work was published. Meanwhile an even more
elaborate and well-reasoned assault on the whole principle of the
single line had appeared in France. In 1787 the Vicomte de Grenier, a
French flag officer, had produced his _L'Art de la Guerre sur
Mer_, in which he boldly attacked the law laid down by De Grasse,
that so long as men-of-war carried their main armament in broadside
batteries there could never be any battle order but the single line
ahead. In Grenier's view the English had already begun to discard it,
and he insists that, in all the actions he had seen in the last two
wars, the English, knowing the weakness of the single line, had almost
always concentrated on part of it without regular order. The radical
defects of the line he points out are: that it is easily thrown into
disorder and easily broken, that it is inflexible, and too extended a
formation to be readily controlled by signals. He then proceeds to
lay down the principle on which a sound battle order should be framed,
and the fundamental objects at which it should aim[6]. His
postulates are thus stated:

'1. De rendre nulle une partie des forces de l'ennemi afin de
reunir toutes les siennes contre celles qui l'on attaque, ou qui
attaquent; et de vaincre ensuite le reste avec plus de facilite et
de certitude.

'2. De ne presenter a l'ennemi aucune partie de son armee qui
ne soit flanquee et ou il ne put combattre et vaincre s'il
vouloit se porter sur les parties de cette armee reconnues faibles
jusqu'a present.'

Never had the fundamental intention of naval tactics been stated with
so much penetration, simplicity, and completeness. The order, however,
which Grenier worked out--that of three lines of bearing disposed on
three sides of a lozenge--was somewhat fantastic and cumbrous, and it
seems to have been enough to secure for his clever treatise complete
neglect. It had even less effect on French tactics than had Nelson's
memorandum on our own. This is all the more curious, for so
thoroughly was the change that was coming over English tactics
understood in France that Villeneuve knew quite well the kind of
attack Nelson would be likely to make. In his General Instructions,
issued in anticipation of the battle, he says: 'The enemy will not
confine themselves to forming a line parallel to ours.... They will
try to envelope our rear, to break our line, and to throw upon those
of our ships that they cut off, groups of their own to surround and
crush them