ch naval strategy which impelled the French naval commanders to fix
their eye on ulterior objects and blinded them to the fact that the best
way to attain those objects was to destroy the naval forces of the enemy
whenever the opportunity offered of so obtaining a decision. Hence their
preference for the leeward position in action, their constant reluctance
to fight a decisive action, their habitual direction of their fire at
the masts and sails of the enemy rather than at his hulls, and in
Tourville's case his failure to annihilate Torrington's fleet in being,
resulting in the total miscarriage of the schemes for invasion, to be
followed by internal insurrection, which, as Admiral Colomb has shown,
were the kernel of the French plan of campaign. In the case of the
Armada in the previous century, the task of invasion was entrusted to
Parma, who had collected troops for the purpose, and vessels for their
transport, in the ports of the Spanish Netherlands. But Justin of Nassau
kept a close watch outside, and Parma could not move. He summoned Medina
Sidonia with the Armada to his assistance, but he summoned him in vain,
for the Armada, harassed throughout the Channel, and, as it were, smoked
out of Calais, was finally shattered at Gravelines. Precisely the same
thing happened in the eighteenth century during the Seven Years' War.
Troops and transports were being collected in the Morbihan, but their
exit was blocked by a British naval force stationed off the ports.
Conflans with the French main fleet was at Brest, and there he was
blockaded by Hawke. Evading the blockade, Conflans put to sea and
straightway went to release the troops and transports, hopelessly
blockaded in the Morbihan. But Hawke swooped down on him and destroyed
him in Quiberon Bay, Boscawen having previously destroyed at Lagos the
fleet which De La Clue was bringing from Toulon to effect a junction
with Conflans.

One more illustration may be cited, and I will treat it at some length,
because it presents certain features which give it peculiar
significance in relation to current controversies. This is the projected
invasion of England by France in 1744. It is, so far as I know, the
solitary instance in our naval history which shows the enemy framing his
plans on the lines of what is now known as "a bolt from the blue"--that
is, he projected a surprise invasion, at a time when the two countries
were nominally at peace, in the hope that the first overt act o