from his squadron in three columns, he himself going with the centre column. The reinforced Mexicans resisted at several points. One party of French stormed a house and captured a Mexican general, the Prince de Joinville in person receiving his sword. The celebrated President Santa Anna, who was in the building, managed to make his escape. It was hopeless to try to subdue or hold the city in the face of the force of Mexicans now occupying it. Admiral Baudin, therefore, having spiked, broken the carriages of, or thrown over the parapet, eighty-two guns, which were mounted where they could annoy his ships or the fortress in his possession, decided to return on board. The retreat was carried out in good order in the face of the advancing Mexicans. The French in this spirited affair had eight officers and men killed and fifty-six wounded. Captain Chevalier's comment is, 'The 'action of the navy is effective within the range of its guns; but for it, a landing in force is a delicate operation.' Negotiations were now begun between the governments of France and Mexico. On their conclusion San Juan de Ulloa was restored to the latter.

Like other recent French writers on naval affairs, Captain Chevalier expresses a high opinion of Admiral Lalande, who commanded in the Levant in 1840, while we were assisting the Sultan in his campaign in Syria against Mehemet Ali of Egypt. Admiral Lalande's fleet, we are told, 'was the only one since 1793 which was in a state to meet an enemy without disadvantage to itself.' The admiral exercised his ships until he had got his fleet into excellent order, which no one more readily admitted than our own officers. He was by no means the only French admiral of whom this could be said. It is not uncharitable to suspect that his celebrity among his own countrymen rests largely on his request, discovered afterwards, to be allowed to make a treacherous attack on the British fleet when he could take it unawares. We may suppose that he could not have been ignorant of the instructions to do the same thing given in 1778 to the Comte d'Estaing by the French government, which Captain Chevalier himself, writing in 1877,* unreservedly condemns. That Admiral Lalande was troubled with few scruples will appear from what a French historian (Capefigue) says of him when the Capitan Pasha carried the Turkish fleet over to the Egyptians: Tout cela

* Histoire de la Marine Française pendant la Guerre de l'Indépendance Américaine, p. 79.

'se faisait sous les yeux de l'amiral français, M. Lalande, 'déjà un peu en opposition avec l'ambassadeur le baron Roussin [the admiral of the Tagus expedition], qui loyalement voulait soutenir les intérêts de la Porte Ottomane, et surtout ce principe: que la trahison d'une troupe sous le drapeau est un fatal exemple pour tous les gouvernements. Admiral Lalande, Capefigue also informs us, proposed to fall upon our fleet without any declaration of war. Luckily for the peace of the world, he did not add to the morals of a buccaneer a buccaneer's courage. He hesitated to act without the shelter of superior authority. M. Thiers, who was in power at the time, would probably have sanctioned the admiral's proposal, but Louis Philippe would not entertain it. It is well to remember this episode. We may suspect, reasonably enough, that it was far from being a solitary instance of treacherous intention foiled by timidity when the moment for action drew near. Mommsen, speaking of the Gauls, says that all their history shows that they 'boldly challenge danger while future, but lose their courage 'before its presence.' Breaches of international honour are best averted by making would-be perpetrators dread the consequences.

We may pass over the operations on the coast of Marocco in 1844, one of which-the attack on Mogador by a squadron under the Prince de Joinville as rear-admiral-cost the French fourteen killed and sixty-four wounded, and gave a name to a ship of war. The next event in French naval history which claims notice is the action at Obligado on the river Paraná. In this brilliant achievement the French and English navies acted together. Rosas, the dictator of the Argentine Republic, had closed the navigation of the river. Hostilities between him on one side and England and France on the other had been practically in progress for some time. At Obligado, on the right bank of the Paraná, the Argentines had constructed a barrier stretching from bank to bank, and consisting of twenty-four large hulks held in position by three chain cables. This was protected at its eastern end by four batteries, two of them being sixty feet above the river and two à fleur d'eau, mounting twenty-four guns and supported by eight field pieces. The other end was defended by two gunboats and a small vessel of six guns. Ten fire-ships were kept in readiness on the right bank.

Six English vessels, a corvette, two steamers, and three brigs, under Commodore Hotham, and five French, one of which was a steamer, under Captain Tréhouart, started to

force the passage on November 20,* 1845. The breeze was light, and the advance necessarily slow, as the sailing vessels formed the attacking columns; the steamers being kept in reserve. One by one the vessels came up, having suffered severely as they advanced. The San Martin,' on board of which Captain Tréhouart commanded, was reduced to a wreck, and the captain shifted his broad pennant to another vessel. The enemy's fire-ships proved ineffective, his armed vessel was set on fire and blown up, and his gunboats withdrew. English and French boats' crews were employed to sever the chain, which was done under a heavy fire, and a passage was made through the barrier. The batteries were now cannonaded by the steamers, and landing parties of both navies were put on shore. These drove off the hostile troops, destroyed the batteries, and threw their armament into the river, the navigation of which was now free. This was only one in a series of operations in the Plate and other rivers. It was a most spirited affair, in which our officers and men behaved with distinguished courage. Yet it is hardly known in this country. In France, on the contrary, its merit was rightly appreciated. A man-of-war was called 'Obligado' after the action; and Captain Tréhouart has had another named after him.

The later more important proceedings, of which Captain Chevalier gives us an account, are those in which again the English and French navies acted together. These are the Black Sea, Baltic, and other campaigns of the Russian war of 1854-56, and the campaigns in China in the years 1857, 1858, 1859, and 1860. The history of these is too well known to need repetition here. Captain Chevalier tells it with his usual clearness, but in a necessarily abbreviated form. He does not omit to mention the British share in the operations, but he naturally deals principally with the proceedings of his own navy. Hostilities in the Crimea began with the landing of the allied army of 61,200 menEnglish, French, and Turks. The two former nations landed about 27,600 men each.† The French landed no cavalry; the English 1,200. The infantry and part of the artillery were put on shore in a day. The whole work took, as Kinglake states, five September days' before it was

Captain Chevalier (p. 125) says merely 'le 20,' and October is the last month named by him. The action, however, took place in November.

Bazancourt, L'Expédition de Crimée (Paris, 1856), i. p. 193,

complete. The transport of this considerable army to the shores of the Crimea was effected without even apprehension of interference. It was another and striking example of the advantages due to having command of the sea :

'The fleets of the Allied Powers were at hand, and their ships had dominion over all the Euxine to the Straits of Kertch. They had the command of the Bosphorus, the Dardanelles, the Mediterranean, of the whole ocean, and of all the lesser seas, bays, gulfs, and straits from the gut of Gibraltar to within sight of St. Petersburg.' (Kinglake, Invasion of the Crimea,' ii. p. 97).

We now take leave of Captain Chevalier as an historian and are called upon to consider him as a naval strategist, if not as an anti-English pamphleteer-a part which his previous literary performances in no way suggested that he was likely to assume. His fifteenth and last book' or chapter is devoted to a discussion of the best way of making war on England. This portion of his work ought to interest us most. He begins by saying that during the period which elapsed between 1815 and the end of 1869 the French navy took part in many expeditions, but in no war that could be properly called maritime. Before 1815, on the contrary, French naval history is made up almost entirely of the narrative of conflicts with England. It is therefore necessary to inquire if France employed the best means of combating a Power which, since the reign of Louis XIV., disposed of forces superior to hers. The point to be determined is the method that a weak navy should adopt if it has to contend with a stronger one.

It is to be noted-though we are unable to estimate the full significance of this fact-that Captain Chevalier assumes throughout that his country will have to carry on alone the naval struggle which he contemplates. He makes no provision for an alliance with any other continental power. However much he may disapprove the naval strategy adopted by his countrymen in former wars, it is unlikely that he would go so far as to condemn their habit-invariable throughout the greater part of the time he specifies-of trying to get the help of a naval ally. We claim to be justified in concluding that the plan he advocates is one that would really be suitable for two navies acting in concert against the English. A glance at the additions to the Russian navy, proposed or actually being made, will give rise to a belief that they are specially adapted for the kind of warfare against England which Captain Chevalier is not alone among his compatriots in thinking the most likely

to succeed. With next to no commerce of her own to protect, Russia is building quite a fleet of fast cruisers, which -having no protecting work to do-can only be used offensively, if used at all, against the commerce of an opponent. Their general design would, to say the least, permit cooperation with ships of a similar class belonging to France. We may keep this in view as we go through Captain Chevalier's proposals.

It has, he says, always been the object of the British government to destroy the enemy's navy. We fear that he pays far too high a compliment to nearly every British government that has existed. If ever in this maritime country there has been a place where ignorance of sound strategy, or indeed contempt for it, reigned supreme, it has been in the cabinet-council room. Certain British admirals, and most notably Nelson, acted on the principle that our navy's true objective was the enemy's fleet. We hope that this principle may never be forgotten. If, says Captain Chevalier, the result in question is brought about, England is freed from all apprehension of attacks on her home territory and her outlying possessions, and can utilise the whole of her naval force in the protection of her maritime commerce, in conquering her enemy's colonies, and, if circumstances are favourable, making attacks on the latter's coasts at home. We must point out that this is stated with perfect gravity. It does not seem to have occurred to the writer that, when its enemy's navy has been destroyed, the British would have absolutely nothing to do if it did not occupy itself as above specified. One does not see clearly, if there is no enemy afloat to prey on it, why British commerce should need a whole navy to protect it.

After supporting the above view with an historical disquisition covering the period from 1694 to 1761, Captain Chevalier comes to the war of American Independence. As he rightly says, we could not in that conflict confine ourselves to the offensive; we had to stand on the defensive also. He suggests, though he does not distinctly give, the reason. We had the three greatest navies in the world opposed to us. We had barely enough strength to make head against them, and we never had a government less capable of conducting a great maritime war. Nevertheless, our enemies did not come out of the struggle very triumphantly. The best that they could do was to fight generally without being seriously defeated and to seize some small British colonies. The only decisive victories on the