Hotham, his successor, an easy-going gentleman, was not the man to change a method of conducting war which gave him much time at anchor at San Fiorenzo or Leghorn. He had gone to Leghorn to cover convoys which could have been much better covered by a close blockade of Toulon, when Martin put to sea again, on the 2nd March, with fifteen sail of the line. The 12,000 men required to make up the crews of these vessels had been found only by drafting 7500 soldiers into them. Martin had only 2300 sailors in addition to officers and petty officers. A gleam of good fortune was again allowed him. On the 7th March he took the Berwick, 74. Her masts had been rolled out of her by the carelessness of her officers, and she was following Hotham to Leghorn under jury rig. But this small advantage was all Martin could gain. Hotham, who sailed from Leghorn on the 9th, was informed of the whereabouts of the French by his frigates on the 10th. He pursued in baffling breezes and calms. On the 13th and 14th an encounter took place between them which has some resemblance to Bridport’s action near Groix. The French straggled, and the French admiral was ill obeyed. Two French vessels, the Ça Ira, 80, and the Censeur, 74, were taken after a stout resistance. Some vague cannonading on opposite tacks took place between the fleets. It is to the credit of the French that they inflicted a loss of 74 killed and 284 wounded on the English vessels most exposed to their fire. The Illustrious, 74, Captain Frederick, lost 90 of the total. Hotham had with him a Neapolitan 74, the Tancredi, commanded by a man whose name is associated closely with the Royal Navy for another reason, the unhappy Carracciolo. When the fragmentary battle was over, Hotham excited the wrath of his subordinate Nelson by placidly putting aside advice to pursue with vigour on the ground that two vessels had been taken and they had done very well.
An admiral of this kidney was not the man either to intercept Renaudin, who joined Martin at Hyères on the 4th April, or to keep the French confined to Toulon. They were almost ruined there by a mutiny of starving, unpaid men, but got over the difficulty, and were at sea again on the 7th June. The second sortie was even feebler than the first. Martin chased Nelson, who had been detached to Genoa, back on Hotham, at San Fiorenzo. Though reinforced by Renaudin, he was weaker than the English admiral, who had been joined by Admiral Mann with nine sail of the line on the 14th June. There was nothing for it but another retreat, another ineffectual distant cannonade—the final retreat of Martin to Toulon, and the return of Hotham to San Fiorenzo.
As the English admiral moved periodically from San Fiorenzo to Leghorn and from Leghorn back to San Fiorenzo, there was obviously nothing to prevent Richery from leaving Toulon on the 24th September with six of the line and three frigates on a cruise to America. He did so, passed the Rock of Gibraltar, and on the 7th October fell in with an English convoy of thirty-one merchant-ships under the protection of two 74’s and the French prize Censeur armed en flûte. Richery retook the Censeur and captured nearly all the merchant-ships. Spain having made peace with France in July, Richery was able to take his prizes into Cadiz, where he was promptly blockaded by Rear-Admiral Mann with six ships, and so remained for months. Hotham, again, was not the man to prevent Honoré Ganteaume from leaving Toulon for a cruise in the Levant on the 10th October. He did sail with one of the line and five frigates, released some scattered French vessels watched by us, did considerable damage to Russian and English trade, escaped the pursuit of Troubridge, and was back at Toulon on the 5th February 1796. Hotham, worn out by his exertions, resigned his command to Sir Hyde Parker on the 1st November 1795, and sailed for home, to be rewarded by an Irish peerage. Sir Hyde Parker was superseded by Sir John Jervis on the 30th of the month.
During 1796 the new admiral could do little, for the French fleet was paralysed by penury in the Mediterranean as in the Channel. He had to look on almost helplessly while Napoleon, who took command of the army of Italy in March, was conducting the first and perhaps the greatest of his campaigns. It was at least a campaign which showed what genius and enthusiasm, even if it be only enthusiasm for a full belly and plenty of plunder, can do against professional pedantry and routine. By June his victories had cowed Naples into deserting the coalition, and her help, such as it was, was lost. On the 28th June he seized Leghorn, and a source of supply to the fleet was lost, an opening for British trade was closed. The loss of Corsica was seen to be at hand, and on the 10th July Elba was seized as an alternative storehouse. Jervis’ fleet hampered the French coast trade, and captured a battering-train on its way to the siege of Mantua. But Spain, whirled about by every folly under the rule of Godoy, was seen to be coming into the war. On the 25th August, Jervis received orders from home to evacuate Corsica. Nelson was appointed to superintend the evacuation on the 26th September, and when he withdrew from before Leghorn to execute the order, a French expedition under General Gentili crossed to the island on the 19th October, on the very day we retired somewhat harassed by the partisans of France.
While we were withdrawing from Corsica, the movements of the fleets seemed to be leading to a clash of battle. On the 29th of July, Jervis wisely desirous to concentrate his forces, had recalled Mann from before Cadiz. He came, but without stores, and Leghorn being now shut to us and Corsica unfriendly, he had to be sent down to Gibraltar to fill up. While he was absent, Richery had sailed on a plundering expedition to Newfoundland, escorted by Don Juan de Lángara with a Spanish fleet on the 7th August. Spain did not declare war till the 5th October, but the declaration was then as always a mere formality. After seeing Richery on his way, Lángara returned, and on the 29th September left for Toulon with nineteen sail. On the 1st October he met Mann, and chased him into Gibraltar. Then he went on towards Toulon, picking up seven more ships of the line, which raised his force to twenty-six sail. Mann, moved by reasons which pass all understanding, called a council of war, which as usual agreed with the commanding officer, and sailed for England. His withdrawal weakened Jervis vitally. In after days the admiral said that if Mann had rejoined him, the battle which was to be fought off Cape St. Vincent on the following 14th February would have been fought in the Mediterranean. Yet it is to be observed that Jervis fought at St. Vincent with fifteen ships against twenty-seven. Now, when Lángara was seen off Cape Corso on the 5th October with twenty-six sail, Jervis was near at hand in Mortella Bay with fourteen. He had many responsibilities on him—the troops to be withdrawn from Corsica, the garrison at Elba, and the French not far off at Toulon. On the 14th February of next year he was free to make play with his admirable squadron. Yet it can hardly be doubted that if he had struck on the 15th October, as he did on the 14th February, the absence of Mann would not have prevented him from gaining a victory which would have dashed the Franco-Spanish naval coalition to pieces. He judged the risk too great, and sailed for Gibraltar on the 2nd November. From Gibraltar he went by order of the Government to Lisbon. We had left the Mediterranean, which was not to see an English fleet again till the summer of 1798. Lángara, much troubled by gales, formidable to his unseamanlike fleet, reached Toulon on the 26th October. He left it again on the 1st December with a French squadron of six sail under the command of Villeneuve. Lángara put in to Carthagena, but the Frenchman went on to Brest. He passed the Straits on the 10th December. Jervis had not yet left for Lisbon, and the French squadron was sighted, but could not be pursued. A storm which blew right into the anchorage at Gibraltar was raging at the time. One of Jervis’ ships was driven on shore, and two were damaged. The admiral could do no more than send a frigate home with the news that a French squadron had escaped from the Mediterranean. Villeneuve went on to Brest. On the 21st December he was seen and chased by the blockading fleet of Admiral Colpoys, but though forced to turn from Brest, he reached L’Orient safely on the 23rd. Villeneuve’s was not the only reinforcement received at this time by the French forces in the Channel and the Bay. Richery, after doing considerable damage in Newfoundland, had reached the island of Aix on the 5th of November, and had gone on to Brest with part of his squadron. A part, detached on the coast of America, had preceded him. Richery was swept into the most determined, and by far the most nearly successful, of the efforts made during this war to invade the British Isles in force.
The very nature of the struggle they had provoked taught the French to dwell on the hope of delivering the much threatened blow at the heart which was to bring their enemy to the ground. Schemes of invasion abounded, and may still be read with interest (or amusement) in Captain Desbrière’s history of Les Projets et Tentatives de Débarquement aux Îles Britanniques between 1793 and 1805. Some were only foolish. Some, without ceasing to be foolish, were ferocious. The most notable of these were the plans for carrying a chouannerie into the British Isles. A chouannerie was a warfare of atrocious brigandage. It took its name from the desperate Royalist partisans who, when no longer able to oppose the Republican armies in the field in Brittany, betook themselves to highway robbery, housebreaking, murder and torture of political opponents, or even only of defenceless people who possessed property. As they naturally preferred to act by night and by surprise, they were known as the Chouans—the brown owls. In the fury of their hatred the French planned to let loose hundreds of insubordinate soldiers and common criminals on the English coast as a measure of revenge for the evils which, so they argued, the support given by England to the Royalist partisans had brought upon France. Soldiers who were in prison for acts of indiscipline were formed into a corps under the name of the Légion des Francs. Another corps, aptly surnamed the Légion Noire, was formed of common criminals. The two were to be landed on the English coast to burn, murder, and plunder. The calculation made was that France stood to win in any case. If the two legions did murder and pillage, loss would be inflicted on England. If the English shot or hanged every man of them, France would be rid of hundreds of violent blackguards. The calculation was silly, in spite of its specious air of cunning. The Chouans in Brittany knew the country and the language, and had friends. The legions would have been perfectly helpless in England—and so they proved in February 1797. In that month a French naval expedition of two frigates, a corvette, and a lugger, escaped unobserved from Brest, and landed about 1500 of the Légion des Francs and the Légion Noire at Fishguard, in Pembroke. Captain Castagnier, who commanded the ships, had hardly sailed out of sight before these intended Chouans with their leader, Tate, a rascally American adventurer, surrendered to an inferior force of Welsh militiamen under Lord Cawdor. They had no intention of losing their lives in a frantic attempt to do mere mischief. The English Government then called on the French to exchange a number of its English prisoners for these cowardly ruffians. When the French refused, they were brought to their senses by a threat to land the legionaries on the coast of France without exchange. The mere prospect created a panic, and the British Government had its way. The end of the Fishguard invasion was therefore that hundreds of useful Englishmen were exchanged against men who were a danger and a burden to France, while other hundreds of honest Frenchmen who were capable of serving their country well remained in prison for months.
Before the Fishguard Invasion ended in sour pleasantry, a more sane and manly attack had failed, partly through mismanagement, but to a far greater extent because of the protection which the superhuman powers governing this universe have not seldom afforded to England. When the war in La Vendée had fairly come to its close by June 1796, the general commanding the Republican army, Lazare Hoche, urged that the large army of 117,000 men left free by the submission of the Royalists should be used for an invasion of the British Isles. His Government was ready to approve, but for a time it distracted its general by double-minded schemes. The belief that our empire in India was the cause, and not, as in truth it was, the consequence, of our strength, was general in France. The French Navy, conscious of its inability to contend with the concentrated force of the Royal Navy in the four seas of Britain, and longing for the warm seas and abundant prize money of the East, was eager for an expedition to India. So the Government at Paris played with dreams of a great expedition to the East Indies which was to drop a body of French troops in Ireland on its way, and the naval officers at Brest obstructed all other plans. The good sense of Hoche saw that division of aim must be fatal to success, and he at last persuaded his superiors to consent to attempt a vigorous invasion of Ireland. An invasion of England in force would have inflicted the worse blow, but it was rightly judged to be, if not impossible, yet so hazardous that it was not entertained. What Castagnier was able to do with four small vessels and a few hundred cut-throats in February 1797, might conceivably have been done by ten line-of-battle ships and several thousand good soldiers in 1796. But a Government which was ready to risk a few small vessels and a flying column of men whom it would willingly have seen at the bottom of the Channel was not disposed to run an equal hazard with valuable ships and fine soldiers. An invasion of Ireland would cause great, perhaps paralysing embarrassment to England. The country was on the verge of rebellion, France was full of Irish exiles who promised the co-operation of their countrymen. So an invasion of Ireland was undertaken.
All through the summer preparations were made. The English Government was well served by its spies in France. Some of them were among the Irish exiles. But it could learn nothing definite as to the exact aim of the invasion which was known to be in preparation. The vacillations of the French Government served it in one way. No definite information could be obtained where no definite plan was adopted. Nothing could be done save stand on guard and watch. The measures of defence taken were sufficient if they had been more effectually applied. A force kept at about fifteen sail of the line cruised off Brest. A western squadron of five, under Curtis, watched beyond the Brest blockade. The grand fleet, under Bridport, lay at Spithead to support and reinforce. But Spithead was too difficult to leave against head-winds and too far off to give an adequate support to the Brest blockade, and the blockade itself was somewhat slackly kept. Our measures were half measures. We had partially dropped Howe’s plan of watch from afar, but had not yet adopted St. Vincent’s close watch on the spot.
On the 15th December 1796 the French expedition drew out from the inner harbour of Brest to the outer roadstead. Some collisions took place among the vessels on their way, but they were not more serious than the similar misfortunes which were to befall Bridport’s ships a few days later. On the 16th the French fleet was ready to start. It consisted of seventeen sail of the line, fourteen frigates, two corvettes, one brig, and three luggers, with transports, and it carried 14,750 soldiers under the command of Hoche. The French admirals—Morard de Galle, Bouvet, and Nielly—had hoisted their flags in frigates, which they had the option to do; but Richery had his flag in the Pégase, 74. Morard de Galle was with Hoche in the Fraternité. The wind was from the east, the weather frosty and clear. The orders were to steer through the Raz du Sein, the southerly passage through the rocks which on that side bound the roadstead of Brest. This course was adopted in order to avoid the English blockading force the better. But on the 16th our ships under Admiral Colpoys, who had just taken up the command, were some fifty miles away to the west, too far off to strike quickly, with the east wind against them—too far off also to be quickly warned by Sir Edward Pellew, who with his own frigate, the Indefatigable, 44, and others, was close to the French port. When through the Raz the French were to steer for 120 miles W.¼S.W. and then head for Bantry.
A detailed account of their cruise belongs rather to the history of the French than of the English Navy, which, for reasons about to be given, as good as vanished for the next few days. But the fate of the invasion cannot be left untold. As the day grew on on the 16th, the wind drew round to the S.E., and became unfavourable to a fleet passing the narrow Raz du Sein. With an unpardonable want of foresight, Morard de Galle had not provided for this highly probable contingency. So when he suddenly decided in the afternoon to take the direct course to the west through the wide Iroise, and steered in that direction himself, he was followed only by the Nestor, 74, and the Romaine and Cocarde frigates. The rest of the ships either followed Bouvet through the Raz du Sein or hesitated and made movements which are now uncertain. One, the Séduisant, was wrecked on the Grand Stevenec. Pellew, who watched the French closely, added to their confusion by false fires and signals of no meaning. He sent the Phœbe frigate to warn Colpoys, and when assured of the direction the French were taking, went himself in search of his admiral.