was to
keep the French in a state of constant inferiority in the practical
handling of their ships, however fair-showing their outward appearance
or equal their numerical force. The position of the port of Brest was
such that a blockaded fleet could not get out during the heavy
westerly gales that endangered the blockaders; the latter, therefore,
had the habit of running away from them to Torbay or Plymouth, sure,
with care, of getting back to their station with an east wind before a
large and ill-handled fleet could get much start of them.

In the latter part of 1758, France, depressed by the sense of failure
upon the continent, mortified and harassed by English descents upon
her coasts, which had been particularly annoying that year, and seeing
that it was not possible to carry on both the continental and sea wars
with her money resources, determined to strike directly at England.
Her commerce was annihilated while the enemy's throve. It was the
boast of London merchants that under Pitt commerce was united with and
made to flourish by war;[98] and this thriving commerce was the soul
also of the land struggle, by the money it lavished on the enemy of
France.

At this time a new and active-minded minister, Choiseul, was called
into power by Louis XV. From the beginning of 1759, preparations were
made in the ocean and Channel ports. Flat-boats to transport troops
were built at Havre, Dunkirk, Brest, and Rochefort. It was intended to
embark as many as fifty thousand men for the invasion of England,
while twelve thousand were to be directed upon Scotland. Two squadrons
were fitted out, each of respectable strength, one at Toulon, the
other at Brest. The junction of these two squadrons at Brest was the
first step in the great enterprise.

It was just here that it broke down, through the possession of
Gibraltar by the English, and their naval superiority. It seems
incredible that even the stern and confident William Pitt should, as
late as 1757, have offered to surrender to Spain the watch-tower from
which England overlooks the road between the Mediterranean and the
Atlantic, as the price of her help to recover Minorca. Happily for
England, Spain refused. In 1759, Admiral Boscawen commanded the
English Mediterranean fleet. In making an attack upon French frigates
in Toulon roads, some of his ships were so damaged that he sailed with
his whole squadron to Gibraltar to refit; taking the precaution,
however, to station look