Читать книгу The Influence of Sea Power on the French Revolution - Alfred Thayer Mahan - Страница 13

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The Year 1794 in the Atlantic and on the Continent.

WHILE the British ships engaged on the 1st of June were refitting, Admiral Cornwallis, on the 22d of the month, sailed in command of Montagu's division for a cruise to the westward, from which he returned to port on the 8th of July. With this short exception, both the Channel and the Bay of Biscay were left unguarded until the 3d of September, when Howe again sailed with thirty-four ships-of-the-line, five of which were Portuguese, returning on the 21st to Torbay after a tempestuous cruise. The fleet remained in port until November 8, when the "Canada" seventy-four arrived with the news that her consort, the "Alexander," of similar force, had been captured two hundred miles west of Ushant by a French division of five ships-of-the-line, from which she herself had escaped by better sailing. The British at once put to sea, but, it is needless to say, failed to find the French ships, which had cruised with impunity during their absence; and on the 29th the fleet anchored again at Spithead, a station so far to the eastward as to indicate little expectation of interfering with any of the operations of the enemy from Brest. There accordingly it remained until the 14th of the following February. The protection of commerce was entrusted to squadrons of frigates, whose young and enterprising commanders did much service by capturing or dispersing the French forces of a similar character.

The Committee of Public Safety determined to use the opportunity which was permitted them by the diligent care of the British admiral to economize his fleet. There were, at this time, in Brest and the other Biscay ports as many as forty-six ships-of-the-line, either afloat or building; whereas in the Mediterranean, in consequence of the disaster at Toulon, there were only fifteen. The Committee therefore decided to send six ships round, and Villaret Joyeuse was directed to sail with the entire Brest fleet, thirty-five in all, for the purpose of escorting this division clear of the Bay of Biscay; after which he was to cruise for a fortnight against British commerce. The destitution of the Brest arsenal, however, still continued; for, with the enemy's command of the Channel, the naval stores of the Baltic could reach Brest only by going north of the British islands, and then running the risk of capture in the Atlantic by hostile cruisers. There had therefore been great difficulty in repairing the injuries received in the actions with Lord Howe, as well as in equipping the ships not then engaged. When the orders were received, vivid remonstrances were made, and the condition of the vessels fully represented to the Committee as being entirely unfit for a winter's cruise. Many masts wounded in the battle could not be replaced, the rigging was in bad condition, the crews were untrained. Several of the ships it was proposed to send were old and worn out; and so great was the dearth of provisions that only those for Toulon received enough for some months, the others for no more than four weeks.

Robespierre had fallen five months before, and the Reign of Terror was now over; but the Committee were still unaccustomed to admit objections, and did not find in their limited knowledge of sea matters any reason for recalling orders once given. On the 24th of December, 1794, the fleet began to leave Brest, and, in so doing, one of the largest, of one hundred and ten guns, was wrecked on a rock in the entrance. On the 29th the remaining thirty-four had cleared the harbor and anchored in the road outside, whence they sailed on the 30th. On the night of January 1, 1795, a furious gale sprang up, followed by a spell of violent weather. Two eighty-gun ships and a seventy-four foundered, the crews being with difficulty saved. Two yet larger, of one hundred and ten guns, had seven feet of water in the hold and would have been lost had the storm lasted for twenty-four hours longer. Another seventy-four had to be run on the coast to save the lives of her people. In the midst of these difficulties, which caused the separation of the fleet, it was necessary to transfer provisions from the Toulon division to the other ships, an herculean undertaking, but imperative to keep the latter from starving. On the 2d of February the greater part of the survivors again reached Brest; but some had to scatter to other ports as the weather permitted. The Toulon ships returned with the rest. This mid-winter cruise had cost the republic five ships-of-the-line; it brought in one British corvette and seventy merchantmen as prizes.

The stars, or rather the winds, in their courses had fought for Great Britain; but in no wise did she owe anything to her own efforts. Not till the 14th of February did the Channel fleet put to sea, nearly a fortnight after the French had returned to Brest. Whatever may be said of the inexpediency of exposing the heavy ships to winter weather, it seems clear that the opposite system left the enemy at perfect liberty to combine his movements; and that there was little likelihood of these being made known to the commander-in-chief in Torbay soon enough for him to follow efficaciously. Howe himself felt this, and, from instructions issued by him to Sir James Saumarez on the 15th of January, it would appear that this escape of the French roused him for a moment to contemplate the close watch off Brest, afterwards practised by Jervis and Cornwallis. [97] This was the last occasion on which the veteran admiral actually went to sea in command of a fleet; although, from an apparent reluctance to try new men, the government insisted upon his exercising a nominal charge from quarters on shore. He was now in his seventieth year and suffering from many infirmities. The command afloat devolved upon a man not much younger, Lord Bridport, one of the naval family of Hood, but whose career does not bear the impress of great ability which distinguished so many of its members. Immediately before this, general dissatisfaction had caused a change in the Admiralty, over which, since 1788, had presided Pitt's elder brother, the Earl of Chatham. He was succeeded, in December, 1794, by Earl Spencer, a more vigorous and efficient man, who remained First Lord until the fall of Pitt's administration in 1801.

The new head, however, did not make any substantial variation of system, calculated to frustrate the enemy's naval combinations by the strategic dispositions of the British fleet. More activity was displayed by keeping a small squadron of half a dozen ships-of-the-line constantly cruising in the soundings and to the westward, and the great Channel fleet was more continuously at sea during the summer months; but the close blockade of Brest was not attempted, nor was Bridport the man to persuade the government to the measures afterwards so vigorously, and in the main successfully, carried out by Lord St. Vincent, both as successor to Bridport in the Channel fleet and subsequently as First Lord of the Admiralty. To this faulty policy contributed not a little the system of telegraphs, adopted in 1795, by which communications were quickly transmitted from height to height between London and Portsmouth. This great improvement unfortunately confirmed the tendency of the Admiralty to keep the Channel fleet at the latter point, regardless of the obvious, but unappreciated, strategic disadvantage of a position so far east of Brest, with winds prevailing from the western quarters. To have the commander-in-chief just there, under their own hand, to receive orders from them, seemed much safer than to put him and his fleet in a central position whence he could most certainly intercept or most rapidly follow the enemy, and then to trust to the judgment of a trained and competent sea-officer to act as the emergency required. The plan came near resulting very disastrously when the French attempted to invade Ireland; and would have done so, had not the elements again interfered to remedy the absence of the British fleet. "If," says Osler in his life of Lord Exmouth, [98] from whom he probably received the idea, "if Lord Bridport (in 1796) had been waiting at Falmouth, with discretional powers, Sir Edward Pellew having been instructed to communicate directly with him, he might have sailed early on December 21st" (Pellew reached Falmouth from before Brest on the 20th) "and found the enemy in Bantry Bay, when perhaps not a ship would have escaped him. It is, however, to be remembered that, as the destination of the French armament was unknown to the last, the Admiralty might very properly determine that he should receive his final instructions from themselves, and therefore would keep the fleet at Spithead (Portsmouth) for the convenience of ready communication." But why! How could they in London judge better than a good admiral on the coast?

During the year 1794, now closing, the Revolution in France had been rapidly devouring its children. After the overthrow of the Girondists in June, 1793, the Terror pursued its pitiless march, sweeping before it for the time every effort made in behalf of moderation or mercy. The queen was put to death on the 16th of October, and her execution was followed on the 31st by that of those Girondists who had not deigned to escape from their accusers. Dissension next arose and spread among the now triumphant party of the Jacobins; resulting in March and April, 1794, in the trial and death of the Hébertists on the one side, and of Danton and his friends on the other. More and more power fell into the hands of the Committee of Public Safety, whose tokens to the world were Robespierre and his chief supporters, St. Just and Couthon, ruling the Convention which passively decreed their wishes, and, through the Convention, France. For three short months Robespierre now appeared as the master of the country, but was himself carried on and away by the torrent which he had done so much to swell. The exigencies and dangers of his position multiplied the precautions he deemed necessary to secure his authority and his safety; and the cold relentlessness of his character recognized no means so sure as death. On the 10th of June, by his sole authority, without the intervention of the Committee of Public Safety, he procured a decree modifying the procedure of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and suppressing the few checks that restrained its uncontrolled power. In the fourteen months preceding this decree 1256 persons had been by the tribunal condemned to death; in the six weeks that followed, until Robespierre himself fell, the executions were 1361. [99] So extreme an access of fury betokened approaching exhaustion; no society could endure the strain; the most violent and blood-thirsty, as well as the most timid, felt their own lives in danger. Bitter opposition to the dictator arose both in the Committee of Public Safety and in the Legislature. The doubtful struggle, between the prestige of his power and long continued success and the various passions of fear and vengeance animating his opponents, culminated in a violent scene in the Convention on the 27th of July. For some hours the issue was balanced, but in the end the arrest and trial of Robespierre and his chief supporters were decreed. The following day he, St. Just and Couthon, with some others of lesser note, died on the guillotine.

No immediate change in the form of government ensued. The Committee of Public Safety, reconstituted, continued to exercise the executive functions which nominally depended upon the Convention; and the impulse which it had imparted to the soldiers and armies of France continued for a time to carry them resistlessly forward. But the delirious intensity of the popular movement had reached its climax in the three months' unrestrained power of Robespierre, with whose name it has been ever associated. Though the external manifestations of strength continued for a time unabated, the inner tension was relaxing. Weakness was about to succeed the strength of fever, to spread from the heart throughout the whole organism, and, by threatening social dissolution, to prepare the way for concentrated absolute power.

The onward swing of the French armies on the north-east still continued. The year 1794 had opened with the investment of Landrecy by the allies, and its surrender to them on the 30th of April. The French began their campaign with the plan, especially affected by Carnot in all his military combinations, of attacking at the same time both flanks of the allied Austrians, Dutch and English, concentrating at each extremity of the line a force greatly superior to the enemy before it. As Jourdan, commanding the French right, threatened the allied stronghold of Charleroi, he drew thither the greater effort of the allies, and Pichegru, on the left, found his task easier. Five times did Jourdan cross the Sambre to attack Charleroi, and four times was he compelled to re-cross; but on the fifth, before the allies could come up in sufficient force, the place capitulated—the guns of the relieving force being heard just as the garrison was marching out. The following day, June 26, 1794, Jourdan fought and won the battle of Fleurus; the Austrians retreating upon Nivelles towards the future field of Waterloo. The allies on both flanks continued to fall back; Ostend and Nieuport, ports on the North Sea facilitating communication with England, were successively surrendered, and Brussels uncovered. On the 10th of July Pichegru entered Brussels and formed his junction with Jourdan. On the 15th the allies lost Landrecy, the first and only prize of the campaign. On the same day the French attacked in force the centre of the allied line, where the Anglo-Dutch left touched the Austrian right. The former being gradually turned fell back, and the Austrians, finding their flank uncovered, did the same. From this time the allies retired in divergent directions, the Anglo-Dutch north-east toward Holland, the Austrians eastward toward Coblentz; thus repeating in retreat the unmilitary and ruinous mistake which had rendered abortive the offensive campaign of 1793.

The French advance was now stayed by the Committee of Public Safety, in deference to an emotion of patriotism, until the towns surrendered the year before should be retaken. On the 11th of August Le Quesnoy opened its gates, on the 27th Valenciennes, and on the 30th Condé. The siege corps now rejoined the armies in the field and the advance was resumed; Pichegru following the British and Dutch toward Holland, Jourdan, by a series of flank attacks which threatened the communications of the Austrians, forcing the latter from one position to another, until on the 5th October they recrossed to the east side of the Rhine, the French occupying Coblentz and Bonn on the west bank. The advance of Pichegru was marked by less of battle and more of siege than that of Jourdan, but was alike successful. By the middle of October his army had reached the Rhine; which in Holland divides into two branches, the Waal and the Leek, between which the enemy lay. A month later they had retreated beyond the latter, the French being for a moment stopped by the floating ice in the rivers; but the winter was one of unusual severity, and early in January the waters were frozen hard. On the 17th of January, 1795, the Prince of Orange left Holland for England, and on the 20th Pichegru entered Amsterdam. The provinces and cities everywhere declared for the French, and a provisional republican government was established; while the pursuit of the British troops was continued with unremitting diligence until they had escaped into German territory, whence they returned, in April, to England.

The occupation of Belgium and Holland by the French was in every way a matter of concern to the other European powers. It threatened Great Britain in the North Sea, where her flank had previously been strengthened by the Dutch alliance, and compelled her at once to weaken the Channel fleet by a detachment of five ships-of-the-line to confront the Dutch squadrons. The merchants of Holland being among the great money-lenders of Europe, large revenues were opened to the needy French; and the resources thus gained by them were by the same blow lost to the allies. Great Britain thenceforth had to bear alone the money burden of the war. But on the other hand the republican commissaries sucked like leeches the substance of the Dutch; and the sources of their wealth, commerce and the colonies, were at the same time threatened with extinction by the British sea power, whose immediate hostility was incurred by the change in their political relations. Within a month, on the 9th of February, orders were issued to arrest all Dutch ships at sea; temporary provision being made to restore neutral property found on board them, because shipped while Holland was an ally. Vigorous measures were at once taken for the seizure of the rich Dutch colonies in all parts of the world; and before the year 1795 closed, there passed into the hands of Great Britain the Cape of Good Hope, Malacca, all the Dutch possessions on the continent of India, and the most important places in Ceylon; the whole island submitting in 1796. Besides these, other colonies were taken in the farther East and in the West Indies. The Dutch navy remained inoffensively in its ports until the year 1797, with the exception of a small expedition that escaped from the Texel in February, 1796, prepared to retake the Cape of Good Hope. Unable to go through the English Channel, which was completely under the enemy's control, it passed north of the British Islands and eluded capture until Saldanha Bay, near the Cape, was reached. Upon hearing of its arrival the British admiral on that station sailed in pursuit, and, having a greatly superior force, received its instant surrender.

The success that followed the French standards in Belgium and Holland during 1794 accompanied the less striking operations on the Rhine and in the South. At the end of the year the Austrians and Prussians had abandoned the west bank of the river, except Luxembourg and the very important fortress of Mayence. Luxembourg also was closely invested, and capitulated in June, 1795. In the Pyrenees, the Spaniards were driven across the frontiers, and had, in the early autumn, established themselves in a strong entrenched camp at Figueras. On the 17th and 20th of November the French assaulted this position, and on the latter day drove the enemy from all their works round the place, forcing them to retreat upon Gerona. The garrison of Figueras, ten thousand strong, capitulated a week later, and the French then invested Rosas, which held out for two months longer; but the resistance of Spain was completely broken, and the further events of the war in that quarter are unimportant.

On the Italian frontier the year opened with substantial successes on the part of the French, who got possession of important mountain passes of the Alps; but progress here was stopped, in May, by reverses attending the operations on the Rhine, causing troops to be withdrawn from the Army of the Alps. The belligerents rested in the same relative positions during the remainder of 1794.

The important political results of the French military successes in the campaign of 1794 were demonstrated and sealed by treaties of peace contracted in 1795 with Prussia, Spain, and Holland. That with the latter power was one not only of peace, but also of alliance, offensive and defensive. The principal naval conditions were that the United Provinces should furnish twelve ships-of-the-line, with frigates, to cruise in the North Sea and Baltic, and should admit a French garrison into the important seaport of Flushing. This treaty was signed May 15, 1795. The Prussian treaty was concluded on the 5th of April. It stipulated, generally, the surrender of Prussian possessions on the left bank of the Rhine, and by a later agreement established a neutral zone in North Germany under Prussian guarantee. The treaty with Spain was signed at Basle on the 22d of July. It maintained the integrity of the Spanish possessions in Europe, but provided for the cession to France of Spain's part of Haïti.

On the other hand, Great Britain during the same year drew closer the ties binding her to her still remaining allies. An agreement was made in May with the emperor of Germany that he should provide not less than two hundred thousand men for the approaching campaign, while Great Britain was to pay a large subsidy for their support. This was followed by a treaty of defensive alliance, each government engaging not to make a separate peace. With Russia also was made a defensive alliance, and the czarina sent twelve ships-of-the-line to cruise with the British fleet in the North Sea.