France need feel no hesitation in placing herself in comparison with England.... Never was the policy of England so yielding and considerate towards France as at the present day. And then, with respect to the vexed question of the invasion, it is certain that Napoleon III has the means of effecting it with greater ease and far greater chance of success than his uncle.” The means was steam power. But the much-talked-of invasion was never to be attempted. Other events intervened, other developments took place, which reduced the tension between the two great naval powers and removed for an indefinite time the danger, which the Leipsic article disinterestedly pointed out, of war under novel and unprecedentedly terrible conditions: with shell guns and wooden unarmoured steam warships. CHAPTER X THE IRONCLAD The year 1860 marks the most dramatic, swift, and far-reaching change which has ever befallen war material: the supersession of the wooden ship-of-the-line by the modern battleship in its earliest form. What were the causes, suddenly realized or acknowledged, which impelled this revolutionary change, and what were the circumstances which moulded the new form of naval construction? This final chapter will attempt to show. Before descending to a detailed examination of this evolution, however, let us trace out the most striking features of the transition; their measure of accuracy can be estimated by the light of the subsequent narration of progress. In the first place, then, we remark that, potentially, from the time when shell-throwing ordnance was introduced into the French, and then as a counter-measure into our own fleet, unarmoured wooden ships were doomed. Strange it seems that so long a time elapsed before this fact was realized; though it is true that with spherical shells and small explosive charges the destructive effects of shell fire were not greatly superior to those of solid shot, that fuzes were unreliable, that trials of artillery against material were rarely resorted to, and that, moreover, no opportunity occurred between 1822 and the outbreak of the Crimean War to demonstrate in actual sea-fighting such superiority as actually existed. Implicit trust was placed in our fine sailing ships. So long as solid shot were used, indeed, these timber-built ships were admirably suited for the line of battle; as size and strength increased and as our methods of construction improved the ship gained an increasing advantage over the gun, defence increasingly mastered attack, to such a degree that by the end of the long wars with France the ship-of-the-line had become almost unsinkable by gun-fire. But so soon as shell guns were established--even with spherical shells fired from smooth-bore ordnance--wooden ships loomed easy targets for destruction. For a long time this disquieting conclusion was ignored or boldly denied; expert opinion with sagacity turned a blind eye to the portentous evidence presented to it of the power of shell.