the jurisdiction of the admiral of France was invaded and defied
by the admiralties of Guyenne, Brittany and the Levant. These
local admiralties were suppressed by Francis I.
Richelieu, the great minister of Louis XIII., found the navy extinct. He was reduced to seeking the help of English ships against the Huguenots. From him dates the creation of the modern French navy. In 1626 he abolished the office of admiral of France, which had long been no more than a lucrative place held by a noble who was too great a man to obey orders. He himself assumed the title of grand maitre et surintendant de la navigation, and the military command was entrusted to the admirals du Ponant, i.e. of the west or Atlantic and Channel, and du Levant, i.e. of the Mediterranean. But Richelieu’s establishment shrivelled after his death. It was raised from its ruins by the pride and policy of Louis XIV. (1643–1715). Under his direction a numerous and strongly organized navy was created. A very full code of laws—the ordonnance—was framed by Colbert and Lyonne with the advice of the ablest officers, and was promulgated on the 5th of April 1689. Though modified by other ordonnances in 1765, 1772, 1774, 1776 and 1786, in the main lines it governed. the French navy till the Revolution.
By this code the French navy was based on the Inscription maritime, a very severe law of compulsory service, affecting the inhabitants of the coast and of the valleys of rivers as far up as they were capable of floating a lighter. The whole body of officials and officers was divided into the civil branch known as la plume, and the military branch called l’épée. The first had the entire control of the finances, and the dockyards of Toulon, Brest and Rochfort, with an intend ant de la marine at the head of each. The general chief was the sous secrétaire au département de la marine, the title of the French minister of marine till the Revolution. Under Louis XIV. a civil officer, the intendant des armées navales, who ranked as an admiral, sat on councils of war and reported on the conduct of the naval officers. He must not be confused with the intendant de la marine. The military branch had at its head the admiral of France, the office having been re-created in 1669 by Louis XIV. in favour of his natural son the duc de Vermandois. In theory the admiral was the administrative military and judicial head of the admiralty. In practice the admirals were princes of the blood, who drew pay and fees, but who never went to sea, with the one exception of the count of Toulouse, another natural son of Louis XIV. Two vice-admirals of France du Ponant and du Levant commanded in the Mediterranean and on the ocean. A third office of vice-admiral of France was created for Suffren. The lieutenant général (vice-admiral) came next, and below him the chef d’escadre (rear-admiral), capitaine de vaisseau (post captain), capitaine de brûlot (fireship) or de frégate (commander), and the major, a chief of the staff on board who commanded all landing parties. There was no permanent body of marines in the French navy, the infanterie de la marine being troops for service in the colonies, which were administratively connected with the navy and governed by naval officers. The lieutenant needs no explanation, and the enseigne was a sub-lieutenant. The corps of officers was recruited from les gardes de la marine, answering more or less to the English midshipmen—who received a careful professional education and were required to be of noble birth. Besides the grand corps de la marine there was a fleet of galleys with a general at its head, and a staff of officers also of noble birth. It was suppressed in 1748 as being a useless expense. Officers not belonging to the grand corps were sometimes taken in from the merchant service. They were known as officiers bleus, because their uniform was all blue, and not, as in the case of the noble corps, blue and red.
On paper the organization of the French royal navy was very thorough. In reality it worked ill; the severity of the inscription maritime made it odious, and owing to the prevailing financial embarrassment of the crown after 1692 the sailors were ill-paid, ill-fed and defrauded of the pensions promised them. They fled abroad, or went inland and took up other trades. The military and civil branches were always in a state of hostility to one another, and their pay also was commonly in arrears. The noble corps was tenacious of its privileges, and extremely insolent towards the officiers bleus. By Louis XV. (1715–1774) the navy was neglected till the last years of his reign, when it was revived by the duc de Choiseul. Under Louis XVI. (1774–1792) when the Revolution broke out the long accumulated hatred felt for the noble officers had free play. Louis XVI. had indeed relaxed the rule imposing the presentation of proofs of nobility on all naval officers, but the change was made only in 1786 and it came too late. The majority of the noble officers were massacred by the Jacobins or driven into exile.
The Revolution subjected the French navy to a series of disorganizations and reorganizations by which all tradition and discipline were destroyed. Old privileges and the office of Grand Admiral were suppressed. The attempt to revive the navy in the face of the superior power of England was hopeless. Neither the Republic nor the Empire was able to create an effective navy. They had no opportunity to form a new body of officers out of the lads they educated.
The strength of the French Royal Navy is difficult to estimate, since for long periods of the 18th century it was rotting in harbour and its ships were rarely commissioned. Louis XIV. is credited with 95 ships of the line and 29 frigates, together with many smaller vessels, in 1692. At the close of the Seven Years’ War it had sunk to 44 ships of the line and 9 frigates. By 1778 the French navy had risen to 78 of the line with frigates and smaller vessels which brought the total to 264. In 1793 on the outbreak of the revolutionary war, it was estimated to consist of 82 ships of the line, mostly fine vessels, and of frigates with lesser craft which brought it to a total of 250. Under Napoleon the mere number was very much more considerable and included ships built in the annexed territories, but they were largely constructed of green timber, were meant merely to force England to maintain blockades, and were never sent to sea.
Spanish Navy.
The administrative history of the Spanish navy is singularly confused and broken. It might almost be said that the country had no navy in the full sense of the word—that is to say, no organized maritime force provided and governed by the state for warlike purposes only—until one was created on the French model by the sovereigns of the Bourbon dynasty i.e. after 1700. Yet the kings of the Spanish peninsula, whether they wore the crown of Castile and Leon or of Aragon, had fleets, formed, like all the others of the middle ages, partly of ships supplied by the coast towns and populations, partly of the royal vessels. Aragon was a purely Mediterranean power. Its fleets, which were chiefly supported by Barcelona, a flourishing commercial city, were composed of galleys. With the union of the crown in 1479 Aragon fell into the background, and its navy continued to be represented only by a few galleys, for service in the Mediterranean against the pirates. The dominions of Castile stretched from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean. Its kings, therefore, had need both of ships (naos) and galleys. The first beginnings of the Castilian navy were not due to the king, but to the foresight and enterprise of Diego Gelmirez, bishop and afterwards first archbishop of Santiago in Gallicia. In or about 1120 he employed the Genoese Ogerio to form a dockyard at Iria, and to build vessels. The naval activity of the coast of the Bay of Biscay developed so rapidly that in 1147 a squadron from the northern ports took part in the conquest of Almeria by Alfonso VII. (1120–1157) in alliance with the Pisans. A century later (1248) another squadron constructed at the expense of the king Fernando III. El Santo (1217–1252), and commanded by Count Ramon Bonifaz of Burgos, the first admiral of Castile, took a decisive part in the conquest of Seville. The annexation of Andalucia and the necessity for guarding against invasions from Africa called for a great extension of the navy of Castile. Alfonso X. El Sabio (1252–1284) founded the great galley dockyards of Seville—the arenal. It was also the work of Genoese builders and administrators. In the course of the 13th century the towns of the northern coast formed one of the associations so common in Spanish history, and known as hermandades (brotherhoods). The first meeting of its delegates took place at Castrourdiales near Bilbao in 1296, when the towns of Santander, Laredo, Bermeo, Guetaria, San Sebastian and Vitoria were represented. The hermandad de la marisma (of the seafarers)
