is best known to the
great folks in London: to us, it appears, only to hum the nation and
make tools of us, for where we have been stationed no enemy was likely
to be met with, or where we could protect our own trade." There can be
no doubt that not only was the practical management of the Navy at
this time exceedingly bad, but that no sound ideas even prevailed upon
the subject. Hotham's squadron gained from neutral vessels two
important pieces of information,--that Nantes, Bordeaux, and L'Orient
were filled with English vessels, prizes to French cruisers; and that
the enemy kept eight sail-of-the-line, with frigates in proportion,
constantly moving in detachments about the Bay of Biscay. Under the
dispositions adopted by the British Admiralty, these hostile divisions
gave, to the commerce destroying of the smaller depredators, aright in their present contention. In
nothing military was scientific accuracy of prediction so possible as
in forecasting the result and duration of a regular siege, where the
force brought to bear on either side could be approximately known.
But, even in this most methodical and least inspired of processes, the
elements of chance, of the unforeseen, or even the improbable, will
enter, disturbing the most careful calculations. For this reason, no
case must be decided purely on its individual merits, without taking
into account the other conditions of the campaign at large. For good
and sufficient reasons, the British had undertaken, not to conquer a
hostile island, but to effect the deliverance of a people who were
already in arms, and had themselves redeemed their country with the
exception of two or three fortified seaports, for the reduction of
which