1759

RESULTS OF THE BATTLE

69

attacking the ships in the river. An attempt with fireboats proved impracticable, and so the long-sought encounter ended. It was not till the fourth day after the action that he sat down to write a report of his immortal victory. He had lost two ships and between three and four hundred men. The French had lost six, one the Formidable, Du Verger's flagship, a prize, two, including the Soleil Royal, burnt, and three driven ashore, besides four as good as wrecks in the Villaine, together with about two thousand five hundred men. It proved indeed the coup de grâce of the French navy, but Hawke was far from satisfied. "In attacking a flying enemy," he wrote apologetically to the Admiralty, "it was impossible in the space of a short winter's day that all our ships should be able to get into action, or all those of the enemy brought to it. When I consider the season of the hard gales on the day of action, a flying enemy, the shortness of the day, and the coast we were on, I can boldly affirm that all that could possibly be done has been done. As to the loss we have sustained, let it be placed to the necessity I was under of running all risks to break this strong force of the enemy. Had we had but two hours more daylight, the whole had been totally destroyed or taken."

year,

the

And if he had not fallen in with the victuallers, if he had waited till his cruisers gave him the news, what then? He would have arrived probably the next day and found Conflans snug in the bay. Before the gale had blown out he would have been joined perhaps by Geary, certainly by Saunders, who was only just too late to share Hawke's triumph. Then he would have gone in with perhaps thirty of the line. As the wind was he would have got to leeward of Conflans and prevented all possibility of escape, either out of the bay or into the Villaine.

Then there must have been another Battle of the Nile, but yet more terrible and destructive, since the numbers were so much greater, and the waters more confined.

Still it was enough. The catastrophe had come, yet Hawke could not tear himself away from the scene. In his eyes the triumph which awaited him at home was nothing compared with the chance of completing his work. A flying squadron was organised under Keppel to follow the ships that had fled to the Basque Roads. He returned in a few days to say that they had all got up the Charente, and were as inaccessible as those in the Villaine. Meanwhile Hawke, after engaging in an angry interchange of notes with D'Aiguillon over a question of prisoners, had been making the French feel the penalty of their abandonment of the sea. Croisic was bombarded for firing on working parties that were trying to salve the guns of the Soleil Royal. Isle d'Yeu, half-way down the coast to Rochefort, was seized, its defences destroyed, and its cattle carried off to refresh the fleet. In short, the movements of his squadrons kept the whole coast in alarm, with the effect that, though the English invasion was at once abandoned, D'Aiguillon's army remained unavailable, for it had to be cantoned along the threatened shores to save them from attack.

By the middle of December Hawke recognised that he had done his work. On December 9th he had written home recommending a division of the fleet into two squadrons, one for Quiberon and one for the Basque Roads, and the distribution of the frigates and fifties at the usual points from Brest down to Bordeaux. At the same time he ordered Geary to send home all the ships which had been specially ordered out as reinforcements. A week later he asked to be relieved, and early in the new year he was permitted to take the rest which he had so hardly earned.

CHAPTER II

THE SECOND PHASE OF THE WAR

It is recognised as a fundamental principle that lies at the root of the higher strategy that wars tend to exhibit two successive phases-phases not always very distinct, yet always existing, and so important in their differences that unless they be kept firmly grasped the conduct of any great war is sure to go astray. There is firstly the phase in which we seek to destroy the armed forces of the enemy, to overcome his means of attack and resistance, so that he is no longer able to gain his own object or to prevent us from gaining ours. If we are successful in this phase, then follows the second, in which we seek to exert our ascendency over him by bringing to bear upon his national life a general pressure in order to force him to accept our terms. In other words, our main objectives. are no longer his armed forces, but what may be called the sources of his vitality; we direct our efforts to inflict upon him or to threaten loss and suffering which he shall recognise as harder to endure than the terms of peace we offer.

In the Seven Years' War, so far at least as England was concerned in it, this change-this transition from the first phase to the second-began to take place at the point we have reached. The complete failure of the desperate attempt of France to recover the situation by direct counter-attack demonstrated how irrevocably the armed forces of England dominated the situation in the

main theatre of the war. It was clear that for all purposes of serious attack or resistance the French sea power had been reduced to impotence, and seeing the nature of the contest and its real object, it was the only kind of force that could directly affect the end. It is true Canada was not yet completely conquered. There remained upon the St. Lawrence a residue of potent armed force that, as we shall see, was destined to exhibit an unexpected power of resistance. But that made no inherent difference. For purposes of war-direction Canada was rightly regarded on both sides as lost. With the naval force of France destroyed, the destruction of her power of attack and resistance across the ocean could only be a question of a few months. The utmost the Canadian forces could do was to prolong the transition from the first phase to the second.

By no one was the decisive character of Hawke's victory more clearly recognised than by Frederick. "This naval battle," he wrote in the lowest depth of his fortunes, "is admirable, and comes to us as from the Lord."

In France the point of transition was recognised by the collapse of her credit. The financiers saw too well that the pressure which England would now bring to bear would be mainly against her trade and against the Colonies, from which her resources could no longer be replenished. It was obvious that her finance was shattered, and the Government had to declare itself unable to meet its engagements.

A still more striking indication of the point which had been reached is the fact that, as almost always happens, there began to appear feverish attempts to patch up a peace and end the war. Hawke and his officers were startled

1 To Finchenstein, Dec. 12, Politische Corr., vol. xviii. p. 693.

1759

INTRIGUES TO STOP THE WAR

73 to find themselves face to face with the movement immediately after the battle. During the course of the angry discussion that ensued between Hawke and the Duc d'Aiguillon over the question of exchanging prisoners, Howe had been sent ashore to conduct the negotiations. While thus engaged, he was surprised one day by D'Aiguillon's broaching the subject of a separate peace between the two countries without any regard to "Madame d'Hongrie," as he called the Austrian Empress. He said that his abortive irruption into the British Islands had been intended to secure peace, and that he had been given full power to treat so soon as he should have established himself in Scotland. These powers, he asserted, were still good, and he set himself to cajole Howe by all kinds of flattery to act as an intermediary between him and Pitt. Howe of course refused, but Hawke thought it best to send him home at once. He reached London at Christmas time, and as soon as he had reported himself Anson sent him on to Pitt.1

It was a thread of a very tangled skein which Howe had found so strangely in his hand. In every court in Europe they were pulling at it, and no one could quite tell how far his neighbour was committed. It was the outcome of a clever idea of Choiseul's to extricate France from the war by inducing Spain to mediate for a separate peace between France and England. If such a negotiation could be set on foot it would be sure in any case to breed mistrust between England and Prussia. Moreover, it was no part of Choiseul's policy to leave Austria without a rival in Germany, and if the negotiation succeeded, France would be able to withdraw from the war before Prussia was entirely crushed, without openly breaking her engagements with Vienna. On the other hand, if

1 Anson to Newcastle, Dec. 27, Newcastle Papers, 32,900.