Council was the result of economic considerations purely, and not of any desire on the part of the British government to return to the paths of law and order. Every one knows the effect of the American war upon British maritime policy. The Treaty of Ghent is the bow of a world's champion to a newly-discovered equal. Between, though not in its lines, we read Great Britain's confession that the day of marine despotism is over; that the policy of marine despotism can never be revived. For there cannot be two despots.

During the American war every effort was made to recede from the high-handed position previously assumed, with as little shock as possible. The blockades were raised from each port as soon as the power of France was driven back sufficiently to afford the slightest excuse for so doing. The ports of the Netherlands were declared open December 13, 1813; Triest and Dalmatia were relieved on the same day; and on January 14, 1814, many ports of France itself were proclaimed free. The check at the hands of the United States was compensated for by the victory over France; the British despotism-system imparted to its own death a sort of éclat by dragging with it in still more hopeless ruin the "Continental System" of Napoleon.

The fall of the latter marks the close of the history of English privateers. Though they had done nothing to promote the peace, though they had succeeded only in injuring neutrals and causing the name of England to be execrated throughout the earth, they were so essential a part of the English system that the prince regent revived them as a

30, 1812 (Am. St. Papers, For. Rel., III., 615), “is the measures of our government," i. e., the embargo of December, 1807, to March, 1809, and the non-intercourse act of May, 1810, which produced acute suffering in England. See also the elaborate argument of the Secretary of State, in his report of July 12, 1813 (Am. St. Papers, For. Rel., III., 609).

'Brit. and For. State Papers, I., 1267

matter of course during the Hundred Days.' But in the long interval of peace from 1815 to the Crimean war, there was ample time for the digestion of facts with regard to this institution, and in consequence, its popularity decidedly declined. Its inhumanity, its invariable effect of producing complications with neutrals, and above all its ineffectiveness, made it no fit weapon to use against Russia in 1854, and both France and England refused to issue "letters of mark."2 Indeed, the Russian commerce was so small, and the British regular navy so powerful, that privateers would have been superfluous. The regular navy captured 205 Russian vessels (all, except one, unarmed): 136 were wholly condemned,3

2

1 Order in Council, June 21, 1815, British and For. State Papers, II., 1044.

1 Cf. Queen's Procl., Mar. 28, 1854, Br. and For. State Papers, XLVI., 36.

3 Return of the Names and Number of Russian vessels captured, etc., ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, July 29, 1856.

CHAPTER II

PRIVATEERING IN FRANCE

I

The French Marine before Colbert

"La marine en France," says Doneaud,' "est un élément de puissance, mais non pas la puissance même du pays, comme en Angleterre." Always a naval power of the first class, France has never been the chief of naval powers, nor, with the exception of a few years under Louis XVI., does she seem ever to have had any ambition to be such. There have been no "sailor kings" in France. Her monarchs have almost invariably been content with bare equality upon the sea; and the dream of reviving the empire of Charles the Great has been to them what that of maritime supremacy was to England. The motives for the employment of privateers in France and England have not therefore been altogether identical. To cripple the enemy by cutting him off from his colonies and generally destroying his trade is a purpose which was common to both; but to direct the excesses of private adventurers against neutrals, who, if allowed to escape unscathed, might become commercial rivals, was a policy which France, in the absence of any wish to establish a maritime despotism, never adopted. Privateers were used in England as something auxiliary to the royal navy; in France very often because there was nothing else to use. In early times, when there was no regular navy, and in later 'Hist. de la Marine Française, Preface.

89

309]

times, when the regular navy was now and again driven off the seas by the English, it was a question of commissioning private individuals, or of allowing the French flag to disappear from the ocean altogether. In this position Louis XIV. found himself after the battle of La Hogue, and Napoleon after Aboukir and Trafalgar.

Before the royal marine became permanent under Colbert, the kings of France, like those of England, relied for their maritime operations upon impromptu navies raised by the impressment or hiring of merchant vessels. In France there was nothing analogous to the Cinque Ports, and the method of raising the contributions varied with the exigencies of each particular war. The decentralized state of the country, moreover, made it possible for private adventure to develop an amount of importance and independence which would have been impossible in England under the strong and jealous Anglo-Norman kingship. The most remarkable illustration of this tendency to independence is the case of Ango of Dieppe in 1525. The Portuguese having seized one of his ships and denied him redress, Ango, at his own cost, fitted out seventeen armed vessels with which, in due form, he blockaded the Tagus. Francis I, in answer to the Portuguese complaints, is said to have remarked, Messieurs, ce n'est pas moi qui fais la guerre; allez trouver Ango, et arrangez-vous avec lui." A certain Vandervelde is said to have been created Chevalier de Saint Jacques for presenting the king with twelve vessels of war, “en pur don et par munificence."3 Again, on the failure of Ribaut's colonizing expedition in 1562, and the massacre of its leader by the Spaniards, a gentleman of Gascony, Dominique de Gourgues, in order that the act might not go unpunished, 1 Doneaud, ch. i.

2 Guérin, Histoire Maritime de France, t. II., p. 69.

3 Eugène Sue, Histoire de la Marine Française (Paris, 1845), t. I., p. 17.

equipped three vessels and "exerça sur les Espagnols de sanglantes représailles." In the preceding century there were numerous cases of this sort; and it is interesting to note that Jacques Coeur (afterwards so poorly recompensed!), was accustomed to furnish Charles VII. whole fleets at his bidding; and that in 1403 a party of Norman gentlemen partially "conquered" the Canaries.2

Nevertheless, from the time of St. Louis the French monarchs had really been struggling to centralize their marine. In 1270 the title of Admiral was borrowed from the Arabs and conferred upon Florent de Varennes; in 1322 Charles IV. created the dignity of Grand Admiral. Meanwhile there had begun the great quarrel with England, which lasted almost without intermission till 1493, and which arose out of piracy or "spoil" claims on both sides. The facts were, substantially, that in 1292 some Norman sailors. complained of English piracies to Philippe le Bel, who without investigating the matter authorized them to use reprisals. Accordingly, "on their first rencontre with an English ship, they attacked it, took it, and hung between two dead dogs (pendirent entre deux chiens morts) a majority of the crew." 3 It was obvious that, to maintain peace with the hardy English, it would be necessary to subject the piratical Normans and Britons to the curb of a strong central authority, and this authority naturally formed around the person of the Admiral as a nucleus. The judicial functions of the Admiral certainly ante-date 1350, for in that year an Ordonnance was issued giving an appeal to the royal courts from the Admiral's jurisdiction in Normandy. The extent of those functions does not seem to have been definitely determined until Charles V., in December, 1373, issued an Ordonnance providing that the Admiralty should "take

'Doneaud, ch. i.

2 Guérin, t. I.

3 Guérin, t. I., p. 230.

Pardessus, Collection des Lois Maritimes (Paris, 1837), t. IV., p. 224.