The French had a poor opinion of the sailing qualities of Spanish warships yet, so short were the British of fighting vessels, that all of Rodney’s captures that were still serviceable were taken into naval service. Throughout the war the Royal Navy was shuffling its strength in order to maintain superiority where required.
Not the least problem centred on the controversial figure of Augustus Keppel as First Lord of the Admiralty. His appointment followed the change of administration caused by Lord North’s downfall in March 1782. Keppel had previously refused any appointment that would have obliged him to fight Americans in what he considered an unjust war and, while he was considered to have insufficient breadth of vision to run a navy engaged on a global scale, he was the best that there was.
North, who had governed with assurance, had been a casualty of war. He knew that total victory meant large-scale borrowing and consequent increases in taxation. An unsatisfactory peace, however, would attract political opprobrium. Relentless increase in the national debt ran parallel with reverses in America and problems in the governance of British India.
Ireland also continued to be a major source of discontent and was another contributory factor in North’s downfall. Its impoverished peasantry had no love for the English yet depended upon them. One of their greatest sources of revenue, the thriving wool trade with America and France, had been made illegal by war. Unemployment forced many Irishmen into the ranks of the British army, while home defence depended increasingly upon locally raised militias with close ties to their local communities. Even the least intelligent of politicians could appreciate parallels between Ireland and the lost American colonies. Seeing the Americans gain concessions on trade by taking a firm line with London, the Irish, headed by non-absentee landowners, did likewise. Parliament, concerned that the French might exploit the situation with an invasion of Ireland, had to buy off the agitators.
North’s darkest political hour came in 1779 when the combined enemy fleets cruised the Western Channel with impunity, watched from a safe distance by a British Channel fleet of barely half its size and commanded by an elderly admiral who was also Member of Parliament for Portsmouth. Alarmed, the British public asked pointedly about the state of the Royal Navy.
It continued to do so as Gibraltar, notwithstanding its surviving a long siege, was also largely neutralized by it. Minorca fell to an operation mounted by the same combined fleets which then again came to cruise the Channel.
No longer able to hack his way through the thicket of problems that beset him, in early 1782 North resigned, yielding to an administration, headed by Lord Rockingham, riven by factionalism but anxious to end the war. In this, it ran counter to the instincts of the king. The canny George knew that the war, while expensive for Britain, was ruining France. To keep fighting the French would be to bankrupt them, while to appease the Americans would only encourage similar demands from the Irish. Above all, the king feared for Britain in the general spirit of revolution that heeded no national frontiers. But, as both his government and his people demanded peace, peace it had to be.
Given which, British policy could hope only that the new United States, in flourishing, would do so with Britain as a natural and influential partner and mentor, acting as a conduit to the world. For the French, the peace was unsatisfactory. Even as George III suspected, France had expended the bulk of her wealth in what Vergennes had hoped would prove an investment. Revenge on Britain was, indeed, a bonus but, being instrumental in gaining independence for the Americans, the French foreign minister felt entitled to better reward. As it was, Britain had yielded to the United States more than sufficient territory to satisfy the one-time colonials, leaving them with no grievance that the French could exploit. In being generous at the peace the British, rather than the French, appeared the benefactors; further, Britain retained the enormous tracts of land that were eastern Canada and Newfoundland as well as title to the rich Atlantic fishing grounds. In the West Indies, where she had hoped for major gain, France was required by the peace to restore most of what territory she had taken, while in India her remaining influence was negligible.
As a further irritation to the French, the Spanish, having contributed less to the great effort, appeared to have gained more. Their claims had been shrill and extensive and, having tried in vain for three years to take Gibraltar, they were now offered the fortress in return for concessions in America. Spain refused, preferring to retain her holdings in Florida. As the territory bordered that of the southern United States, Britain could foresee future complications and did not press the point. In agreeing to drop any further claim to Minorca, Britain also acknowledged no current interest in control of the western Mediterranean.
Lord Rockingham had died just months into his new ministry and it is to his successor, Lord Shelburne, that credit should be given for the sound common sense that pervaded the peace negotiations. He recognized that, militarily, Britain was exhausted and that concessions, if not offered, would quite likely have been wrung from him. By appearing generous through the concealment of weakness, he made considerable gains. However, because he could not reveal the underlying weakness of his negotiating position, he acquired a reputation of being a political schemer. For this he paid the political price, resigning in February 1783 following defeats in Parliament.
It remains a matter of debate whether political disunity at home affected the direction of the war to a greater extent than the greatly diverse war objectives caused political upheaval.
If France herself considered that she had gained something of a Pyrrhic victory after 1783, she could derive some satisfaction that her navy had acquitted itself well. Its revival had begun under Choiseul and continued under Sartine and, after October 1780, Castries. All shared the burning resolve of Vergennes to exact retribution on Britain. Castries, more than Sartine (and certainly more than his British equivalent, Keppel), thought in global terms, which maximized the flexibility of sea power. Reacting quickly to events or to perceived future advantage, it was Castries who had placed de Grasse in a position to intervene decisively prior to Yorktown and who had directed Suffren to cause a nuisance in the Indian Ocean. As both fleets were being operated to the limits of their resources, however, neither could strike a decisive blow.
The French took a pragmatic view of the performance of their fleet. Defeat and setback were accepted as necessary features of a grand strategy whose only important result was the final one. Drawn or indecisive engagements were not generally a matter of argument and recrimination, as they were with the British, but were gauged against their success in impeding the enemy’s strategic aims.
During the War of American Independence the fundamental problem for the French was simply that the British were numerically superior in warships and had not neglected their supporting infrastructure. Only through alliance with Spain could the French achieve local superiority and cause the Royal Navy to be stretched to a dangerous extent. To win a war against the British, a powerful fleet was essential while France, unlike Britain, could afford the loss of such a fleet without facing defeat.
That their assistance to the Americans cost the French dearly is evident from the correspondence of Washington to French ministers, correspondence that reveals his own anxieties about an ultimate outcome which could be decided only through military reinforcement, naval superiority and, above all, money. ‘Next to a loan of money, a constant naval superiority upon these coasts is the object most interesting.’ And:
If France delays a timely and powerful aid in this critical posture of our affairs, it will avail us nothing should she attempt it hereafter … We are at the end of our tether, and that now or never deliverance must come [through maintaining] a superior fleet always in these seas, and France [putting] us in condition to be active by advancing us money.
Despite the formal ending of the war with the Treaty of Versailles of September 1783, Castries believed that peace would not last and moved successfully to increase the fleet strength from its curr
ent establishment of sixty to eighty. Considerable economies resulted from building to standard designs but the cost of fleet renewal and expansion proved punitive, not least because many materials needed to be sourced from abroad. Following a series of disputes with the controller-general of finance, Calonne, Castries resigned in 1787 but his successor, the less able comte de Luzerne, continued his policies.
The French navy’s own administration was headed by the minister of marine who, like the First Lord of the Admiralty, was a political appointee. As the First Lord was not a member of the Cabinet so the minister of marine was not one of the King’s Council of State, despite his title of secretary of state. Only after 1788 did the French institute a system which approximated to the British Board of Admiralty. This, the Conseil de Marine, was again headed by the minister, but included seaman officers, administrators and, when required, technical experts.
The ministry comprised four separate departments, having responsibility for ports and arsenals, finance, recruitment and, surprisingly, colonial affairs. Day-to-day operation of the fleet was the function of the first. It supervised subsidiary organizations at the major arsenaux (arsenals) of Brest, Rochefort and Toulon, with lesser administrations at Dunkirk, Le Havre, Lorient, Bordeaux, Bayonne and Marseille. Of the latter group Lorient, recently acquired from the bankrupt East India Company, was so well equipped that it, too, attained arsenal status during the forthcoming French Revolutionary War.
It will be noted that there were only minor naval facilities facing the major enemy across the English Channel. Work had begun in 1783 on the construction of a deep-water roadstead at Cherbourg. Because of the depth of water the enclosing moles were to be based on about ninety enormous conical structures, built ship-fashion, ballasted with rock, towed to the appropriate site, moored and sunk in position through the introduction of further rock through numerous apertures. For the age, it was engineering on a bold scale, demanding vast quantities of timber, ballast and skilled manpower. Great prestige surrounded the project through the close attention paid it by the king, who was greatly interested in his navy and its activities. The local economy boomed and, at least in Normandy, Louis enjoyed a considerable boost to his popularity.
Again, however, the expense was crippling and, by 1786, Calonne, who had spent enthusiastically on both navy and military, had to pronounce the financial cupboard bare. As funds petered out, the Cherbourg project came to a halt, to be abandoned totally in 1789 as Revolution gripped the nation.
The organization of the country’s naval ports could almost have been designed to promote factionalism, a failing that in fact permeated the entire service. Louis XIV’s great minister, Colbert, had established the caste of intendants who, across the land, took instruction directly from the Royal Council of State to initiate and oversee required action. Incumbents acquired considerable status and power, usually reflected in their manner.
Until 1776, an intendant represented supreme authority in each naval arsenal. In that year they were subordinated to the commandant de la marine, a serving flag officer. Three separate departments, each headed by a director, reported through a director-general to the commandant. Each director was a serving seaman officer and their responsibilities were for shipbuilding, ordnance and port operation. There were also five administrative bureaux: for shipyards and workshops; central stores; ships’ stores and victualling; hospitals and labour; and pay and establishment. Each bureau was headed by a commissioner reporting through a commissioner-general to the intendant and, thence to the commandant. Every fortnight the commandant chaired a meeting of a local Conseil de Marine, comprising the intendant, the director-general and commissioner-general and their aides, and the secretary to the committee.
Although civilians, the administrators were members of a corps. Responsible to an intendant and thus, until recently, directly to the highest levels of government, the corps had its own structure, uniform and powerful sense of group identity. It greatly resented losing overall authority and its opinion of naval officers was that, in general, they were incompetent.
For their part, the naval officer class, much of it from aristocratic background, regarded the administrators simply as social inferiors, and to be treated as such. Not surprisingly, therefore, the commandant and the intendant, as leaders of disparate groups, did not usually enjoy the smoothest of relationships.
French naval officers were recruited rather differently to their British counterparts. They fell into two distinct categories, an arrangement which again encouraged divisions. The upper tier was termed the Grand Corps, an officer of which could command a king’s ship and progress upward in rank without any artificial bar. Entry qualification included the mandatory noble birth and, further, a family prepared to meet the considerable bill for incidentals attached to training. Once accepted, a boy was rated as a garde, the process of social subdivision beginning immediately through his being attached to either the Compagnie des Gardes de la Marine or to the more exclusive company of the Gardes du Pavillon Amiral, from which were recruited aides to senior personnel.
Officers of the Grand Corps, by virtue of that colour’s inclusion in their uniform, were known colloquially as Rouges. All other than their own were treated with the disdain then common to all aristocrats. A debilitating feature was the assumption that social superiority counted for as much as rank. As members of an exclusive club, all ranks in the Grand Corps mixed freely and with considerable informality. An order received by a junior rank might well be a matter of discussion before it was executed. Their studied arrogance guaranteed continual friction with all other grades. The practical arts of seamanship and gunnery, so much a part of the British officer’s experience from the outset, were inclined to be regarded as the province of others, the preferred education being theoretical.
Serving alongside the Rouges were officers of the so-called Petit Corps, whose plainer uniforms led to their being termed officiers bleus or, simply, Bleus. This term itself carried pejorative overtones as it referred to officers recruited from the lower social strata that, being of other than the nobility, barred them from command of a royal warship. Paradoxically, as Bleus tended to be drawn from the merchant service, or promoted from the navy’s own lower orders, they tended to have a superior grounding in the more practical requirements of their calling, together with a better understanding of, and relationship with, the lower deck. The relative importance of the Bleus reflected the state of the service at any time for, in emergency, their numbers could be expended fairly rapidly while those of the Rouges could not. The latter thus viewed them as a potential threat to their own privileges, not least with respect to the command of smaller regular warships.
The manner in which the Rouges distanced themselves not only generated a considerable fund of hostility but also concealed a goodly proportion of incompetent officers, who rose to considerable seniority by virtue of birth rather than ability. Although the Royal Navy was not above criticism in this respect, its wider emphasis on practical seamanship and the sea time in which to practise it tended to identify and weed out the poorer material.
A further unhealthy trend, again not unique to France, was for a large number of aged senior officers to crowd the upper reaches of the navy list, blocking the advancement of the younger and more able. Efforts to introduce change had, to date, proved ineffective until the marquis de Castries became minister of marine in 1780.
Following the end of the American War, Castries introduced a series of reforms to redress the more obvious failings of the service. Boys would now be recruited for officer training from a wider social background, being allocated to one of two new naval colleges. The Garde was no more, being replaced by a new élève-aspirant who was, however, still to be drawn from the nobility. Those from the more impoverished end of the aristocratic scale could now be supported by the state if they possessed genuine academic ability.
Those from the very fringe of aristocracy could join as volontaires, in company with those from non-aristocratic b
ut respectable background and selected merchant navy officers. Although the term echoed that of the British system, there existed no similarity: although such entrants might serve with considerable distinction and gain promotion, it was only rarely to the ranks of the Grand Corps.
Castries’s intention was that the aspirants of lesser social standing, primarily the volontaires, should graduate to a new grade of junior officer known as a sous-lieutenant de vaisseau. These would considerably outnumber the still-exclusive élèves, and would constitute a pool of trained professionals for times of emergency. In peacetime, they would be allowed command of minor, i.e. non-line, warships. Failing such a posting, a graduate would be put on half-pay but remain free to take a mercantile position to maintain and extend his skills. Exceptional sous-lieutenants could be promoted to lieutenant, thus joining the Grand Corps, but this was rare.
Although social distinctions were still being observed, therefore, the process of merging the Rouges and Bleus had begun. In fairness, it should be stated that the aristocracy were nothing if not well-educated and many accepted the reforms as a force for good. Some, indeed, were known to support the principles of emancipation and individual rights enunciated by the new Americans as justification for revolution.
Castries’s reforms affected all departments of the navy. It was he who introduced the new grade of seaman-gunner, controversially recruited from the ranks of army artillerymen and retrained as naval specialist gunners. Important technical matters, such as ship construction within the arsenals, ordnance and port movements, he allotted to new port officers who, although serving ashore, were drawn from the naval officer corps rather than from the administrators.
There was still little done to improve the lot of the average seaman, however. As in the Royal Navy, budget shortfalls usually translated into his pay falling into arrears, a cause of widespread discontent. With a smaller base of commercial shipping and fishing than was available to the British, the French had greater difficulty in raising the requisite number of men to crew their steadily growing fleet. Despite this, they did not resort to the impressment of landmen. Instead, all males of active age resident in coastal districts were required to register for a form of conscription. Each was called to the colours for spells which could be years apart and which varied in length according to urgency. In return for this somewhat irregular upheaval the government granted them exemption from certain taxes or commitments and, theoretically at least, compensated the severely injured or the families of those lost at sea.
The Fall of Toulon Page 6