Page:Final French Struggles in India and on the Indian Seas.djvu/108

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THE ISLE OF FRANCE

had emigrated in large numbers, and the democratic principle, which had been introduced upon the ruins of that which had crumbled away because its foundations had rotted, had been denied the opportunity granted to the land forces of developing, on the spur of the moment, a perfect system of promotion and command. Nevertheless, even under these trying circumstances, the navy of France proved not unworthy of the renown it had inherited from Tourville, from Duguay-Trouin, from Jean Bart, from de Forbin,[1] and from Suffren. The battle of the 1st June, fought by an untried admiral, with a fleet in no way superior to its enemy in numbers and weight of metal, and newly officered from the lowest to the highest grade,[2] was indeed a defeat, though not a very decisive defeat; yet who will say that under all the circumstances of the case, that defeat even was not glorious to the French arms?

Another cause which tended at this period to the

  1. The memoirs of the Count de Forbin. Commodore of the French Navy in the time of Louis XIV, were considered so remarkable that they were translated into English and published in London in the year 1731.
  2. Rear Admiral Kerguelen, writing at the time, gives an animated description of the flagrant mode in which officers were appointed to the ships of war "by charlatans and ignorant empirics." He gives details to prove his statements. Captain Brenton, R.N., writing on the same subject, says: "The French fleet was no longer manned and officered as in the splendid times of Louis XIV. * * Most of the seamen had been marched to the Rhine and the Moselle to fill the ranks of the army, and their places were supplied by wretched conscripts and fishermen. The captains of the line were men totally unqualified from their habits for such a station; they had been, with few exceptions, masters of merchantmen, and knew nothing of the signal book or of the mode of conducting a ship of war."