The part which England played was to herself glorious and profitable, and to Europe advantageous. It was also arduous. But the student of the history of the time, if he approaches the subject with a just determination to see it in a dry light and to judge by the evidence, must soon be convinced that if the nation was called upon to make great efforts and endure much, the burden was not imposed on it by the naval forces of its enemy. If we are to realise the real character of the task and estimate the true merit of the performance, we must first come to a sound understanding of the condition of the French fleet, which was our one serious opponent. The other navies thrown or dragged into the conflict served to do little more—if we put aside the gallant fight of the Dutch at Camperdown—than to multiply the number of posts which required to be watched, and so to add further severity to the already cruel strain of blockade. When our squadrons began to get to sea in the summer of 1793, they found in front of them an enemy disorganised by four years of administrative destruction and attempted reconstruction, and morally ruined by four years of progressive anarchy.[1] The _ordonnance_ of Louis XIV. had never been honestly carried out. The _classes_ had been cruelly worked. The compensations promised to the seafaring population had never been given. Bad food, no pay, and nakedness were the lot of the sailors in the king’s ships. Therefore they hated the king’s service, and fled from it when they could. The State punished them by billeting soldiers on their families, and the outrages perpetrated by these men on the women and girls were notorious. It has been already said that the French officers of the regular, or grand, corps were nobles. Being nobles, they insisted on equality among themselves to the injury of discipline, and were perfectly insolent to all men who were not of their own class. None of the many ignorant things said of the French Revolution is more ignorant than the assertion that it gave Frenchmen their love of equality. What it did was to declare that all Frenchmen should be equal, and that there should be an end of the division of the people into nobles above, who were equal among themselves, and the _roture_, or non-noble, below, who also were equal among themselves. As the grand corps had never been sufficiently numerous to officer the fleet on a war footing, it had been found necessary to employ supplementary officers drawn from the merchant service. These men, who were known as the “blue officers,” because their uniform had not the red facings and knee-breeches of the grand corps, were not allowed to reach the higher ranks. They had to endure much impertinence.