This lesson, as the sequel demonstrated, had not been learned when Great Britain became involved in a war with the insurgent colonies in North America. Mahan's comment is striking: 'The magnificence of sea-power and its value had perhaps been more clearly shown by the uncontrolled sway and consequent exaltation of one belligerent; but the lesson thus given, if more striking, is less vividly interesting than the spectacle of that sea-power meeting a foe worthy of its steel, and excited to exertion by a strife which endangered not only its most valuable colonies, but even its own shores.'[43] We were, in fact, drawing too largely on the _prestige_ acquired during the Seven Years' war; and we were governed by men who did not understand the first principles of naval warfare, and would not listen to those who did. They quite ignored the teaching of the then comparatively recent wars which has been alluded to already--that we should look upon the enemy's coast as our frontier. A century and a half earlier the Dutchman Grotius had written-- Quæ meta Britannis Litora sunt aliis. [Footnote 43: _Influence_on_Hist._ p. 338.] Though ordinary prudence would have suggested ample preparation, British ministers allowed their country to remain unprepared. Instead of concentrating their efforts on the main objective, they frittered away force in attempts to relieve two beleaguered garrisons under the pretext of yielding to popular pressure, which is the official term for acting on the advice of irresponsible and uninstructed busybodies. 'Depuis le début de la crise,' says Captain Chevalier, 'les ministres de la Grande Bretagne s'étaient montrés inférieurs à leur tâche.' An impressive result of this was the repeated appearance of powerful and indeed numerically superior hostile fleets in the English Channel. The war--notwithstanding that, perhaps because, land operations constituted an important part of it, and in the end settled the issue--was essentially oceanic. Captain Mahan says it was 'purely maritime.' It may be true that, whatever the belligerent result, the political result, as regards the _status_ of the insurgent colonies, would have been the same. It is in the highest degree probable, indeed it closely approaches to certainty, that a proper use of the British sea-power would have prevented independence from being conquered, as it were, at the point of the bayonet. There can be no surprise in store for the student acquainted with the vagaries of strategists who are influenced in war by political in preference to military requirements. Still, it is difficult to repress an emotion of astonishment on finding that a British Government intentionally permitted De Grasse's fleet and the French army in its convoy to cross the Atlantic unmolested, for fear of postponing for a time the revictualling of the garrison beleaguered at Gibraltar. Washington's opinion as to the importance of the naval factor has been quoted already; and Mahan does not put