g the last war; for it would be an error to believe that
they followed by choice and temper the timid and defensive
system which predominated in the tactics of the navy. The
government, always finding the expenses exacted by the
employment of the navy excessive, too often prescribed to its
admirals to keep the sea as long as possible without coming to
pitched battles, or even to brushes, generally very expensive,
and from which might follow the loss of ships difficult to
replace. Often they were enjoined, if driven to accept action,
carefully to avoid compromising the fate of their squadron by
too decisive encounters. They thought themselves, therefore,
obliged to retreat as soon as an engagement took too serious a
turn. Thus they acquired the unhappy habit of voluntarily
yielding the field of battle as soon as an enemy, even inferior,
boldly disputed it with them. Thus to send a fleet to meet the
enemy, only to retire shamefully from his presence; to receive
action instead of offering it; to begin battles only to end them
with the semblance of defeat; to ruin moral force in order to
save physical force,--that was the spirit which, as has been
very judiciously said by M. Charles Dupin, guided the French
ministry of that epoch. The results are known."[116]

The brave words of Louis XVI. were followed almost immediately by
others, of different and qualifying tenor, to Admiral d'Orvilliers
before he sailed. He was informed that the king, having learned the
strength of the English fleet, relied upon his prudence as to the
conduct to be followed at a moment when he had under his orders all
the naval force of which France could dispose. As a matter of fact the
two fleets were nearly equal; it would be impossible to decide which
was the stronger, without detailed information as to the armament of
every ship. D'Orvilliers found himself, as many a responsible man has
before, with two sets of orders, on one or the other of which he was
sure to be impaled, if unlucky; while the government, in the same
event, was sure of a scape-goat.

The consideration of the relative force of the two navies, material
and moral, has necessarily carried us beyond the date of the opening
of the American Revolutionary War. Before beginning with that
struggle, it may be well to supplement the rough estimate of England's
total naval force, given, in lack of more precise i