lost not even
a boat, much less a ship, which, if true, makes yet more culpable the
sluggishness of the pursuit; while the allies fled, casting sixteen of
their ships ashore and burning them in sight of the enemy, who pursued
as far as the Downs. The English indeed give the allied loss as only
eight ships,--an estimate probably full as much out one way as the
French the other. Herbert took his fleet to the Thames, and baffled
the enemy's further pursuit by removing the buoys.[71]

Tourville's is the only great historical name among the seamen of this
war, if we except the renowned privateersmen at whose head was Jean
Bart. Among the English, extraordinary merit cannot be claimed for any
one of the gallant and enterprising men who commanded squadrons.
Tourville, who by this time had served afloat for nearly thirty
years, was at once a seaman and a military man. With superb courage,
of which he had given dazzling examples in his youth, he had seen
service wherever the French fleets had fought,--in the Anglo-Dutch
war, in the Mediterranean, and against the Barbary pirates. Reaching
the rank of admiral, he commanded in person all the largest fleets
sent out during the earlier years of this war, and he brought to the
command a scientific knowledge of tactics, based upon both theory and
experience, joined to that practical acquaintance with the seaman's
business which is necessary in order to apply tactical principles upon
the ocean to the best advantage. But with all these high qualities he
seems to have failed, where so many warriors fail, in the ability to
assume a great responsibility.[72] The caution in his pursuit of the
allies after Beachy Head, though so different in appearance, came from
the same trait which impelled him two years later to lead his fleet
into almost certain destruction at La Hougue, because he had the
king's order in his pocket. He was brave enough to do anything, but
not strong enough to bear the heaviest burdens. Tourville was in fact
the forerunner of the careful and skilful tacticians of the coming
era, but with the savor still of the impetuous hard-fighting which
characterized the sea commanders of the seventeenth century. He
doubtless felt, after Beachy Head, that he had done very well and
could be satisfied; but he could not have acted as he did had he felt,
to use Nelson's words, that "if we had taken ten ships out of the
enemy's eleven, and let the eleventh escape, being able to take her, I