the van of the admiral's fleet
is to steer with the van of the enemies, and _there_ to engage them."
There was no alternative course laid down; just as there was no
punishment alternative to death in the Article of War under which Byng
was shot.

Yet the indications all were that to wait for this most formal and
pedantic disposition, which ignored every principle of warfare, would
be to throw away the chance of battle. The French, fresh from port and
clean-bottomed, out-sailed the bulk of the British, as did the
Spaniards, though to a less degree; and it was part of Lestock's
defence, admitted by the Court, that, doing his utmost, his division, as
a whole, certainly could not get abreast the allied rear. Lestock,
indeed, directly submitted to the Court that the commander-in-chief was
at fault in not waiting till his line was thus extended and formed, and
then all bearing down together, in line abreast; although by his own
contention no such issue could have been reached that day, unless the
allies were obliging enough to wait. "I aver, and I shall die in this
opinion, that no man that is an officer, who knows his duty, will make
the signal for line abreast to steer down upon an enemy, until the fleet
has been stretched and extended in a line of battle, according to the
19th Article of the Fighting Instructions. Can it be service," he adds,
"to bear down so much unformed and in confusion, that the van cannot
possibly join battle with, or engage the van of the enemy, the centre
with the centre, and the rear with the rear?"

Mathews not being then on trial, the Court in its finding did not reply
directly to this question; but indirectly it left no doubt as to its
opinion. "The Admiral, by bearing down as he did upon the rear division
of the combined fleet, excluded the Vice-Admiral from any part of the
engagement, if he could have come up; for if both lines had been closed,
when the Admiral engaged the _Real_, there would have been no more than
one ship of the enemy's fleet for the Vice-Admiral and his whole
division to have engaged." Again, "It does not appear that the
Vice-Admiral was in any part the cause of the miscarriage of his
Majesty's fleet in the Mediterranean; the _bringing on of the general
engagement according to the 19th Article_ of the Fighting
Instructions ... not depending upon him." Sixteen officers of the rank of
captain and above signed these opinions, and there is no denying the
words of the 19th Art