The officers think in silence, and the crew act without speech or thought.' This perfection of subordination, however, he ascribes, in a certain degree, to the phlegmatic character and the natural taciturnity of the English; at the same time he is of opinion that similar results might be obtained even from the vivacious Frenchmen of the south; for,' says he, (an inference which we do not clearly comprehend,) the inhabitants of Great Britain are naturally less active than the French, and especially than the inhabitants of the south of France.'

There is an instruction in the British naval service which strictly enjoins every officer to refrain from making any remarks or observations on the conduct or orders of any of his superior officers, that may tend to bring them into contempt; and most carefully to avoid the saying or doing of any thing which, if seen or heard by, or reported to, the ship's company, may discourage, or render them dissatisfied with their condition, or with the service they shall then be employed on, or with any service on which they may be ordered.' But what is the case in the French navy?

Under the system, at present so much extolled, of the Imperial navy, I have witnessed a renewal of the bad example of that spirit of insubordination which, under Louis XV. and Louis XVI. on two occasions, destroyed the French navy. I have seen captains of ships of the line manifest openly their contempt for most of the admirals under whom they were serving, or might serve; captains of frigates express towards those of the line, sentiments of reproach which these had bestowed on their superiors; in short, from rank to rank, down to the lowest midshipman, and even to the sailors themselves, I have witnessed a spirit of detraction-a wish to spread contempt for all in command, to infect the mind of every inferior, destroy the confidence of the crew in their officers; and, by the loss of that confidence, to destroy the energy and the efficiency of the naval force.'—tom. ii. p. 15.

But if the administration of the British navy exacts from inferiors an entire obedience to the orders of their superiors, it also exacts from these, as M. Dupin justly observes, an example of all the military virtues, and more especially of daring enterprize and unquestionable courage. The English,' he adds, like the Carthaginians, punish with death the admiral who, engaging with a force nearly equal, does not gain the victory. The fate of Admiral Byng, and the more recent censure of Sir Robert Calder, furnish him with examples of this strict and rigid justice. Though, with an inferior force, the latter met the combined fleets of France and Spain, engaged, and took two of them, he was tried and censured, because it was supposed that, by renewing the engagement, he might have obtained a more decisive success.

'What,'

says

says Dupin, would they have done in England with Calder if he had commanded a superior fleet, and lost two ships in avoiding a battle which ought to have afforded so fair an opportunity for the display of skill and valour? What would they have done with the captains? We can tell him, at least, what they would not have done they would not have secretly put them to death, as there is but too much reason to believe was the fate of poor Villeneuve. We cannot help thinking that Sir Robert Calder was hardly dealt with. In saying this, we mean not to impugn the sentence, but the charge-which ordered him to be tried, not for his whole conduct in presence of the enemy, but for part of it only-not for what he did, but for what he omitted to do; and we believe this was the general feeling in the navy. With regard to Byng, his sentence was a just one, as the law then stood; and the members of the court-martial who awarded it had not (as the members of those of the present day have) a discretionary power to mitigate the sentence. Byng, however, was, in some measure, the victim of popular clamour, and the squabbles and intrigues of an administration which had lost the confidence of their master, and feared to trust one another.

The mode in which that great naval officer, Napoleon, managed matters of this kind is thus stated by M. Dupin.

'Captains,' he says, ' evidently culpable, were delivered over by him to the maritime courts: they were acquitted by the judges, who were delighted to establish the point in naval jurisprudence, that a man might be imbecile or pusillanimous in battle, without incurring the punishment due to that incapacity which compromises the public interest, or that cowardice which dishonours the national flag. Sometimes Napoleon deposed the members of these courts, and wished to retry that which the law permitted to be tried only once. This was only acting the despot without remedying the evil. He had done better by consulting public opinion; by endeavouring to know beforehand those men so lenient towards crimes against honour; never to have trusted them with commands, but to have placed them without delay on the retired list.'—tom. ii. p. 18.

We have a further specimen of his Imperial Majesty's ideas of justice, and of the encouragement which he gave to the navy, in an official communication in the Moniteur of November, 1811: 'The Minister of the Marine shall cause the laws of the Empire to be executed. The Commander of the Clorinde shall be brought before the tribunals for having taken so small a share in the battle... for having preferred life to honour.'... Thus,' observes M. Dupin, the sovereign authoritatively decides on the infamy of an officer whom he is about to try!' 'If,' he continues, fear, honour and virtue, are the characteristics of despotical, monarchical, and democratical

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democratical states, I leave others to judge to what form of government such a decision belongs.'

In naval tactics as well as discipline, M. Dupin candidly avows the English are far superior to the French; and he thinks it would be very desirable that some one of the French officers who, in the course of the last war, had the misfortune to serve on board an enemy's ship, would give his countrymen a faithful description of the principal manœuvres, and of the order in which they are executed on board an English ship of war.' 'One might then,' he continues, compare the means of action of our rivals with those in use with us, and give the preference to the best.' Without undervaluing the talents of a French naval officer, we apprehend that a few days, or weeks, or even months, would not enable him to do what M. Dupin here requires. A perfect knowledge of seamanship, and of what a ship will perform under all circumstances, can be acquired only by long practice, and not at all by merely looking on. The same observation will apply to the management of the great guns, which he considers as of more importance than the manoeuvring of the ship itself, and as infinitely more difficult than that of artillery on shore. There can be no doubt of this: as, in the one case, the instrument is steady and immovable; in the other it is constantly in motion. The effect of the broadside of a British man of war on her opponent, is produced by that calm and undisturbed coolness, which, in the midst of the loose and scattered fire of the enemy, never allows the person who has the command of the gun, to lose sight of his object, or to neglect the critical moment presented by the rolling of the ship, which affords the most likely chance of striking his opponent. In this respect, and in the rapidity of loading and firing, M. Dupin says, we have much yet to do to subdue our petulance, and to bring ourselves towards that degree of coolness and calculated activity so fully possessed by the English.'

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Strictly speaking, however, it is not the system of manoeuvring a single ship, or the state of discipline on board that shipit is the management of a fleet, with regard to its order of sailing and forming the line, to the principles of attack and defence, which may properly be called Naval tactics. the early part of our history, when artillery was unknown, these principles were disregarded, because the value of them could not be perceived. The ships were small, and their armament simple and rude; they engaged stem to stem, or broadside to broadside; and the men fought hand to hand, and foot to foot. The main object was, then, the destruction of life; and the stoutest and most courageous soldiers generally obtained the victory. We are

told

told that, when Edward III. attacked the French fleet collected at Sluys to oppose his landing, the English, after pouring in a volley of arrows, boarded the enemy's ships and gained a glorious victory, with the loss of 4000 men. Of the French more than 30,000 perished, the greater part of whom were driven overboard and drowned: so dreadfully destructive were battles, whether by sea or land, when man was immediately opposed to man! whereas the victory of the Nile was obtained at the expense of 218 men killed, and 677 wounded; and the glorious and decisive day of Trafalgar, at somewhat less than 420 killed, and 1112 wounded.

The invention of gunpowder, and the introduction of artillery into the army and navy, unquestionably diminished the waste of human life. The combatants now engaged, whether at sea or on land, at a greater distance from each other, and this rendered it necessary for fleets as well as armies, to act in concert, and to observe a certain order or disposition, whether out of sight or in presence of an enemy; not only for their mutual support and defence, but to enable them to earry against the enemy the greatest accumulation of force, generally speaking, upon one given point. This, at least, has become the favourite system of late years. M. Dupin says, that certain men of genius discovered, in the time of Lewis XIV., excellent combinations for particular cases; but that, until the French revolutionary war, the art of disposing and conducting fleets, for the purpose of producing the most prompt and complete effect, had not been reduced to any rational practice. The English however, he tells us, adopted the principles laid down by Mr. Clerk, a professor of Edinburgh, and changed the system which prevailed during the American war, of getting to windward, bearing down upon the enemies' fleet, attacking the van by the van, the centre by the centre, and the rear by the rear:-a mode of fighting which, though it generally left the English fleet masters of the field, (if it may so be called,) yet permitted the French to escape in line of battle, and led to no decisive result whatever.

This practice of retiring in good order, with little or no damage, caused, M. Dupin says, 'not only our rivals, but other nations, to adopt the disgraceful opinion, that a French fleet could not face an English fleet of equal force.' But the real fact, he tells us, was that their admirals had orders to keep the sea for the longest possible time, without coming to an action, in which the result might be the loss of ships too expensive to be replaced; and, if forced to engage, to avoid, with the greatest care, compromising the fate of their fleet, by a conflict too decisive. Such an order, he says, obliged them to fight retreating, by which they acquired the disastrous habit of yielding the field of battle, as soon

as

as an enemy, though inferior, appeared disposed to dispute it with courage. Thus then,' he adds, to maintain, at a great expense, a naval armament; to forbid it from making the best use of its effective power; to send it in search of an enemy; to retreat shamefully from its presence; to receive battle instead of offering it; to commence an action only to finish it by the phantom of a defeat; to lose the moral for the sake of sparing the physical force-formed the principle which, from the declining energies of the reign of Lewis XIV. to the mistakes of Napoleon, (with a few brief exceptions,) has guided the administration of the French marine,'' the consequences are well known!'

M. Dupin ridicules, and not unsuccessfully, 'what he terms the pious respect of his countrymen for the sacred order of the line of battle' to which the combined fleets were sacrificed at Trafalgar. While Nelson advanced in two close columns to overwhelm the centre of this sacred line,' the two wings remained immovable; they were in line,' he says, and that was enough; and in this position they looked on avec une effrayante impassibilité,' until the centre was destroyed-then, and not till then, forgetting all respect for the sacred order of the line, they thought-not of seeking to remedy any part of the evil, but of making their escape. This is true; and can only be explained by the astonishment and confusion into which the Commander-in-Chief was thrown by a mode of attack so unusual, and which might have been followed by a different result, had the combined fleets, instead of remaining in that state of 'impassibility' while the destruction of the centre was going on, hauled their wind in one or two lines, which would have obliged Nelson to change his order of sailing in two columns, into a line of battle. It was neither from any premeditated plan of attack on the part of Nelson, nor from any particular predilection for the advance in two columns; but, as we are officially informed by Lord Collingwood, to avoid the inconvenience and delay in forming a line of battle in the usual manner,' that he was induced to bear down upon the enemy the order of sailing; and, as the combined fleets kept their positions, Nelson, with that happy and instinctive promptitude with which he availed himself of every circumstance, saw instantly that the most decisive result would ensue from pressing with his whole force upon their centre, and even calculated the number of ships of which it would put him in possession.

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We are not surprized that M. Dupin should offer this battle, of Trafalgar, and that of Rodney in the West Indies, as fine examples of the system laid down by Clerk. It has been maintained, we know, that Rodney, previously to his sailing, had received some