When we turn to the French we find a great difference. With them the constant aim was to fight as little as might be when fighting was necessary, and to achieve their purpose without fighting, if possible. La Galissonière did not follow up his success against Byng, though he had ocular demonstration of the clumsiness and timidity of his opponent. Beauffremont had declined battle with Holburne, though numbers were on his side. Yet the French spoke of the glory of La Galissonière, and Beauffremont was held to have done right. It would be a very silly national vanity which sought the explanation of the difference in any want of personal courage among the French. Though a nervous and excitable they are a valiant people, and the history of their navy is full of the heroic fights of individual ships against long odds. What explains their inferiority in enterprise is the principle upon which they acted. It has been stated with simplicity by one of their writers on the art of war at sea, Ramatuelle. He says gravely that the French Navy did not aim at destroying a few of the enemy’s ships, but at a more serious object, namely, the execution of its mission. On the face of it this seems absurd, for what more serious object can any fleet have than to defeat its opponent and make itself master at sea? The French answered, that given the great number of the English warships it was idle to suppose that they would ever be destroyed wholly in battle, and that they themselves would be worn out long before a decisive result could be obtained. Therefore when a French admiral sailed to relieve a colony, or save some particular post from attack, or land men to be used against a British possession, he was to avoid battle as far as he could, and if forced to fight then to engage to leeward, cripple as many as he could of the enemy’s spars, and slip away. In short, his aim was always to keep his own fleet intact, and not to destroy the enemy’s. There is a superficial air of ingenuity about all this, but it was in the long run a fatal method of conducting wars. It left us free to direct our blows where we pleased. It made it certain that our fleets would never be seriously crippled. It made it inevitable that sooner or later we would break down the French defence, since that which attacks and wears away will always in the end break through a passive opposition. But its worst consequence was the degrading moral effect it had. The French Navy was taught that to be brought to battle was a misfortune, and thus it came to have a predisposition to give way, to avoid, to seek shelter, to run. We grew accustomed to look upon our opponent as one who feared our blows, and to take it for granted that the French would never stand in the face of an equal force. The working of these two widely different ideals of conduct will be seen in the following years of the war. CHAPTER VI THE YEARS OF TRIUMPH AUTHORITY.—See last Chapter.