destroyed by the orders of Collingwood, who despaired of saving them. No British ship was lost.

Of thirty-three combined French and Spanish ships which sailed out of Cadiz on the 20th of October, eleven, five French and six Spanish, mostly now disabled hulks, lay there at anchor on the last day of the month. The four that escaped to sea under Dumanoir fell in with a British squadron of the same size near Cape Ortegal, on the 4th of November, and were all taken. This raised the allied loss to twenty-two,—two more than the twenty for which Nelson, in his dying hour, declared that he had bargained.

No attempt to move from Cadiz was again made by the shattered relics of the fight. On the 25th of October Rosily arrived and took up his now blasted command. Nearly three years later, when the Spanish monarchy, so long the submissive tool of the Directory and of Napoleon, had been overthrown by the latter, and the Spanish people had risen against the usurper, the five French ships were still in the port. Surprised between the British blockade and the now hostile batteries of the coast, Rosily, after an engagement of two days with the latter, surrendered his squadron, with the four thousand seamen then on board. This event occurred on the 14th of June, 1808. It was the last echo of Trafalgar.

Such, in its leading outlines and direct consequences, was the famous battle of Trafalgar. Its lasting significance and far-reaching results have been well stated by a recent historian, more keenly alive than most of his fellows to the paramount, though silent, influence of Sea Power upon the course of events: “Trafalgar was not only the greatest naval victory, it was the greatest and most momentous victory won either by land or by sea during the whole of the Revolutionary War. No victory, and no series of victories, of Napoleon produced the same effect upon Europe.... A generation passed after Trafalgar before France again seriously threatened England at sea. The prospect of crushing the British navy, so long as England had the means to equip a navy, vanished. Napoleon henceforth set his hopes on exhausting England’s resources, by compelling every state on the Continent to exclude her commerce. Trafalgar forced him to impose his yoke upon _all_ Europe, or to abandon the hope of conquering Great Britain.... Nelson’s last triumph left England in such a position that no means remained to injure her but those which _must result in the ultimate deliverance of the Continent_.”[85]

These words may be accepted with very slight modification. Napoleon’s scheme for the invasion of Great Britain, thwarted once and again by the strategic difficulties attendant upon its execution, was finally frustrated when Villeneuve gave up the attempt to reach Brest and headed for Cadiz. On the part of the allies Trafalgar was, in itself, a useless holocaust, precipitated in the end by the despair of the unfortunate admiral, upon whose irresolution Napoleon not unjustly visited the anger caused by the wreck of his plans. Villeneuve was perfectly clear-sighted and right in his appreciation of the deficiencies of his command,—of the many chances against success. Where he wretchedly failed was in not recognizing the simple duty of obedience,—the obligation to persist at all hazards in the part of a great scheme assigned to him, even though it led to the destruction of his whole force. Had he, upon leaving Ferrol, been visited by a little of the desperation which brought him to Trafalgar, the invasion of England might possibly—not probably—have been effected.

An event so striking as the battle of Trafalgar becomes, however, to mankind the symbol of all the circumstances—more important, perhaps, but less obvious—which culminate in it. In this sense it may be said that Trafalgar was the cause—as it certainly marked the period—of Napoleon’s resolution to crush Great Britain by excluding her commerce from the Continent. Here, therefore, the story of the influence of Sea Power upon this great conflict ceases to follow the strictly naval events, and becomes concerned simply with commerce-destroying, ordinarily a secondary operation of maritime war, but exalted in the later years of Napoleon’s reign to be the principal, if not the sole, means of action.

_Commerce Warfare after Trafalgar_

The warfare against commerce during the French Revolution, alike under the Republic and under Napoleon, was marked by the same passionate vehemence, the same extreme and far-reaching conceptions, the same obstinate resolve utterly to overthrow and extirpate every opposing force, that characterized the political and military enterprises of the period. In the effort to bring under the yoke of their own policy the commerce of the whole world, the two chief contestants, France and Great Britain, swayed back and forth in deadly grapple over the vast arena, trampling under foot the rights and interests of the weaker parties; who, whether as neutrals, or as subjects of friendly or allied powers, looked helplessly on, and found that in this great struggle for self-preservation, neither outcries, nor threats, nor despairing submission, availed to lessen the pressure that was gradually crushing out both hope and life. The question between Napoleon and the British people became simply one of endurance, as was tersely and powerfully shown by the emperor himself. Both were expending their capital, and drawing freely drafts upon the future, the one in money, the other in men, to sustain their present strength. Like two infuriated dogs, they had locked jaws over commerce, as the decisive element in the contest. Neither would let go his grip until failing vitality should loose it, or until some bystander should deal one a wound through which the powers of life should drain away. All now know that in the latter way the end came. The commercial policy of the great monarch, who, from the confines of Europe, had watched the tussle with all the eagerness of self-interest, angered Napoleon. To enforce his will, he made new and offensive annexations of territory. The czar replied by a commercial edict, sharp and decisive, and war was determined. “It is all a scene in the Opera,” wrote Napoleon,[86] “and the English are the scene shifters.” Words failed the men of that day to represent the grandeur and apparent solidity of the Empire in 1811, when Napoleon’s heir was born. In December, 1812, it was shattered from turret to foundation stone; wrecked in the attempt “to conquer the sea by the land.” The scene was shifted indeed.

Great Britain remained victorious on the field, but she had touched the verge of ruin. Confronted with the fixed resolution of her enemy to break down her commerce by an absolute exclusion from the continent of Europe, and as far as possible from the rest of the world, she met the challenge by a measure equally extreme, forbidding all neutral vessels to enter ports hostile to her, unless they had first touched at one of her own. Shut out herself from the Continent, she announced that while this exclusion lasted she would shut the Continent off from all external intercourse. “No trade except _through_ England,” was the formula under which her leaders expressed their purpose. The entrance of Russia into this strife, under the provocations of Napoleon, prevented the problem, which of these two policies would overthrow the other, from reaching a natural solution; and the final result of the measures which it is one object of this and the following chapter to narrate must remain for ever uncertain. It is, however, evident that a commercial and manufacturing country like Great Britain must, in a strife the essence of which was the restriction of trade, suffer more than one depending, as France did, mainly upon her internal resources. The question, as before stated, was whether she could endure the greater drain by her greater wealth. Upon the whole, the indications were, and to the end continued to be, that she could do so; that Napoleon, in entering upon this particular struggle, miscalculated his enemy’s strength.

But besides this, here, as in every contest where the opponents are closely matched, where power and discipline and leadership are nearly equal, there was a further question: which of the two would make the first and greatest mistakes, and how ready the other party was to profit by his errors. In so even a balance, the wisest prophet cannot foresee how the scale will turn. The result will depend not merely upon the skill of the swordsman in handling his weapons, but also upon the wariness of his fence and the quickness of his returns; much, too, upon his temper. Here also Napoleon was worsted. Scarcely was the battle over commerce joined, when the uprising of Spain was precipitated by overconfidence; Great Britain hastened at once to place herself by the side of the insurgents. Four years later, when the British people were groaning in a protracted financial crisis,—when, if ever, there was a hope that the expected convulsion and ruin were at hand,—Napoleon, instead of waiting for his already rigorous blockade to finish the work he attributed to it, strove to draw it yet closer, by demands which were unnecessary and to which the czar could not yield. Again Great Britain seized her opportunity, received her late enemy’s fleet, and filled his treasury. Admit the difficulties of Napoleon; allow as we may for the intricacy of the problem before him; the fact remains that he wholly misunderstood the temper of the Spanish people, the dangers of the Spanish enterprise, the resolution of Alexander. On the other hand, looking upon the principal charge against the policy of the British government, that it alienated the United States, it is still true that there was no miscalculation as to the long-suffering of the latter under the guidance of Jefferson, with his passion for peace. The submission of the United States lasted until Napoleon was committed to his final blunder, thus justifying the risk taken by Great Britain and awarding to her the strategic triumph.

... As regards the rightfulness of the action of the two parties, viewed separately from their policy, opinions will probably always differ, according to the authority attributed by individuals to the _dicta_ of International Law. It may be admitted at once that neither Napoleon’s decrees nor the British orders can be justified at that bar, except by the simple plea of self-preservation,—the first law of states even more than of men; for no government is empowered to assent to that last sacrifice, which the individual may make for the noblest motives. The beneficent influence of the mass of conventions known as International Law is indisputable, nor should its authority be lightly undermined; but it cannot prevent the interests of belligerents and neutrals from clashing, nor speak with perfect clearness in all cases where they do. Of this the Rule of 1756 offered, in its day, a conspicuous instance. The belligerent claimed that the neutral, by covering with his flag a trade previously the monopoly of the enemy, not only inflicted a grave injury by snatching from him a lawful prey, but was guilty likewise of a breach of neutrality; the neutral contended that the enemy had a right to change his commercial regulations, in war as well as in peace. To the author, though an American, the belligerent argument seems the stronger; nor was the laudable desire of the neutral for gain a nobler motive than the solicitude, about their national resources, of men who rightly believed themselves engaged in a struggle for national existence. The measure meted to Austria and Prussia was an ominous indication of the fate Great Britain might expect, if her strength failed her. But, whatever the decision of our older and milder civilization on the merits of the particular question, there can be no doubt of the passionate earnestness of the two disputants in their day, nor of the conviction of right held by either. In such a dilemma, the last answer of International Law has to be that every state is the final judge as to whether it should or should not make war; to its own self alone is it responsible for the rightfulness of this action. If, however, the condition of injury entailed by the neutral’s course is such as to justify war, it justifies all lesser means of control. The question of the rightfulness of these disappears, and that of policy alone remains.

It is the business of the neutral, by his prepared condition, to make impolitic that which he claims is also wrong. The neutral which fails to do so, which leaves its ports defenseless and its navy stunted until the emergency comes, will then find, as the United States found in the early years of this century, an admirable opportunity to write State Papers.

26. GENERAL STRATEGY OF THE WAR OF 1812[87]

The general considerations that have been advanced are sufficient to indicate what should have been the general plan of the war on the part of the United States. Every war must be aggressive, or, to use the technical term, offensive, in military character; for unless you injure the enemy, if you confine yourself, as some of the grumblers of that day would have it, to simple defense against his efforts, obviously he has no inducement to yield your contention. Incidentally, however, vital interests must be defended, otherwise the power of offense falls with them. Every war, therefore, has both a defensive and an offensive side, and in an effective plan of campaign each must receive due attention. Now, in 1812, so far as general natural conditions went, the United States was relatively weak on the sea frontier, and strong on the side of Canada. The seaboard might, indeed, in the preceding ten years, have been given a development of force, by the creation of an adequate navy, which would have prevented war, by the obvious danger to British interests involved in hostilities. But this had not been done; and Jefferson, by his gunboat policy, building some two hundred of those vessels, worthless unless under cover of the land, proclaimed by act as by voice his adherence to a bare defensive. The sea frontier, therefore, became mainly a line of defense, the utility of which primarily was, or should have been, to maintain communication with the outside world; to support commerce, which in turn should sustain the financial potency that determines the issues of war.

... Such in general was the condition of the sea frontier, thrown inevitably upon the defensive. With the passing comment that, had it been defended as suggested [by a squadron of respectable battleships in concentrated strength.—EDITOR], Great Britain would never have forced the war, let us now consider conditions on the Canadian line, where circumstances eminently favored the offensive by the United States; for this war should not be regarded simply as a land war or a naval war, nor yet as a war of offense and again one of defense, but as being continuously and at all times both offensive and defensive, both land and sea, in reciprocal influence.

Disregarding as militarily unimportant the artificial boundary dividing Canada from New York, Vermont, and the eastern parts of the Union, the frontier separating the land positions of the two belligerents was the Great Lakes and the river St. Lawrence. This presented certain characteristic and unusual features. That it was a water line was a condition not uncommon; but it was exceptionally marked by those broad expanses which constitute inland seas of great size and depth, navigable by vessels of the largest sea-going dimensions. This water system, being continuous and in continual progress, is best conceived by applying to the whole, from Lake Superior to the ocean, the name of the great river, the St. Lawrence, which on the one hand unites it to the sea, and on the other divides the inner waters from the outer by a barrier of rapids, impassable to ships that otherwise could navigate freely both lakes and ocean.

The importance of the lakes to military operations must always be great, but it was much enhanced in 1812 by the undeveloped condition of land communications. With the roads in the state they then were, the movement of men, and still more of supplies, was vastly more rapid by water than by land. Except in winter, when iron-bound snow covered the ground, the routes of Upper Canada were well-nigh impassable; in spring and in autumn rains, wholly so to heavy vehicles. The mail from Montreal to York,—now Toronto,—three hundred miles, took a month in transit.[88] In October, 1814, when the war was virtually over, the British general at Niagara lamented to the commander-in-chief that, owing to the refusal of the navy to carry troops, an important detachment was left “to struggle through the dreadful roads from Kingston to York.”[89] “Should reinforcements and provisions not arrive, the naval commander would,” in his opinion, “have much to answer for.”[90] The commander-in-chief himself wrote: “The command of the lakes enables the enemy to perform in two days what it takes the troops from Kingston sixteen to twenty days of severe marching. Their men arrive fresh; ours fatigued, and with exhausted equipment. The distance from Kingston to the Niagara frontier exceeds two hundred and fifty miles, and part of the way is impracticable for supplies.”[91] On the United States side, road conditions were similar but much less disadvantageous. The water route by Ontario was greatly preferred as a means of transportation, and in parts and at certain seasons was indispensable. Stores for Sackett’s Harbor, for instance, had in early summer to be brought to Oswego, and thence coasted along to their destination, in security or in peril, according to the momentary predominance of one party or the other on the lake. In like manner, it was more convenient to move between the Niagara frontier and the east end of the lake by water; but in case of necessity, men could march. An English traveler in 1818 says: “I accomplished the journey from Albany to Buffalo in October in six days with ease and comfort, whereas in May it took ten of great difficulty and distress.”[92] In the farther West the American armies, though much impeded, advanced securely through Ohio and Indiana to the shores of Lake Erie, and there maintained themselves in supplies sent over-country; whereas the British at the western end of the lake, opposite Detroit, depended wholly upon the water, although no hostile force threatened the land line between them and Ontario. The battle of Lake Erie, so disastrous to their cause, was forced upon them purely by failure of food, owing to the appearance of Perry’s squadron.

... The opinion of competent soldiers on the spot, such as Craig and Brock, in full possession of all the contemporary facts, may be accepted explicitly as confirming the inferences which in any event might have been drawn from the natural features of the situation. Upon Mackinac and Detroit depended the control and quiet of the Northwestern country, because they commanded vital points on its line of communication. Upon Kingston and Montreal, by their position and intrinsic advantages, rested the communication of all Canada, along and above the St. Lawrence, with the sea power of Great Britain, whence alone could be drawn the constant support without which ultimate defeat should have been inevitable. Naval power, sustained upon the Great Lakes, controlled the great line of communication between the East and West, and also conferred upon the party possessing it the strategic advantage of interior lines; that is, of shorter distances, both in length and time, to move from point to point of the lake shores, close to which lay the scenes of operations. It followed that Detroit and Michilimackinac, being at the beginning in the possession of the United States, should have been fortified, garrisoned, provisioned, in readiness for siege, and placed in close communication with home, as soon as war was seen to be imminent, which it was in December, 1811, at latest. Having in that quarter everything to lose, and comparatively little to gain, the country was thrown on the defensive. On the east the possession of Montreal or Kingston would cut off all Canada above from support by the sea, which would be equivalent to ensuring its fall. “I shall continue to exert myself to the utmost to overcome every difficulty,” wrote Brock, who gave such emphatic proof of energetic and sagacious exertion in his subsequent course. “Should, however, the communication between Montreal and Kingston be cut off, the fate of the troops in this part of the province will be decided.”[93] “The Montreal frontier,” said the officer selected by the Duke of Wellington to report on the defenses of Canada, “is the most important, and at present [1826] confessedly most vulnerable and accessible part of Canada.”[94] There, then, was the direction for offensive operations by the United States; preferably against Montreal, for, if successful, a much larger region would be isolated and reduced. Montreal gone, Kingston could receive no help from without; and, even if capable of temporary resistance, its surrender would be but a question of time. Coincidently with this military advance, naval development for the control of the lakes should have proceeded, as a discreet precaution; although, after the fall of Kingston and Montreal, there could have been little use of an inland navy, for the British local resources would then have been inadequate to maintain an opposing force.

_Results of the Northern Campaign_

[While control was more vital and the forces stronger on Lake Ontario than on either Erie or Champlain, no naval action of consequence occurred there in 1813 or in fact throughout the war. Yeo, the British commander, was enjoined by Admiralty orders to take no risks; and the American Commodore Chauncey, with no such justification, adopted a similar policy. Hence the important fleet actions of the war were in other waters—Perry’s victory of September 10, 1813, on Lake Erie, and Macdonough’s victory on Lake Champlain a year later. The first sentence in the paragraph following refers to a raid on Buffalo, December 30, 1813.—EDITOR.]

With this may be said to have terminated the northern campaign of 1813. The British had regained full control of the Niagara peninsula, and they continued to hold Fort Niagara, in the State of New York, till peace was concluded. The only substantial gain on the whole frontier, from the extreme east to the extreme west, was the destruction of the British fleet on Lake Erie, and the consequent transfer of power in the west to the United States. This was the left flank of the American position. Had the same result been accomplished on the right flank,—as it might have been,—at Montreal, or even at Kingston, the center and left must have fallen also. For the misdirection of effort to Niagara, the local commanders, Dearborn and Chauncey, are primarily responsible; for Armstrong[95] yielded his own correct perceptions to the representations of the first as to the enemy’s force, supported by the arguments of the naval officer favoring the diversion of effort from Kingston to Toronto. Whether Chauncey ever formally admitted to himself this fundamental mistake, which wrecked the summer’s work upon Lake Ontario, does not appear; but that he had learned from experience is shown by a letter to the Secretary of the Navy,[96] when the squadrons had been laid up. In this he recognized the uselessness of the heavy sailing schooners when once a cruising force of ships for war had been created, thereby condemning much of his individual management of the campaign; and he added: “If it is determined to prosecute the war offensively, and secure our conquests in Upper Canada, Kingston ought unquestionably to be the first object of attack, and that so early in the spring as to prevent the enemy from using the whole of the naval force that he is preparing.”

In the three chapters which here end, the Ontario operations have been narrated consecutively and at length, without interruption by other issues,—except the immediately related Lake Erie campaign,—because upon them turned, and upon them by the dispositions of the government this year were wrecked the fortunes of the war. The year 1813, from the opening of the spring to the closing in of winter, was for several reasons the period when conditions were most propitious to the American cause. In 1812 war was not begun until June, and then with little antecedent preparation; and it was waged half-heartedly, both governments desiring to nip hostilities. In 1814, on the other hand, when the season opened, Napoleon had fallen, and the United States no longer had an informal ally to divert the efforts of Great Britain. But in the intervening year, 1813, although the pressure upon the seaboard, the defensive frontier, was undoubtedly greater than before, and much vexation and harassment was inflicted, no serious injury was done beyond the suppression of commerce, inevitable in any event. In the north, on the lakes frontier, the offensive and the initiative continued in the hands of the United States. No substantial reinforcements reached Canada until long after the ice broke up, and then in insufficient numbers. British naval preparations had been on an inadequate scale, receiving no proper professional supervision. The American Government, on the contrary, had had the whole winter to prepare, and the services of a very competent naval organizer. It had also the same period to get ready its land forces; while incompetent Secretaries of War and of the Navy gave place in January to capable men in both situations.

With all this in its favor, and despite certain gratifying successes, the general outcome was a complete failure, the full measure of which could be realized only when the downfall of Napoleon revealed what disaster may result from neglect to seize opportunity while it exists. The tide then ebbed, and never again flowed. For this many causes may be alleged. The imbecile ideas concerning military and naval preparation which had prevailed since the opening of the century doubtless counted for much. The entrusting of chief command to broken-down men like Dearborn and Wilkinson was enough to ruin the best conceived schemes. But, despite these very serious drawbacks, the strategic misdirection of effort was the most fatal cause of failure.

There is a simple but very fruitful remark of a Swiss military writer, that every military line may be conceived as having three parts, the middle and the two ends, or flanks. As sound principle requires that military effort should not be distributed along the whole of an enemy’s position,—unless in the unusual case of overwhelming superiority,—but that distinctly superior numbers should be concentrated upon a limited portion of it, this idea of a threefold division aids materially in considering any given situation. One third, or two thirds, of an enemy’s line may be assailed, but very seldom the whole; and everything may depend upon the choice made for attack. Now the British frontier, which the United States was to assail, extended from Montreal on the east to Detroit on the west. Its three parts were: Montreal and the St. Lawrence on the east, or left flank; Ontario in the middle, centering at Kingston; and Erie on the right; the strength of the British position in the last-named section being at Detroit and Malden, because they commanded the straits upon which the Indian tribes depended for access to the east. Over against the British positions named lay those of the United States. Given in the same order, these were: Lake Champlain, and the shores of Ontario and of Erie, centering respectively in the naval stations at Sackett’s Harbor and Presque Isle.

Accepting these definitions, which are too obvious to admit of dispute, what considerations should have dictated to the United States the direction of attack; the one, or two, parts out of the three, on which effort should be concentrated? The reply, as a matter of abstract, accepted, military principle, is certain. Unless very urgent reasons to the contrary exist, strike at one end rather than at the middle, because both ends can come up to help the middle against you quicker than one end can get to help the other; and, as between the two ends, strike at the one upon which the enemy most depends for reinforcements and supplies to maintain his strength. Sometimes this decision presents difficulties. Before Waterloo, Wellington had his own army as a center of interest; on his right flank the sea, whence came supplies and reinforcements from England; on his left the Prussian army, support by which was imminently necessary. On which flank would Napoleon throw the weight of his attack? Wellington reasoned, perhaps through national bias, intensified by years of official dependence upon sea support, that the blow would fall upon his right, and he strengthened it with a body of men sorely needed when the enemy came upon his left, in overwhelming numbers, seeking to separate him from the Prussians.

No such doubt was possible as to Canada in 1813. It depended wholly upon the sea, and it touched the sea at Montreal. The United States, with its combined naval and military strength, crude as the latter was, was at the beginning of 1813 quite able in material power to grapple two out of the three parts,—Montreal and Kingston. Had they been gained, Lake Erie would have fallen; as is demonstrated by the fact that the whole Erie region went down like a house of cards the moment Perry triumphed on the lake. His victory was decisive, simply because it destroyed the communications of Malden with the sea. The same result would have been achieved, with effect over a far wider region, by a similar success in the east.

27. LESSONS OF THE WAR WITH SPAIN[97]

_The Possibilities of a “Fleet in Being”_

[Admiral Cervera left the Cape Verde Islands on April 29, 1898. After touching at Martinique on May 11, he coaled at Curaçao on the 15th, and entered Santiago on the 19th.

On news of Cervera’s arrival at Martinique, Sampson’s squadron from Porto Rico and Schley’s Flying Squadron from Hampton Roads converged on Key West. Sampson had his full strength in the approaches to Havana by the 21st and Schley was off Cienfuegos, the chief southern port of Cuba, on the 22d.

“We cannot,” writes Admiral Mahan, “expect ever again to have an enemy so entirely inapt as Spain showed herself to be; yet, even so, Cervera’s division reached Santiago on the 19th of May, two days before our divisions appeared in the full force they could muster before Havana and Cienfuegos.”[98]—EDITOR.]

As was before said, the disparity between the armored fleets of the two nations was nominally inconsiderable; and the Spaniards possessed one extremely valuable—and by us unrivalled—advantage in a nearly homogeneous group of five[99] armored cruisers, very fast, and very similar both in nautical qualities and in armament. It is difficult to estimate too highly the possibilities open to such a body of ships, regarded as a “fleet in being,” to use an expression that many of our readers may have seen, but perhaps scarcely fully understood.

The phrase “fleet in being,” having within recent years gained much currency in naval writing, demands—like the word “jingo”—preciseness of definition; and this, in general acceptance, it has not yet attained. It remains, therefore, somewhat vague, and so occasions misunderstandings between men whose opinions perhaps do not materially differ. The writer will not attempt to define, but a brief explanation of the term and its origin may not be amiss. It was first used, in 1690, by the British admiral Lord Torrington, when defending his course in declining to engage decisively, with an inferior force, a French fleet, then dominating in the Channel, and under cover of which it was expected that a descent upon the English coast would be made by a great French army. “Had I fought otherwise,” he said, “our fleet had been totally lost, and the kingdom had lain open to invasion. As it was, most men were in fear that the French would invade; but I was always of another opinion, for I always said that whilst we had a fleet in being, they would not dare to make an attempt.”

A “fleet in being,” therefore, is one the existence and maintenance of which, although inferior, on or near the scene of operations, is a perpetual menace to the various more or less exposed interests of the enemy, who cannot tell when a blow may fall, and who is therefore compelled to restrict his operations, otherwise possible, until that fleet can be destroyed or neutralized. It corresponds very closely to “a position on the flank and rear” of an enemy, where the presence of a smaller force, as every military student knows, harasses, and may even paralyze, offensive movements. When such a force is extremely mobile, as a fleet of armored cruisers may be, its power of mischief is very great; potentially, it is forever on the flank and rear, threatening the lines of communications. It is indeed as a threat to communications that the “fleet in being” is chiefly formidable.

The theory received concrete and convincing illustration during the recent hostilities, from the effect exerted—and justly exerted—upon our plans and movements by Cervera’s squadron, until there had been assembled before Santiago a force at once so strong and so numerous as to make his escape very improbable. Even so, when a telegram was received from a capable officer that he had identified by night, off the north coast of Cuba, an armored cruiser,—which, if of that class, was most probably an enemy,—the sailing of Shafter’s expedition was stopped until the report could be verified. So much for the positive, material influence—in the judgment of the writer, the reasonable influence—of a “fleet in being.” As regards the moral effect, the effect upon the imagination, it is scarcely necessary more than to allude to the extraordinary play of the fancy, the kaleidoscopic effects elicited from our own people, and from some foreign critics, in propounding dangers for ourselves and ubiquity for Cervera. Against the infection of such tremors it is one of the tasks of those in responsibility to guard themselves and, if possible, their people. “Don’t make pictures for yourself,” was Napoleon’s warning to his generals. “Every naval operation since I became head of the government has failed, because my admirals see double and have learned—where I don’t know—that war can be made without running risks.”

The probable value of a “fleet in being” has, in the opinion of the writer, been much overstated; for, even at the best, the game of evasion, which this is, if persisted in, can have but one issue. The superior force will in the end run the inferior to earth. In the meanwhile, however, vital time may have been lost. It is conceivable, for instance, that Cervera’s squadron, if thoroughly effective, might, by swift and well-concealed movements, have detained our fleet in the West Indies until the hurricane of September, 1898, swept over the Caribbean. We had then no reserve to replace armored ships lost or damaged. But, for such persistence of action, there is needed in each unit of the “fleet in being” an efficiency rarely attainable, and liable to be lost by unforeseen accident at a critical moment. Where effect, nay, safety, depends upon mere celerity of movement, as in retreat, a crippled ship means a lost ship; or a lost fleet, if the body sticks to its disabled member. Such efficiency it is probable Cervera’s division never possessed. The length of its passage across the Atlantic, however increased by the embarrassment of frequently recoaling the torpedo destroyers, so far overpassed the extreme calculations of our naval authorities, that ready credence was given to an apparently authentic report that it had returned to Spain; the more so that such concentration was strategically correct, and it was incorrect to adventure an important detachment so far from home, without the reinforcement it might have received in Cadiz. This delay, in ships whose individual speed had originally been very high, has been commonly attributed in our service to the inefficiency of the engine-room force; and this opinion is confirmed by a Spanish officer writing in their “Revista de la Marina.” “The Americans,” he says, “keep their ships cruising constantly, in every sea, and therefore have a large and qualified engine-room force. We have but few machinists, and are almost destitute of firemen.” This inequality, however, is fundamentally due to the essential differences of mechanical capacity and development in the two nations. An amusing story was told the writer some years ago by one of our consuls in Cuba. Making a rather rough passage between two ports, he saw an elderly Cuban or Spanish gentleman peering frequently into the engine-room, with evident uneasiness. When asked the cause of his concern, the reply was, “I don’t feel comfortable unless the man in charge of the engines talks English to them.”

When to the need of constant and sustained ability to move at high speed is added the necessity of frequent recoaling, allowing the hostile navy time to come up, it is evident that the active use of a “fleet in being,” however perplexing to the enemy, must be both anxious and precarious to its own commander. The contest is one of strategic wits, and it is quite possible that the stronger, though slower, force, centrally placed, may, in these days of cables, be able to receive word and to corner its antagonist before the latter can fill his bunkers. Of this fact we should probably have received a very convincing illustration, had a satisfactory condition of our coast defenses permitted the Flying Squadron to be off Cienfuegos, or even off Havana, instead of in Hampton Roads. Cervera’s entrance to Santiago was known to us within twenty-four hours. In twenty-four more it could have been communicated off Cienfeugos by a fast despatch boat, after which less than forty-eight would have placed our division before Santiago. The uncertainty felt by Commodore Schley, when he arrived off Cienfuegos, as to whether the Spanish division was inside or no, would not have existed had his squadron been previously blockading; and his consequent delay of over forty-eight hours—with the rare chance thus offered to Cervera—would not have occurred. To coal four great ships within that time was probably beyond the resources of Santiago; whereas the speed predicted for our own movements is rather below than above the dispositions contemplated to ensure it.

The great end of a war fleet, however, is not to chase, nor to fly, but to control the seas. Had Cervera escaped our pursuit at Santiago, it would have been only to be again paralyzed at Cienfuegos or at Havana. When speed, not force, is the reliance, destruction may be postponed, but can be escaped only by remaining in port. Let it not, therefore, be inferred, from the possible, though temporary, effect of a “fleet in being,” that speed is the chief of all factors in the battleship. This plausible, superficial notion, too easily accepted in these days of hurry and of unreflecting dependence upon machinery as the all in all, threatens much harm to the future efficiency of the navy. Not speed, but power of offensive action, is the dominant factor in war. The decisive preponderant element of great land forces has ever been the infantry, which, it is needless to say, is also the slowest. The homely summary of the art of war, “To get there first with the most men,” has with strange perverseness been so distorted in naval—and still more in popular—conception, that the second and more important consideration has been subordinated to the former and less essential. Force does not exist for mobility, but mobility for force. It is of no use to get there first unless, when the enemy in turn arrives, you have also the most men,—the greater force. This is especially true of the sea, because there inferiority of force—of gun power—cannot be compensated, as on land it at times may be, by judiciously using accidents of the ground. I do not propose to fall into an absurdity of my own by questioning the usefulness of higher speed, _provided_ the increase is not purchased at the expense of strictly offensive power; but the time has come to say plainly that its value is being exaggerated; that it is in the battleship secondary to gun power; that a battle fleet can never attain, nor maintain, the highest rate of any ship in it, except of that one which at the moment is the slowest, for it is a commonplace of naval

## action that fleet speed is that of the slowest ship; that not

exaggerated speed, but uniform speed—sustained speed—is the requisite of the battle fleet; that it is not machinery, as is often affirmed, but brains and guns, that win battles and control of the sea. The true speed of war is not headlong precipitancy, but the unremitting energy which wastes no time.

For the reasons that have been given, the safest, though not the most effective, disposition of an inferior “fleet in being” is to lock it up in an impregnable port or ports, imposing upon the enemy the intense and continuous strain of watchfulness against escape. This it was that Torrington, the author of the phrase, proposed for the time to do. Thus it was that Napoleon, to some extent before Trafalgar, but afterward with set and exclusive purpose, used the French Navy, which he was continually augmenting, and yet never, to the end of his reign, permitted again to undertake any serious expedition. The mere maintenance of several formidable detachments, in apparent readiness, from the Scheldt round to Toulon, presented to the British so many possibilities of mischief that they were compelled to keep constantly before each of the French ports a force superior to that within, entailing an expense and an anxiety by which the emperor hoped to exhaust their endurance. To some extent this was Cervera’s position and function in Santiago, whence followed logically the advisability of a land attack upon the port, to force to a decisive issue a situation which was endurable only if incurable. “The destruction of Cervera’s squadron,” justly commented an Italian writer, before the result was known, “is the only really decisive fact that can result from the expedition to Santiago, because it will reduce to impotence the naval power of Spain. The determination of the conflict will depend throughout upon the destruction of the Spanish sea power, and not upon territorial descents, although the latter may aggravate the situation.” The American admiral from before Santiago, when urging the expedition of a land force to make the bay untenable, telegraphed, “The destruction of this squadron will end the war;” and it did.

28. THE SANTIAGO BLOCKADE[100]

Our battle fleet before Santiago was more than powerful enough to crush the hostile squadron in a very short time if the latter attempted a stand-up fight. The fact was so evident that it was perfectly clear nothing of the kind would be hazarded; but, nevertheless, we could not afford to diminish the number of armored vessels on this spot, now become the determining center of the conflict. The possibility of the situation was twofold. Either the enemy might succeed in an effort at evasion, a chance which required us to maintain a distinctly superior force of battleships in order to allow the occasional absence of one or two for coaling or repairs, besides as many lighter cruisers as could be mustered for purposes of lookout, or, by merely remaining quietly at anchor, protected from attack by the lines of torpedoes, he might protract a situation which tended not only to wear out our ships, but also to keep them there into the hurricane season,—a risk which was not, perhaps, adequately realized by the people of the United States.

It is desirable at this point to present certain other elements of the naval situation which weightily affected naval action at the moment, and which, also, were probably overlooked by the nation at large, for they give a concrete illustration of conditions, which ought to influence our national policy, as regards the navy, in the present and immediate future. We had to economize our ships because they were too few. There was no reserve. The Navy Department had throughout, and especially at this period, to keep in mind, not merely the exigencies at Santiago, but the fact that we had not a battleship in the home ports that could in six months be made ready to replace one lost or seriously disabled, as the _Massachusetts_, for instance, not long afterwards was, by running on an obstruction in New York Bay. Surprise approaching disdain was expressed, both before and after the destruction of Cervera’s squadron, that the battle fleet was not sent into Santiago either to grapple the enemy’s ships there, or to support the operations of the army, in the same way, for instance, that Farragut crossed the torpedo lines at Mobile. The reply—and, in the writer’s judgment, the more than adequate reason—was that the country could not at that time, under the political conditions which then obtained, afford to risk the loss or disablement of a single battleship, unless the enterprise in which it was hazarded carried a reasonable probability of equal or greater loss to the enemy, leaving us, therefore, as strong as before relatively to the naval power which in the course of events might yet be arrayed against us. If we lost ten thousand men, the country could replace them; if we lost a battleship, it could not be replaced. The issue of the war, as a whole and in every locality to which it extended, depended upon naval force, and it was imperative to achieve, not success only, but success delayed no longer than necessary. A million of the best soldiers would have been powerless in face of hostile control of the sea. Dewey had not a battleship, but there can be no doubt that that capable admiral thought he ought to have one or more; and so he ought, if we had had them to spare. The two monitors would be something, doubtless, when they arrived; but, like all their class, they lacked mobility.

When Cámara started by way of Suez for the East, it was no more evident than it was before that we ought to have battleships there. That was perfectly plain from the beginning; but battleships no more than men can be in two places at once, and until Cámara’s movement had passed beyond the chance of turning west, the Spanish fleet in the Peninsula had, as regarded the two fields of war, the West Indies and the Philippines, the recognized military advantage of an interior position. In accepting inferiority in the East, and concentrating our available force in the West Indies, thereby ensuring a superiority over any possible combination of Spanish vessels in the latter quarter, the Department acted rightly and in accordance with sound military precedent; but it must be remembered that the Spanish Navy was not the only possibility of the day. The writer was not in a position to know then, and does not know now, what weight the United States Government attached to the current rumors of possible political friction with other states whose people were notoriously sympathizers with our enemy. The public knows as much about that as he does; but it was clear that if a disposition to interfere did exist anywhere, it would not be lessened by a serious naval disaster to us, such as the loss of one of our few battleships would be. Just as in the maintenance of a technically “effective” blockade of the Cuban ports, so, also, in sustaining the entireness and vigor of the battle fleet, the attitude of foreign Powers as well as the strength of the immediate enemy had to be considered. For such reasons it was recommended that the orders on this point to Admiral Sampson should be peremptory; not that any doubt existed as to the discretion of that officer, who justly characterized the proposition to throw the ships upon the mine fields of Santiago as suicidal folly, but because it was felt that the burden of such a decision should be assumed by a superior authority, less liable to suffer in personal reputation from the idle imputations of over-caution, which at times were ignorantly made by some who ought to have known better, but did not. “The matter is left to your discretion,” the telegram read, “except that the United States armored vessels must not be risked.”

When Cervera’s squadron was once cornered, an intelligent opponent would, under any state of naval preparedness, have seen the advisability of forcing him out of the port by an attack in the rear, which could be made only by an army. As Nelson said on one occasion, “What is wanted now is not more ships, but troops.” Under few conditions should such a situation be prolonged. But the reasons adduced in the last paragraph made it doubly incumbent upon us to bring the matter speedily to an issue, and the combined expedition from Tampa was at once ordered. Having in view the number of hostile troops in the country surrounding Santiago, as shown by the subsequent returns of prisoners, and shrewdly suspected by ourselves beforehand, it was undoubtedly desirable to employ a larger force than was sent. The criticism made upon the inadequate number of troops engaged in this really daring movement is intrinsically sound, and would be wholly accurate if directed, not against the enterprise itself, but against the national shortsightedness which gave us so trivial an army at the outbreak of the war. The really hazardous nature of the movement is shown by the fact that the column of Escario, three thousand strong, from Manzanillo, reached Santiago on July 3d; too late, it is true, abundantly too late, to take part in the defense of San Juan and El Caney, upon holding which the city depended for food and water; yet not so late but that it gives a shivering suggestion how much more arduous would have been the task of our troops had Escario come up in time. The incident but adds another to history’s long list of instances where desperate energy and economy of time have wrested safety out of the jaws of imminent disaster. The occasion was one that called upon us to take big risks; and success merely justifies doubly an attempt which, from the obvious balance of advantages and disadvantages, was antecedently justified by its necessity, and would not have been fair subject for blame, even had it failed.

The Navy Department did not, however, think that even a small chance of injury should be taken which could be avoided; and it may be remarked that, while the man is unfit for command who, on emergency, is unable to run a very great risk for the sake of decisive advantage, he, on the other hand, is only less culpable who takes even a small risk of serious harm against which reasonable precaution can provide. It has been well said that Nelson took more care of his topgallant masts, in ordinary cruising, than he did of his whole fleet when the enemy was to be checked or beaten; and this combination of qualities apparently opposed is found in all strong military characters to the perfection of which both are necessary.

29. “FLEET IN BEING” AND “FORTRESS FLEET”[101]

_The Port Arthur Squadron in the Russo-Japanese War_

[At the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War in February, 1904, Russia had three armored cruisers at Vladivostok, another at Chemulpo, Korea, and seven battleships, six cruisers, and a torpedo flotilla at Port Arthur. Three of the Port Arthur ships were badly damaged by torpedo attack on February 8, and the cruiser at Chemulpo was destroyed on the next day. Togo lost two of his six first-class battleships by running into a mine field off Port Arthur on May 15. In an attempt to escape to Vladivostok on August 10, the Port Arthur squadron lost a battleship and several cruisers; the remainder were sunk in the course of the Port Arthur siege. This lasted from May 27 to January 1, 1905. Even before February 8, 1904, the Japanese had begun transporting their troops to Korea; and after the fall of Port Arthur they were able to throw their full strength against General Kuropatkin in the decisive battle of Mukden, February 24, 1905.—EDITOR.]

I have been led, on an occasion not immediately connected with Naval Strategy, to observe that errors and defeats are more obviously illustrative of principles than successes are. It is from the records of the beaten side that we are most surely able to draw instruction. This is partly due to the fact that the general or admiral who is worsted has to justify himself to his people, perhaps also to his Government. The naval practice of court-martialing a defeated captain or admiral has been most productive of the material which history, and the art of war, both require for their treatment. Even failing a court-martial, defeat cries aloud for explanation; whereas success, like charity, covers a multitude of sins. To this day Marengo is the victory of Napoleon, not of Desaix; and the hazardous stretching of the French line which caused the first defeat is by most forgotten in the ultimate triumph. The man who has failed will of his own motion bring out all that extenuates failure, or relieves him from the imputation of it. The victor is asked few questions; and if conscious of mistakes he need not reveal them. More can be found to criticize Kuropatkin and Rozhestvensky than to recognize either their difficulties or their merits. Probably few, even in this naval audience, knew, or have noted, that on the day preceding that on which two Japanese battleships, the _Hatsuse_ and _Yashima_, were sunk by Russian mines, not a Japanese scout was in sight, to notice the Russian vessel engaged in the work which resulted so disastrously to its foes. On that day, during that operation, no Japanese vessel was visible to the lookouts at Port Arthur.

For the reasons advanced, I turn at first, and more particularly, to the Russian naval action for illustration of principles, whether shown in right or wrong conduct; and here I first name _two_ such principles, or formulation of maxims, as having been fundamental, and in my judgment fundamentally erroneous, in the Russian practice. These are mental conceptions, the first of which has been explicitly stated as controlling Russian plans, and influencing Russian military ideas; while the second may be deduced, inferentially, as exercising much effect. The first, under the title of “Fortress Fleet,” is distinctly Russian; realized, that is, in Russian theory and practice, though not without representation in the military thought of other countries. The second is the well known “Fleet in Being;” a conception distinctly English in statement and in origin, although, like the first, it finds reflection in naval circles elsewhere. I shall not at this point define this conception “Fleet in Being.” I shall attempt to do so later, by marking its extreme expression; but to do more will require more space than is expedient to give here, because full definition would demand the putting forward of various shades of significance, quite wide in their divergence, which are attributed to the expression—“Fleet in Being”—by those who range themselves as advocates of the theory embraced in the phrase.

It is, however, apt here to remark that, in extreme formulation, the two theories, or principles, summed up in the phrases, “Fortress Fleet” and “Fleet in Being,” are the antipodes of each other. They represent naval, or military, thought polarized, so to say. The one lays all stress on the fortress, making the fleet so far subsidiary as to have no reason for existence save to help the fortress. The other discards the fortress altogether, unless possibly as a momentary refuge for the vessels of the fleet while coaling, repairing, or refreshing. The one throws national defense for the coast lines upon fortifications only; the other relies upon the fleet alone for actual defense. In each case, co-operation between the two arms, fleet and coast-works, is characterized by a supremacy of one or the other, so marked as to be exclusive. Co-ordination of the two, which I conceive to be the proper solution, can scarcely be said to exist. The relation is that of subjection, rather than of co-ordination. [Here a distinction is drawn between _compromise_, which implies concessions and a middle course between divergent purposes, and the proper method best expressed by the word _adjustment_, which signifies concentration on a single purpose and co-ordination of all means to that end.]

It is worthy of your consideration whether the word “compromise” does not really convey to your minds an impression that, when you come to design a ship of war, you must be prepared to concede something on every quality, in order that each of the others may have its share. Granting, and I am not prepared to deny, that in effect each several quality must yield something, if only in order that its own effectiveness be ensured, as in the case of the central defense force just cited, is it of no consequence that you approach the problem in the spirit of him who divided his force among several passes, rather than of him who recognizes a central conception to which all else is to minister? Take the armored cruiser; a fad, I admit, with myself. She is armored, and she is a cruiser; and what have you got? A ship to “lie in the line?” as our ancestors used to say. No, and Yes; that is to say, she may on a pinch, and at a risk which exceeds her powers. A cruiser? Yes, and No; for, in order to give her armor and armament which do not fit her for the line, you have given tonnage beyond what is needed for the speed and coal endurance proper to a cruiser. By giving this tonnage to armor and armament you have taken it from other uses; either from increasing her own speed and endurance, or from providing an additional cruiser. You have in her more cruiser than you ought to have, and less armored vessel; or else less cruiser and more armored ship. I do not call this a combination, though it is undoubtedly a compromise. You have put two things together, but they remain two, have not become one; and, considering the tonnage, you have neither as much armored ship, nor as much cruiser, as you ought to have. I do not say you have a useless ship. I do say you have not as useful a ship as, for the tonnage, you ought to have. Whether this opinion of one man is right or wrong, however, is a very small matter compared with the desirability of officers generally considering these subjects on proper lines of thought, and with proper instruments of expression; that is, with correct principles and correct phraseology.

As an illustration of what I am here saying, the two expressions, “Fortress Fleet” and “Fleet in Being,” themselves give proof in their ultimate effect upon Russian practice and principle. Fortress Fleet was a dominant conception in Russian military and naval thought. I quote with some reserve, because from a daily newspaper,[102] but as probably accurate, and certainly characteristic of Russian theory, the following: “Before his departure from Bizerta for the Suez Canal, Admiral Wirenius, in command of the Russian squadron, remarked that the Russian plan was to make Port Arthur and Vladivostok the two most important arsenals in the empire, each having a fleet of corresponding strength,”—corresponding, that is, to the fortress,—“depending upon it as upon a base.” The distribution would be a division in the face of the probable enemy, Japan, centrally situated, because the design has reference primarily to the fortress, not to naval efficiency. The conception is not wholly erroneous; if it were, the error would have been detected. It has an element of truth, and therein lies its greatest danger; the danger of half or quarter truths. A fleet _can_ contribute to the welfare of coast fortresses; especially when the fortress is in a foreign possession of the nation. On the other hand, the Fleet in Being theory has also an element of truth, a very considerable element; and it has been before the naval public, explicitly, for so long a time that it is impossible it was not known in Russia. It was known and was appreciated. It had a strong following. The Russian Naval General Staff clamored for command of the sea; but in influence upon the government, the responsible director and formulator of national policy, it did not possess due weight. Not having been adequately grasped,—whether from neglect, or because the opposite factor of Fortress Fleet was already in possession of men’s minds,—it was never able to secure expression in the national plans. There was compromise, possibly; both things, Fleet in Being and Fortress Fleet, were attempted; but there was not adjustment. The fortress throughout reduced the fleet, as fleet, to insignificance in the national conceptions. What resulted was that at Port Arthur the country got neither a fortress fleet, for, except the guns mounted from it, the fleet contributed nothing to the defense of the place; nor yet a Fleet in Being, for it was never used as such.

It is interesting to observe that this predominant conception of a fortress fleet reflects national temperament; that is, national characteristics, national bias. For, for what does Fortress Fleet stand? For the defensive idea. For what does Fleet in Being stand? For the offensive. In what kind of warfare has Russia most conspicuously distinguished herself? In defensive. She has had her Suvarof, doubtless; but in 1812, and in the Crimea, and now again, in 1904–1905, it is to the defensive that she has inclined. In virtue of her territorial bulk and vast population, she has, so to say, let the enemy hammer at her, sure of survival in virtue of mass. Militarily, Russia as a nation is not enterprising. She has an apathetic bias towards the defensive. She has not, as a matter of national, or governmental, decision, so grasped the idea of offense, nor, as a people, been so gripped by that idea, as to correct the natural propensity to defense, and to give to defense and offense their proper adjustment in national and military policy.

In these two well-known expressions, “Fortress Fleet” and “Fleet in Being,” both current, and comparatively recent, we find ourselves therefore confronting the two old divisions of warfare,—defensive and offensive. We may expect these old friends to exhibit their well-known qualities and limitations in action; but, having recognized them under their new garb, we will also consider them under it, speaking not directly of offensive and defensive, but of Fortress Fleet and Fleet in Being, and endeavoring, first, to trace their influence in the Russian conduct....

Why then was the fleet stationed in Port Arthur? Because, expecting the Japanese attack to fall upon Port Arthur, the purpose of the Russian authorities was not to use the fleet offensively against the enemy’s navy, but defensively as a fortress fleet; defending the fortress by defensive action, awaiting attack, not making it. That is, the function of the fortress was conceived as defensive chiefly, and not as offensive. Later, I hope to show that the purpose, the _raison d’être_, of a coast fortress is in itself offensive; because it exists chiefly for the purpose of sheltering a fleet, and keeping it fit to act offensively. For the present, waiving the point, it will be sufficient to note that the conception of the fleet by the Russians, that it should act only in defense, led necessarily to imperfect action even in that respect. The Port Arthur division virtually never acted offensively, even locally. An observer on the spot says: “In the disposition of their destroyers, the authorities did not seem disposed to give them a free hand, or to allow them to take any chances.” And again, “The torpedo boats were never sent out with the aim of attacking Japanese ships, or transports. If out, and attacked, they fought, but they did not go out for the purpose of attacking, although they would to cover an army flank.” These two actions define the rôle indicated by the expression, “Fortress Fleet.” The Japanese expressed surprise that no attempt by scouting was made to ascertain their naval base, which was also the landing place of their army; and, although the sinking of the two battleships on May 15 was seen from Port Arthur, no effort was made to improve such a moment of success, and of demoralization to the enemy, although there were twenty-one destroyers at Port Arthur; sixteen of which were under steam and outside. So, at the very last moment, the fleet held on to its defensive rôle; going out only when already damaged by enemy’s shells, and then not to fight but to fly.

It is a curious commentary upon this course of action, that, as far as any accounts that have come under my eye show, the fleet contributed nothing to the defense of the fortress beyond landing guns, and, as the final death struggle approached, using their batteries in support of those of the fortress; but the most extreme theorist would scarcely advocate such an end as the object of maintaining a fleet. The same guns would be better emplaced on shore. As far as defense went, the Russian Port Arthur fleet might as well have been at Cronstadt throughout. Indeed, better; for then it would have accompanied Rozhestvensky in concentrated numbers, and the whole Russian navy there assembled, in force far superior, would have been a threat to the Japanese command of the sea much more effective, as a defense to Port Arthur, than was the presence of part of that fleet in the port itself.

The Russian fleet in the Far East, assembled as to the main body in Port Arthur, by its mere presence under the conditions announced that it was there to serve the fortress, to which it was subsidiary. Concentrated at Vladivostok, to one side of the theater of war, and flanking the enemy’s line of communications to that which must be the chief scene of operations, it would have been a clear evident declaration that the fortress was subsidiary to the ships; that its chief value in the national military scheme was to shelter, and to afford repairs, in short, to maintain in efficiency, a body which meant to go out to fight, and with a definite object. The hapless Rozhestvensky gave voice to this fact in an expression which I have found attributed to him before the fatal battle at Tsushima: that; if twenty only of the numbers under his command reached Vladivostok, the Japanese communications would be seriously endangered. This is clear “Fleet in Being” theory, and quite undiluted; for it expresses the extreme view that the presence of a strong force, even though inferior, near the scene of operations, will produce a momentous effect upon the enemy’s action. The extreme school has gone so far as to argue that it will stop an expedition; or should do so, if the enemy be wise. I have for years contended against this view as unsound; as shown to be so historically. Such a “fleet in being,” inferior, should not be accepted by an enemy as a sufficient deterrent under ordinary circumstances. It has not been in the past, and the Japanese did not so accept it. The Russian “fleet in being,” in Port Arthur, did not stop their transportation; although they recognized danger from it, and consistently took every step in their power to neutralize it. Their operations throughout were directed consistently to this end. The first partially successful torpedo attack; the attempts to block the harbor by sinking vessels; the distant bombardments; the mines laid outside; and the early institution and persistence in the siege operations,—all had but one end, the destruction of the fleet, in being, within; but, for all that, that fleet did not arrest the transport of the Japanese army.

These two simultaneous operations, the transport of troops despite the fleet in being, and the persevering effort at the same time to destroy it—or neutralize it—illustrate what I have called adjustment between opposite considerations. The danger from the fleet in being is recognized, but so also is the danger in delaying the initiation of the land campaign. The Fleet in Being School would condemn the transportation, so long as the Port Arthur fleet existed. It actually did so condemn it. The London _Times_, which is, or then was, under the influence of this school, published six weeks before the war began a summary of the situation, by naval and military correspondents, in which appears this statement: “With a hostile fleet behind the guns at Port Arthur, the Japanese could hardly venture to send troops into the Yellow Sea.” And again, four weeks later: “It is obvious that, until the Russian ships are sunk, captured, or shut up in their ports with their wings effectually clipped, there can be no security for the sea communications of an expeditionary force.” These are just as clear illustrations of the exaggeration inherent in the Fleet in Being theory, which assumes the deterrent influence of an offensive threatened by inferior force, as the conduct of the Russian naval operations was of the inefficiency latent in their theory of Fortress Fleet.

If security meant the security of peace, these Fleet in Being statements could be accepted; but military security is an entirely different thing; and we know that, coincidently with the first torpedo attack, before its result could be known, an expeditionary Japanese force was sent into the Yellow Sea to Chemulpo, and that it rapidly received reinforcements to the estimated number of fifty or sixty thousand. The enterprise in Manchuria, the landing of troops west of the mouth of the Yalu, was delayed for some time—two months, more or less. What the reason of that delay, and what determined the moment of beginning, I do not know; but we do know, not only that it was made in face of four Russian battleships within Port Arthur, but that it continued in face of the increase of their number to six by the repair of those damaged in the first torpedo attack. As early as May 31, it was known in Tokyo that the damaged ships were nearly ready for the sortie, which they actually made on June 23.

It is doubtless open to say that, though the Japanese did thus venture, they ought not to have done so. Note therefore that the Japanese were perfectly alive to the risks run. From the first they were exceedingly careful of their battleships, knowing that on them depended the communications of their army. The fact was noted early in the war by observers on the spot. This shows that they recognized the full menace of all the conditions of the Russian fleet in Port Arthur, also of the one in the Baltic, and of the danger to their communications. Nevertheless, though realizing these various dangers from the hostile “fleets in being,” they ventured.

About the middle of March, that is, six weeks after the war began, a report, partly believed by the Japanese authorities, came in that the Port Arthur ships had escaped in a snow storm, on March 11. It is reported that all transportation of troops stopped for some ten days. It may be remembered that in our war with Spain, a very similar report, from two different and competent witnesses, arrested the movement of Shafter’s army from Key West until it could be verified. In the case of the Japanese, as in our own, the incident illustrates the possible dangers from a “fleet in being.” In neither report was there an evident impossibility. Had either proved true the momentary danger to communications is evident; but the danger is one the chance of which has to be taken. As Napoleon said, “War cannot be made without running risks.” The condition that an enemy’s fleet watched in port may get out, and may do damage, is entirely different from the fact that it has gotten out. The possibility is not a sufficient reason for stopping transportation; the actual fact is sufficient for taking particular precautions, adjusting dispositions to the new conditions, as was done by ourselves and by the Japanese in the circumstances. The case is wholly different if the enemy has a fleet equal or superior; for then he is entirely master of his movement, does not depend upon evasion for keeping the sea, and communications in such case are in danger, not merely of temporary disarrangement but of permanent destruction. No special warning is needed to know this; the note of the “Fleet in Being” School is insistence on the paralyzing effect of an _inferior_ fleet.

_Divided Forces_[103]

But among the most important lessons of this war—perhaps the most important, as also one easily understood and which exemplifies a principle of warfare of ageless application—is the inexpediency, the terrible danger, of dividing the battle fleet, even in times of peace, into fractions individually smaller than those of a possible enemy. The Russian divisions at Port Arthur, at Vladivostok, and in the European ports of Russia, if united, would in 1904 have outweighed decisively the navy of Japan, which moreover could receive no increase during hostilities. It would have been comparatively immaterial, as regards effect upon the local field of operations, whether the ships were assembled in the Baltic, in Vladivostok, or in Port Arthur. Present together, the fleet thus constituted could not have been disregarded by Japan without a risk transcending beyond comparison that caused by the Port Arthur division alone, which the Japanese deliberately put out of court. For, while they undertook, and successfully carried out, measures which during a period of four months disabled it as a body menacing their sea communications, they none the less before the torpedo attack of February 8 had begun the movement of their army to the continent. It is most improbable that they would have dared the same had the available Russian navy been united. It would have mattered nothing that it was frozen in in Vladivostok. The case of Japan would not have been better, but worse, for having utilized the winter to cross her troops to the mainland, if, when summer came, the enemy appeared in overwhelming naval force. If Togo, in face of Rozhestvensky’s division alone, could signal his fleet, “The salvation or the fall of the Empire depends upon the result of this engagement,” how much more serious the situation had there been with it the Port Arthur ships, which had handled his vessels somewhat roughly the preceding August.

To an instructed, thoughtful, naval mind in the United States, there is no contingency affecting the country, as interested in the navy, so menacing as the fear of popular clamor influencing an irresolute, or militarily ignorant, administration to divide the battleship force into two divisions, the Atlantic and the Pacific. A determined President, instructed in military matters, doubtless will not yield, but will endeavor by explanation to appease apprehension and quiet outcry. Nevertheless, the danger exists; and always will exist in proportion as the people do not understand the simple principle that an efficient military body depends for its effect in war—and in peace—less upon its position than upon its concentrated force. This does not ignore position, and its value. On the contrary, it is written with a clear immediate recollection of Napoleon’s pregnant saying, “War is a business of positions.” But the great captain, in the letter in which the phrase occurs, goes on directly to instruct the marshal to whom he is writing so to station the divisions of his corps, for purposes of supply, around a common center, that they can unite rapidly; and can meet the enemy in mass before he can attack any one of them, or move far from his present position against another important French interest.

Concentration indeed, in last analysis, may be correctly defined as being itself a choice of position; viz.: that the various corps, or ships, shall not be some in one place, and some in others, but all in one place. We Americans have luckily had an object lesson, not at our own expense, but at that of an old friend. There is commonly believed to have been little effective public opinion in Russia at the time the war with Japan was at hand; such as did manifest itself, in the use of dynamite against officials, seems not to have taken into consideration international relations, military or other. But in the councils of the Empire, however constituted, and whatever the weight of the military element, there was shown in act an absolute disregard of principles so simple, so obvious, and so continually enforced by precept and experience, that the fact would be incomprehensible, had not we all seen, in civil as in military life, that the soundest principles, perfectly well known, fail, more frequently than not, to sustain conduct against prepossession or inclination. That communications dominate strategy, and that the communications of Japan in a continental war would be by sea, were clear as daylight. That the whole navy of Russia, united on the scene, would be sufficient, and half of it probably insufficient, certainly hazardous, was equally plain. Yet, ship by ship, half was assembled in the Far East, until Japan saw that this process of division had been carried as far as suited her interests and declared war; after which of course no Russian battleship could go forward alone.

From the military point of view the absurdity of the procedure is clear; but for national safety it has to be equally clear to statesmen and to people. An outside observer, with some little acquired knowledge of the workings of men’s minds, needs small imagination to hear the arguments at the Russian council board. “Things are looking squally in the East,” says one; “the fleet ought to be increased.” “Increased,” says another, “you may say so. All the ships we have ought to be sent, and together, the instant they can be got ready.” “Oh but,” rejoins a third, “consider how exposed our Baltic shores would be, in case war against us should be declared by Great Britain, which already has an understanding with Japan.” The obvious reply, that, in case Great Britain did declare war, the only thing to be done with the Baltic fleet would be to snuggle it close inside of the guns of Cronstadt, would probably be made; if it was, it was not heeded. In a representative government would doubtless have been heard the further remark, “The feeling in our coast towns, at seeing no ship left for their protection, would be so strong, that I doubt if the party could carry the next election.” Against this there is no provision, except popular understanding; operative perhaps in the interior, where there is no occasion for fright.

The most instructive feature of this Russian mistake, inexcusable in a government not browbeaten by political turmoil, is that it was made in time of peace, in the face of conditions threatening war. In fact, as is often the case, when war came it was already too late to remedy adequately the blunders or neglects of peace. More than twenty years ago the present writer had occasion to quote emphatically the words of a French author, “Naval Strategy”—naval strategic considerations—“is as necessary in peace as in war.” In 1904, nearly a decade had elapsed since Japan had been despoiled of much of her gains in her war with China. Since then Russia had been pursuing a course of steady aggression, in furtherance of her own aims, and contrary to what Japan considered her “vital interests and national honor.” It is not necessary to pronounce between the views of the two parties to see that the action of Russia was militarily preposterous, unless her fleet grew in proportion to that of Japan, and of her own purposes, and was kept in hand; that is, kept concentrated. It would have mattered little whether, being united, the outbreak of war found it in the Baltic, or in Vladivostok. That it could come, as did Rozhestvensky, but in double his force, would have been a fact no less emphatic when in the Baltic than in the farther East.

It is precisely the same, in application as well as in principle, with the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States. Both are exposed. Neither need be more exposed than the other; for, in virtue of our geographical position relatively to the other great Powers of the world, it is not the momentary location of the fleet, but its simple existence, adequate in numbers and efficiency, and concentrated in force, which protects both coasts. Any invader from the one side or the other must depend upon sea communications to support his army _throughout the war_; not merely for the three months needed to bring the United States fleet from one side to the other. But, if the war begin with the fleet divided between the two oceans, one half may be overmatched and destroyed, as was that of Port Arthur; and the second on coming prove unequal to restore the situation, as befell Rozhestvensky. That is to say, Concentration protects both coasts, Division exposes both. IT IS OF VITAL CONSEQUENCE TO THE NATION OF THE UNITED STATES, THAT ITS PEOPLE, CONTEMPLATING THE RUSSO-JAPANESE NAVAL WAR, SUBSTITUTE THEREIN, IN THEIR APPREHENSION, ATLANTIC FOR BALTIC, AND PACIFIC FOR PORT ARTHUR. So they will comprehend as well as apprehend.

30. ROZHESTVENSKY AT TSUSHIMA[104]

[The Russian fleet under Rozhestvensky left Libau October 15, 1904; reached Madagascar January 1, 1905, the day of the surrender of Port Arthur; and entered the Korea or Tsushima Straits on the morning of May 26. A part of the auxiliaries had been left in the mouth of the Yang-tse River, but the hospital and repair ships and those laden with naval stores were with the fleet. According to testimony at the court martial of Admiral Rozhestvensky, the battleships entered the straits with coal for three thousand miles, though the distance from the Saddle Islands to Vladivostok was but nine hundred.—EDITOR.]

Criticism here is another case of inferring intentions from actions; but, when the various parts of Rozhestvensky’s conduct are taken together, the inference is nearly irresistible that the exaggerated estimate of the influence of an inferior fleet in being possessed his imagination. Besides the excessive coal stowage, he took with him a train of transports, a notorious source of tactical embarrassment in battle, though doubtless equally a source of refitment, if he got them to Vladivostok; and there is no evidence of any attempt at advanced scouting on his own part, or of driving off, as he might have done, the Japanese scouts which showed up; the result being that Togo knew all about his dispositions, and he knew nothing about Togo’s until he saw the enemy’s main body.

Now I say, that, while all this was bad management in the face of the enemy, and in so far bad tactics, the bad tactics issued from an error of strategy; and the error in strategy was due to the lack of unity of conception, of that exclusiveness of purpose, which is the essence of strategy, and which subordinates, adjusts, all other factors and considerations to the one exclusive aim. While writing these pages, I came across a few lines by one of the first of German philosophical historians, Ranke, in one of his greatest works, “England in the Seventeenth Century.” They apply to policy, but policy is twin brother to strategy. Permit me to quote them:

“Why did William III get the better of James II in Ireland? Because he always kept his one great idea before his eyes, amid the many perplexing circumstances, which surrounded him. The decision which he displayed at every moment rested upon the fact that he had _only one end_, and that the one _imposed by the course of things_.”

[Illustration: SCENE OF NAVAL WAR JAPAN AND RUSSIA]

Apply this to Rozhestvensky. The one end imposed on him by the course of things was the destruction of the Japanese fleet, which comprised every armored vessel Japan could possibly muster for that war. Togo’s signal[105] before the battle recognized this one end, and there was no reason why his opponent should not have recognized it equally. To reach Vladivostok was only a means to that end; an object most important, because, if attained, it would put the Russians in the best possible condition for battle. But this by no means superseded the one necessary aim,—battle. More, it did not even postpone that aim, as a matter of immediate consideration and preparation; for, though escape through to Vladivostok might be possible, it was not certain. It was not even probable, under all the conditions. Therefore, while every forethought and care should have been to effect escape, if possible, they should have been accompanied with the clear decision that, should battle be forced, the fighting should have been qualified by no thought of escape, and the fleet, like a ship cleared for action, should have been stripped of all fleet encumbrances from the moment of leaving the Saddles. A fleet is half beaten already when it goes into battle with one eye upon something else than fighting.

If Rozhestvensky had recognized these facts, in their due importance and proportion, and had been convinced that battle was his one aim, and that there was at least a very real possibility that he could not postpone it till after Vladivostok, it seems to me he must have reasoned thus: I must have coal enough to reach Vladivostok, on a reasonable calculation of the distance, and of the expenditures of the ships; both which were known. To this amount add a fair margin of safety. This total should be carried for the purpose of escape, if feasible; with perhaps an addition sufficient to last during battle, with funnels pierced, which was a likely accident. Again, there is for each ship a draft of water which best meets her maneuvering needs. The chances are that the enemy will await us either in the narrower part of the sea, or near his navy yards. As there is one position, that in the Straits of Korea, which favors both these objects, it is there I will probably have to fight, if at all. Therefore, as far as possible, the coal carried by the fleet on starting should be such that consumption up to the moment of reaching the straits will put them in their best tactical trim. The coal supply needed to reach Vladivostok is thus adjusted to the exigencies of battle.

Then as regards the transports. For the moment, on this last fateful stretch, they are absolutely of no consequence as affecting results. The adjustment of them, to the end of the battle, is to dismiss them out of mind and presence. If beaten, the loss of them will not be of the slightest consequence to Russia; if successful, they can be summoned from an appointed rendezvous, and escorted to a destination under such protection as may then seem expedient. An Austrian officer has suggested that if the whole body had weighed together, and at night had separated, the supply vessels proceeding under convoy by the east of Japan might have escaped notice; or, if seen, this report might have perplexed Togo, rather than enlightened him. Upon the suggestion I make no comment, other than that it would have been one way of counting out the supply ships.

The imminency of the occasion should have drawn, and did draw, all Japan’s fighting force to the Straits of Korea, an element for Rozhestvensky’s consideration. According to Semenoff the auxiliary steamers _Terek_ and _Kuban_ were sent off the east coast expressly to draw attention, but met no one, and their presence was unknown to the Japanese.

I am not disposed to question, or to doubt, that _if_ the Russian squadron had escaped Togo, and _if_ the separated supply train had been intercepted, it would have been very embarrassing to the ships of war refitting at Vladivostok. Nor do I question that, in case of such escape, the coal remaining in consequence of the deck loads taken would have been of much value for future operations. The more real and the greater those distracting considerations, like those of William III in Ireland, the more do they throw into relief the greatness, as well as the necessity, of subordinating them to the one thing needful, namely, to be ready to the utmost on the day of battle. They illustrate, too, how misleading is the disposition to compromise, to concede something all around; to straddle the two horses, escape and battle.

Rozhestvensky’s course was a compromise, a mix-up of escape and fighting; a strategic blunder to begin with, in not concentrating attention on the one needful thing clearly indicated by the course of events, and hence resulting necessarily in a series of blunders, which comprehensively may be called tactical. They all hang together, as the results of a frame of mind; the overloading with coal, the increased danger of fire therefrom, the submersion of the armor belts, the loss of speed and tactical capacity, the neglect of scouting, the company of the transports,—each of which is a tactical error,—all proceed from the failure to observe that the one governing consideration of strategy, in this war, was a naval battle under the most favorable conditions. It is the repetition of the mistakes of the Port Arthur division. When it becomes clearly imminent that one may have to fight under conditions less favorable than one would desire, conditions are changed; but there is no change of the principles involved. Vladivostok reached, the principle would have required the utmost preparation the yard offered, in the least possible time, so as to be the most fit possible to fight. At the Saddles, the same fitness required the dismissal from influence upon conduct of all thought of Vladivostok, and of supplies there, so far as such thought might modify the preparation for probable battle. It seems very probable that the defective conceptions deducible from Rozhestvensky’s conduct were emphasized and reinforced by the heavy preoccupations about supplies, necessarily incidental to his anxious outward voyage. His mind and _morale_ had got a twist, a permanent set, from which they could not recover.

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