Chapter V: The Seven Years’ War Till 1758 (2)

So ended the battle of the 20th May. It was first and foremost an example of what must happen so long as our navy continued to be bound by the stupid pattern set up in the Fighting Instructions for all actions against an enemy of equal, or approximately equal, force—so long, in fact, as we continued to engage to windward, ship to ship, leaving the enemy his line of retreat open, and depriving ourselves of the power to push the attack home, by making it a rule to adhere to the formation in which we began the fight. In these conditions decisive results were not to be achieved. But Byng did ill even according to this stupid model. He ought to have arranged his fleet parallel to the enemy before he bore down, and he ought not to have begun firing, as he did, when at such a distance that he could do no harm. Yet the lame and impotent conclusion of the battle and his own bungling might both have been forgiven, or even passed unnoticed, but for what followed. The fleet was satisfied that it had made the enemy run, and the nation would have been satisfied too, if there had been any effort to help Fort St. Philip in the days following the battle. There was none. For four days Byng loitered near the scene of the action, repairing the vessels crippled on the 20th. He said it was not easy to do, and indeed, from first to last, showed a marked disinclination to attempt anything that was not “easy.” Then a council of war came to the conclusion, which is always so welcome to weak men weakly led, that nothing more could be done. The fleet returned to “cover” Gibraltar, leaving Minorca to its fate. Before the complacent dispatch in which Byng announced his decision could reach home, the news of the failure had been given by La Galissonière’s boastful letter to his own king. It was published in Paris, and sent on from thence. In truth the French admiral was very nervous, constantly expecting the reappearance of the English in superior force, and was only kept from retiring to Toulon by the incessant driving of Richelieu. The honour both of the defence and of the attack in this campaign belongs wholly to the soldiers. When the result of the meeting of the two fleets was known, there burst out a storm of rage of which the echoes can be heard to this day. It is not pleasant to hear a people howling for the life of a man, whether he be the great and terrible Strafford or poor, weak, self-satisfied John Byng. The manifestations, too, were vulgar. The mob hanged the admiral in effigy, the City of London sent deputations asking for his life, the Prime Minister gabbled promises that he should be punished. Meanwhile Byng had returned to Gibraltar on the 19th June. He found there a reinforcement of five line-of-battle ships under Commodore Brodrick, who had arrived on the 15th from England. Preparations were being made to return to Mahon when Hawke came into Gibraltar to take command and also to send Byng home for trial together with the witnesses. Fowke was also recalled. The admiral heard of his supersession with unaffected, or at any rate with remarkably well-simulated, indignation. He wrote a furious self-laudatory letter on the 4th July, all but claiming a statue for his exertions. On the 9th July he sailed a prisoner in the =Antelope=, and reached England on the 19th August.

He was first imprisoned at Greenwich, and then sent to Portsmouth for trial. In the sentimental reaction of coming years, it was said that he could not expect fair treatment in the prevailing rage of the nation, and that he was made a sacrifice by base-minded politicians. But nobody can read the minutes of the court martial without seeing that the admiral had a perfectly fair trial, and was condemned on his merits, while the politicians who had an interest in securing his condemnation had left office before the court martial began, and remained out till after his execution. Newcastle had been replaced by the first short administration of Pitt. The court martial began to sit on the 17th December 1756, and sentence was given on the 28th February 1757. The court found that the admiral had offended against the 12th Article in that he had not done his utmost against the enemy. Therefore, though it acquitted him of cowardice or disaffection, it found him guilty of negligence, and condemned him to the only punishment it was authorised to inflict, which was death. Attempts were made to save his life. The House of Commons even passed a Bill to relieve the officers forming the court martial from the obligation to preserve secrecy as to what had passed in their private decision on the sentence. It was hoped that they might have something to say which would avail the prisoner, but when questioned by the House of Lords they could answer nothing to the purpose. The Upper House rejected the Bill, and the admiral was shot to death on the deck of the =Monarque= on the 14th March 1757. He died with dignity, and protesting to the last he had been made a victim.

In the changes of things and in the usual reaction by which Englishmen habitually atone for the fury of their rage, he came indeed to be thought of as a victim, yet the sentence was just. Coward, in the sense that he suffered from the pitiable cowardice which makes a man sick and giddy at the approach of personal danger, he was not. Neither was he disaffected, in the sense that he was scheming to upset the Government he served. As these were the forms of cowardice and disaffection contemplated by the Act, the court very properly acquitted him under these heads. But he was a coward in the intellectual sense. Having a dangerous piece of work to do, and one in which the very errors of the Government rendered it only the more incumbent on him to make all wants good by his own exertions, he thought chiefly of doing it at the least risk, and was resigned to failure. The excuses he made were pitiable. All through he insisted on the inferiority of his fleet. Yet he had thirteen ships to twelve. It is true that the French were better vessels, the _Foudroyant_ with her 80 guns, for instance, being superior in real strength to the =Ramillies= with her 90. Yet the _Foudroyant_ afterwards surrendered to a much smaller ship than the =Ramillies=. He harped on the lesser weight of his guns, and it is true that the 42-pounders carried on the lower deck of some French ships were heavier than any of ours. Yet he had 834 guns to the Frenchman’s 806, and the 42-pounder was afterwards rejected from our navy as too lumbering for ship-work. All through he kept insisting on the risk of doing this or that, till he brought upon himself the scathing answer of Blakeney: “I have served these sixty-three years, and I never knew any enterprise undertaken without some danger; and this might have been effected with as little danger as any I ever knew.” It was monstrous that men should think they could make war without hazard. Therefore the court justly found Byng guilty of “negligence,”—that is to say, all that deficiency to do enough, all that hanging back from strenuous effort, which are due to want of spirit, to a selfish regard of what the soft-minded man thinks are the interests of his safety, to the moral cowardice which falls short of mere physical poltroonery, and the disaffection which stops on this side of deliberate treason. The law had been made stern after the experience of the last war. Byng knew the conditions of his servitude. They were in the Act by which he exercised his own authority, and he sinned against the light.

Brutal as the wrath of the nation was, it was founded on a sound sentiment. If England was to take her place in the world, there had to be an end of Mathews and Lestock, of Peyton, Griffin, and Cornelius Mitchell. Voltaire’s famous jest that the English shot an admiral to encourage the others suffers from the worst defect a scoff can have. He meant it for a _reductio ad absurdum_. It was a perfectly accurate statement of fact. The shooting of Byng did encourage the others. Henceforward there might be errors and stupidities, and failures here and there. So there always will be while men remain men, but a service is to be judged by its general spirit, and by the view it takes of errors and failures. Nobody who looks critically at the history of the British Navy in the eighteenth century can fail to note a vast difference between the years before and those after 1757. And we insult the memory of the seamen of the eighteenth century if we suppose that this is so only because the wrath of the nation drove them to greater exertion, or that they did not think the execution of Byng just. Some did not. His second in command, Temple West, resigned rather than continue to serve if he was to be liable to punishment for “an error of judgment.” West by the use of that phrase gave currency to a sophism which has often been used to obscure the real significance of this great sacrifice. But the navy had not protested against the change in the Naval Discipline Act of 1749. The officers who tried Byng did not shrink from applying the law though it cut them to the heart to send a brother in arms to a shameful death. If they had been dishonest men, they might have acquitted him of negligence, but they saw the truth and they did their terrible duty. There is nothing to show that the seamen, whether on the quarter-deck or before the mast, did, as a body, think the sentence unjust. Indeed, the whole navy was now burning with a spirit which asked for nothing better than to be relieved of such leadership as Byng’s.

Three months after the admiral met his fate, the great administration of the elder Pitt was formed. At last the power of England was about to be directed, not by pettifogging and parliamentary intrigue, but by genius and passion. Yet the full effect of the change could not be felt for a space, and until 1758 was well advanced the work of Newcastle may be said to overlap that of Pitt. We may look for a moment at the interval before the power of the navy was fully free to act.

When Hawke superseded Byng in July 1756 it was too late to save Minorca, and no means were at hand for its recovery. He cruised unopposed by the French till December, and then returned home, leaving the command to Admiral Saunders. The interest on both sides was centred now in North America. The French had to reinforce and support their colonies. Our aim was to intercept their succours, and to make ourselves masters of the French port at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, as preparatory to the conquest of Canada. At home our Channel fleet was to watch Brest, and our Mediterranean fleet to keep a check on Toulon; while in America preparations were making to attack Cape Breton upon the arrival of a naval force from England. The work of watching the French ports was not uniformly well done. In April a squadron of four sail under the command of M. Durevest escaped Saunders in the Straits of Gibraltar after a slight brush, and held on to America. In May, Vice-Admiral Henry Osborn came out with reinforcements, and took over the command. The total force was thirteen of the line and two 50-gun ships, a much larger force than the French ships at Toulon could hope to face in open battle. Osborn was a good representative of that large body of naval officers whose names are associated with no single action of great renown, but who did much and varied service, and who contributed to the glory of more fortunate rivals by weary cruising and vigilant watch far away from the scene where more brilliant reputations were being earned. He was also a very typical officer of his time, when the life of the chief was one of stern solitude, and his exercise of authority was harsh. By nature Osborn was of a cold, saturnine disposition. He made no friends, and if he did not actively make enemies his hand weighed on all under his command with oppressive severity. But his vigilance, his strenuous discharge of duty, and his severe exaction of their utmost from his subordinates fitted him admirably for the work he had to do in the Mediterranean, in 1757 and the early months of 1758.

The loss of Minorca imposed a heavy disadvantage on the British admiral who had to watch Toulon. The nearest port at which vessels could be docked was Gibraltar, and this was a serious consideration before the use of copper sheathing had been introduced, and when ships grew rapidly foul. In December, when Osborn was at the Rock, M. de la Clue left Toulon with five sail of the line and one 50-gun ship, in the hope that he might elude his opponent and follow Durevest to America. But Osborn was on the watch in the Straits, and La Clue put into the Spanish port of Carthagena. Here he was watched rather than blockaded. Two more liners and a frigate succeeded in slipping in and joining him. On the 5th February 1758 he put out to meet reinforcements promised him from Toulon, and went as far as Palos; but his friends did not appear, and fearing to have the whole British squadron on his hands, he returned to Carthagena. On the 25th February a reinforcement did appear off the port. It consisted of the _Foudroyant_, 80, commanded by Captain Duquesne, who had with him the _Orphée_, 64, and the _Oriflamme_, 50. Duquesne declined to come within the island of Escombrera, which lies at the mouth of Carthagena harbour, and waited outside to be joined by La Clue. A squall drove him to sea, where his little squadron was sighted, scattered, and chased by Osborn. The _Orphée_ struck to the =Revenge= and the =Berwick=. The _Oriflamme_ was driven on shore, but succeeded in getting off and joining La Clue in Carthagena. A noble story is connected with the fortunes of the _Foudroyant_.

Among the ships under Admiral Osborn’s command was the =Monmouth=, 64, a poor little liner of our starved model, but a quick sailer. She was commanded by Arthur Gardiner, who had been flag-captain to Byng in the miserable battle of Minorca, and his first lieutenant was Robert Carkett, one of those officers who rose from before the mast. Little is known of Gardiner, save that he had been chosen by Byng to be his flag-captain, which implies that he was a “follower” of his admiral and was under obligations to him. In the battle he had given Byng good and manly advice, and in the court martial his evidence had told severely against his chief. The memory of that day had rankled in Gardiner’s mind. Now La Galissonière’s flag had flown in the _Foudroyant_ in the battle, and the English captain had come to regard her with a concentrated hatred. He is reported to have said that whenever he met her he would attack her, at all odds, and either take her or perish. Charnock, to whom the traditions of the navy of that time came directly, quotes a letter telling how “Two days before he left his port (viz. Gibraltar) being in company with Lord Robert Bertie, and other persons, he with great anguish of soul told them, that my Lord Anson had reflected on him, and said he was one of the men who had brought disgrace upon the nation; that it touched him excessively, but it ran strongly in his mind, that he should have an opportunity shortly to convince his lordship how much he had the honour of the nation at heart, and that he was not culpable.”

When now, on the morning of the 28th February 1758, Gardiner found himself among the chasing ships of Osborn’s squadron, and saw the French ships in flight, he singled out the mighty _Foudroyant_, and crowded sail in pursuit. The =Swiftsure= and the =Hampton Court= accompanied him, but they were heavy sailers and soon fell behind. The chase began early in the morning, and was prolonged till evening, when the _Foudroyant_ and the =Monmouth= were alone. As he pressed on the chase, Captain Gardiner, so tradition recorded by Charnock tells, said to a military officer who was with him, “Whatever becomes of you and me, this ship (pointing presumably at the _Foudroyant_) must go into Gibraltar.” Also he called his crew aft, and said, “That ship must be taken, she appears above our match, but Englishmen are not to mind that, nor will I quit her while this ship can swim, or I have a soul left alive.” Finding that he could not shake off his pursuer, and feeling not unreasonably confident that the other English ships were too far off to act against him, Captain Duquesne turned on the =Monmouth=. If M. Troude, the most careful historian of the French Navy, is right, the _Foudroyant_ suffered from a weakness which was infinitely dishonourable. Her crew was so mutinous that Captain Duquesne could not use the guns of his second deck. The men ran below very soon after the action began. This goes far to explain the action. The _Foudroyant_, a larger vessel than our three-deckers of the time, carried a broadside at least twice as heavy as the =Monmouth’s=, and ought, if properly handled, to have made a wreck of her in two broadsides. The bad conduct of Duquesne’s men does not diminish in any way the credit due to Captain Gardiner, who could not know how ill his opponent would be supported, and it does go to prove the moral inferiority of the French Navy at that period. The engagement began about seven o’clock between these two opponents so ill matched in material strength, and lasted till about midnight before help came to the =Monmouth=. Her mizen-mast was shot away and about a hundred of her men fell killed or wounded, but the mainmast of the bulky Frenchman was brought down on the fore, and he became an unmanageable wreck. At last the =Swiftsure= and the =Hampton Court= came up, guided by the sound of the cannon, and at one in the morning Duquesne surrendered, insisting, with chivalrous politeness, on giving up his sword to the officer commanding the =Monmouth=. This was not now Captain Gardiner. He had been wounded early in the action, but refused to leave the deck. Later he was mortally struck, and handed over the command to Lieutenant Carkett with a last exhortation not to let go his hold of the Frenchman. He died with the supreme consolation of knowing that no one could ever again accuse him of disgracing his country.

La Clue remained at Carthagena till he found an opportunity to slip out and escape to Toulon in April. The attempt to send help to North America had broken down before the watch of the English admiral. It was Osborn’s last service. An attack of paralysis reduced him to the necessity of coming home in July. He was thanked by the House of Commons, and acknowledged its thanks in the words which sound best in the ears of Englishmen, protesting that he had done no more than his duty, and hoping that his services might be “the most inconsiderable that shall be thus honoured.” The command in the Mediterranean devolved on Admiral Brodrick, but the war in that sea died down till it revived in the _annus mirabilis_ of 1759.

The share of the work thrown on the Channel fleet was not so successfully done. Until the superiority of the navy had been more fully established, and St. Vincent had organised his system of sleepless blockade, winter and summer, Brest was a bad port to watch, opening as it does on the wide and stormy Atlantic, not, as Toulon does, on the fierce and fickle but not formidable Mediterranean. In January of 1757 M. de Beauffremont left Brest for America with a squadron. It was too early to venture to enter the St. Lawrence, and he sailed first for the West Indies. Thence he made his way to Cape Breton in June, carrying with him a large convoy of merchant ships. At Cape Breton he found M. Durevest with the four vessels which had eluded Admiral Saunders in April. Another reinforcement joined him under the command of M. Dubois de Lamotte, who had left Brest on the 3rd May with nine sail of the line. The total force under Beauffremont’s command now amounted to eighteen sail of the line and five frigates. An admirable opportunity was offered him of doing some service, but he effected nothing of the active order. His mere presence on the coast had put a stop for the time to a scheme of Lord Loudoun for an attack on Louisbourg. In so far he did some good to his side in a passive way, and with that he was content. And with that he continued to be content. Admiral Holburne sailed from St. Helen’s on the 16th April, picked up some troops at Cork, and reached Halifax in July. His purpose was to join with Lord Loudoun and the colonial forces in an attack on Louisbourg. But the French were judged to be in too great strength to allow of success, and the combined operation was given up. Admiral Holburne, with his fleet of sixteen sail of the line and three frigates, paraded past Louisbourg in August and dared Beauffremont to battle. But the Frenchman would not come out. Holburne returned to Halifax, was reinforced by four sail of the line, and resumed the blockade of Louisbourg, but on the 24th of September a hurricane of extraordinary violence scattered his fleet, and he was blown home. The most severely damaged vessels were sent back at once. The admiral came on with the others, and the trade from Halifax. When the coast was clear Beauffremont came out at the end of October, and reached Brest in November.

We are now at the end of the preliminary period of the Seven Years’ War, and on the eve of the great campaigns which left the Royal Navy the uncontested mistress of the seas, and Great Britain the dominating power in Asia and America. A few words may be devoted to the moral and intellectual qualities of the two navies opposed to one another. It will be seen that from 1755 till well in 1758 our operations had not on the whole been successfully conducted. But when we look close it appears that, except in the notorious case of Byng, the fault lay with the rulers who did not use the fleet with vigour. In one respect the navy had still a good deal to learn. Its blockades were not maintained with the severity of later times. Our admirals, or perhaps it was rather My Lords at the Admiralty, shrank from the risks of a blockade of Brest in winter and spring. But even in the Mediterranean the method of conducting a blockade inevitably diminished its effect. A fleet was kept together outside an enemy’s port till it was all in want of water and a refit. Then it was taken back in a body, with the result that for the time being the blockade was raised. In the Mediterranean this was of less importance, because there always remained the chance of catching the enemy in the Straits. Yet the temporary absence of our fleet allowed M. de la Clue to escape first from Toulon, and then from Carthagena. On the ocean this periodical raising of the blockade rendered any effectual watch in Brest impossible. Yet our navy did, in the main, endeavour to keep close to the enemy’s ports in order to be in a position to attack him whenever he came out, and the aim it steadily pursued was to bring on battle with the French and beat their squadrons at sea. So it gained steadily in skill by prolonged cruising, and it grew no less steadily in confidence and daring.

When we turn to the French we find a great difference. With them the constant aim was to fight as little as might be when fighting was necessary, and to achieve their purpose without fighting, if possible. La Galissonière did not follow up his success against Byng, though he had ocular demonstration of the clumsiness and timidity of his opponent. Beauffremont had declined battle with Holburne, though numbers were on his side. Yet the French spoke of the glory of La Galissonière, and Beauffremont was held to have done right. It would be a very silly national vanity which sought the explanation of the difference in any want of personal courage among the French. Though a nervous and excitable they are a valiant people, and the history of their navy is full of the heroic fights of individual ships against long odds. What explains their inferiority in enterprise is the principle upon which they acted. It has been stated with simplicity by one of their writers on the art of war at sea, Ramatuelle. He says gravely that the French Navy did not aim at destroying a few of the enemy’s ships, but at a more serious object, namely, the execution of its mission. On the face of it this seems absurd, for what more serious object can any fleet have than to defeat its opponent and make itself master at sea? The French answered, that given the great number of the English warships it was idle to suppose that they would ever be destroyed wholly in battle, and that they themselves would be worn out long before a decisive result could be obtained. Therefore when a French admiral sailed to relieve a colony, or save some particular post from attack, or land men to be used against a British possession, he was to avoid battle as far as he could, and if forced to fight then to engage to leeward, cripple as many as he could of the enemy’s spars, and slip away. In short, his aim was always to keep his own fleet intact, and not to destroy the enemy’s. There is a superficial air of ingenuity about all this, but it was in the long run a fatal method of conducting wars. It left us free to direct our blows where we pleased. It made it certain that our fleets would never be seriously crippled. It made it inevitable that sooner or later we would break down the French defence, since that which attacks and wears away will always in the end break through a passive opposition. But its worst consequence was the degrading moral effect it had. The French Navy was taught that to be brought to battle was a misfortune, and thus it came to have a predisposition to give way, to avoid, to seek shelter, to run. We grew accustomed to look upon our opponent as one who feared our blows, and to take it for granted that the French would never stand in the face of an equal force. The working of these two widely different ideals of conduct will be seen in the following years of the war.