The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire 1793-1812, vol 2

by A. T. Mahan

CHAPTER XVII.

The Warfare against Commerce during the French Revolution and Empire, to the Berlin Decree. 1793-1806.

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, [247] "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 over-confidence; 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.

The Continental System of Napoleon, here briefly alluded to, and to be described more fully further on, was, however, only the continuation, in its spirit and aims, of a policy outlined and initiated by the Republic under the Directory; which in turn but carried into its efforts against commerce the savage thoroughness which the Convention had sought to impress upon the general war. The principal measures of the emperor found antitypes in the decrees of the Directory; the only important difference being, that the execution of the latter reflected the feeble planning and intermittent energy of the government which issued them; whereas Napoleon, as always, impressed upon his system a vigor, and employed for its fulfilment means, proportioned to the arduousness of the task and the greatness of the expected results. The one series being therefore but the successor and fulfilment of the other, it has been thought best to present them in the same close connection in which they stand in the order of events, so as to show more clearly the unity of design running throughout the whole history,—a unity due to the inexorable logic of facts, to the existence of an external compulsion, which could in no other way be removed or resisted. Both in common owed their origin to the inability of France seriously to embarrass, by the ordinary operations of war, the great commerce of her rival, though she launched her national cruisers and privateers by dozens on every sea. The Sea Power of England held its way so steadily, preserved its trade in the main so successfully, and was withal so evidently the principal enemy, the key of the hostile effort against France, that it drove not only the weak Directors, but the great soldier and statesman who followed them, into the course which led straight to destruction.

The declarations of war were followed by the customary instructions to commanders of ships-of-war and privateers to seize and bring into port the merchant vessels of the enemy, as well as neutrals found violating the generally acknowledged principles of international law. So far there was nothing in the course of either belligerent that differed from the usual and expected acts of States at war. At once the sea swarmed with hastily equipped cruisers; and, as always happens on an unexpected, or even sudden, outbreak of hostilities, many valuable prizes were made by ships of either nation. The victims were taken unawares, and the offence on each side was more active and efficient than the defence. This first surprise, however, soon passed, and was succeeded by the more regular course of maritime war. The great British fleets gradually established a distinct preponderance over the masses of the enemy, and the latter was quickly reduced to the ordinary operations of commerce-destroying, in the sense usually given to that word,—a policy, moreover, to which the national tradition and the opinion of many eminent naval officers particularly inclined.

To these raids upon their shipping, by numerous scattered cruisers, the British opposed a twofold system. By the one, their merchant vessels bound to different quarters of the globe were gathered in specified ports, and when assembled sailed together under the care of a body of ships of war, charged to conduct them to their voyage's end. This was the convoy system, the essence of which was to concentrate the exposed wealth of the country, under the protection of a force adequate to meet and drive away any probable enemy. Immense numbers of ships thus sailed together; from two to three hundred was not an unusual gathering; and five hundred, or even a thousand, [248] were at times seen together in localities like the Chops of the Channel or the entrance to the Baltic, where the especial danger necessitated a stronger guard and a more careful acceptance of protection by the trader,—thus emphasizing and enlarging the peculiar features of the practice. It is scarcely necessary to remark that much time was lost in collecting such huge bodies, and that the common rate of sailing was far below the powers of many of their members; while the simultaneous arrival of great quantities of the same goods tended to lower prices. Consequently, many owners, relying upon the speed of their vessels and upon good luck, sailed without convoy upon completing their cargoes,—willing, after the manner of merchants, to take great risks for the sake of great returns, by being first in the market. To protect these, and others, which, by misfortune or bad management parted from their convoy, as well as to maintain their general command of the sea, the British resorted to another system, which may be called that of patrol. Fast frigates and sloops-of-war, with a host of smaller vessels, were disseminated over the ocean, upon the tracks which commerce follows and to which the hostile cruisers were therefore constrained. To each was assigned his cruising ground, the distribution being regulated by the comparative dangers, and by the necessary accumulation of merchant shipping in particular localities, as the North Sea, the approach to the English Channel, and, generally, the centres to which the routes of commerce converge. The forces thus especially assigned to patrol duty, the ships "on a cruise," to use the technical expression, were casually increased by the large number of vessels going backward and forward between England and their respective stations, dispatch-boats, ships going in for repairs or returning from them, so that the seas about Europe were alive with British cruisers; each one of which was wide-awake for prizes. To these again were added the many privateers, whose cruising ground was not indeed assigned by the government, but which were constrained in their choice by the same conditions that dictated at once the course of the trader and the lair of the commerce-destroyer.

Through this cloud of friends and foes the unprotected merchantman had to run the gantlet, trusting to his heels. If he were taken, all indeed was not lost, for there remained the chance of recapture by a friendly cruiser; but in that case the salvage made a large deduction from the profits of the voyage. The dangers thus run were not, however, solely at the risk of the owner; for, not to speak of the embarrassment caused to others by the failure of one merchant, the crews of the ships, the sailors, constituted a great potential element of the combatant force of the nation. A good seaman, especially in those days of simple weapons, was more than half ready to become at once a fighting man. In this he differed from an untrained landsman, and the customs of war therefore kept him, whenever taken afloat, a prisoner till exchanged. Every merchant ship captured thus diminished the fighting power of Great Britain, and the losses were so numerous that an act, known as the Convoy Act, was passed in 1798, compelling the taking of convoy and the payment of a certain sum for the protection. In the first year of its imposition this tax brought in £1,292,000 to the Treasury, while resulting in a yet greater saving of insurance to owners; and the diminished number of prizes taken by the French was thought to be a serious inconvenience to them, at a time when, by the admission of the Directory, foreign commerce under their own flag was annihilated. This remarkable confession, and the experience which dictated the Convoy Act, may together be taken as an indication that, in the defence and attack of commerce, as in other operations of war, concentration of effort will as a rule be found a sounder policy than dissemination. In 1795 the French formally abandoned the policy of keeping great fleets together, as they had before done in their history, and took to the guerre de course. Within three years, ending in December, 1798, "privateers alone put more than twenty thousand individuals in the balance of exchanges favorable to England," and "not a single merchant vessel sailed under the French flag." [249] "The fate of almost all mere cruisers (bâtimens armés en course) is to fall, a little sooner or later, into the hands of the enemy," and in consequence, "out of a maritime conscription of eighty thousand seamen, to-day but half remain" with which to man the fleet. British contemporary authority gives 743 as the number of privateers taken from France alone, between the outbreak of war in 1793 and the 31st of December, 1800,—not to speak of 273 ships of war of the cruiser classes. [250] The absolute loss inflicted by the efforts of these vessels and their more fortunate comrades cannot be given with precision; but as the result of an inquiry, the details of which will be presented further on, the author is convinced that it did not exceed two and a half per cent, and probably fell below two per cent of the total volume of British trade. This loss may be looked upon as a war tax, onerous indeed, but by no means insupportable; and which it would be folly to think could, by itself alone, exercise any decisive influence upon the policy of a wealthy and resolute nation. Yet no country is so favorably situated as France then was for operations against British commerce, whether in the home waters or in the West Indies, at that time the source of at least a fourth part of the trade of the Empire.