With their fleets passive, the French resorted vigorously to commerce warfare, and at the same time kept England constantly perturbed by rumors, grandiose plans, and actual undertakings of invasion. That these earlier efforts failed was due as much to ill luck and bad management as to the work of Bridport's fleet. Intended, moreover, primarily as diversions to keep England occupied at home and sicken her of the war, they did not altogether fail of their aim. Some of these projects verged on the ludicrous, as that of corraling a band of the criminals and royalist outlaws that infested France and dropping them on the English coast for a wild campaign of murder and pillage. Fifteen hundred of these _Chouans_ were actually landed at Fishguard in February of 1798, but promptly surrendered, and France had to give good English prisoners in exchange for them on the threat that they would be turned loose again on French soil. Much more serious was General Hoche's expedition to Ireland of the winter before. Though Hoche wished to use for the purpose the army of over 100,000 with which he had subdued revolt in the Vendee, the Government was willing to venture a force of only 15,000, which set sail from Brest, December 15, 1796, in 17 ships-of-the-line, together with a large number of smaller war-vessels and transports. Heavy weather and bad leadership, helped along by British frigates with false signals, scattered the fleet on the first night out. It never again got together; and though a squadron with 6,000 soldiers on board was actually for a week or more in the destination, Bantry Bay, not a man was landed, and by the middle of January nearly all of the flotilla was back in France. The British squadron under Colport, which had been on the French coast at the time of the departure, had in the meanwhile been obliged to make port for supplies. Bridport with the main fleet left Portsmouth, 250 miles from the scene of operations, four days after news of the French departure. During the whole affair neither he nor Colport took a single prize.