been proposed in war."[94] The justice of this conclusion depends upon
the view that is taken of the true end of naval war. If it is merely
to assure one or more positions ashore, the navy becomes simply a
branch of the army for a particular occasion, and subordinates its
action accordingly; but if the true end is to preponderate over the
enemy's navy and so control the sea, then the enemy's ships and fleets
are the true objects to be assailed on all occasions. A glimmer of
this view seems to have been present to Morogues when he wrote that at
sea there is no field of battle to be held, nor places to be won. If
naval warfare is a war of posts, then the action of the fleets must be
subordinate to the attack and defence of the posts; if its object is
to break up the enemy's power on the sea, cutting off his
communications with the rest of his possessions, drying up the sources
of his wealth in his commerce, and making possible a closure of his
ports, then the object of attack must be his organized military forces
afloat; in short, his navy. It is to the latter course, for whatever
reason adopted, that England owed a control of the sea that forced the
restitution of Minorca at the end of this war. It is to the former
that France owed the lack of prestige in her navy. Take this very case
of Minorca; had Galissoniere been beaten, Richelieu and his fifteen
thousand troops must have been lost to France, cooped up in Minorca,
as the Spaniards, in 1718, were confined to Sicily. The French navy
therefore assured the capture of the island; but so slight was the
impression on the ministry and the public, that a French naval officer
tells us: "Incredible as it may seem, the minister of marine, after
the glorious affair off Mahon, instead of yielding to the zeal of an
enlightened patriotism and profiting by the impulse which this victory
gave to France to build up the navy, saw fit to sell the ships and
rigging which we still had in our ports. We shall soon see the
deplorable consequences of this cowardly conduct on the part of our
statesmen."[95] Neither the glory nor the victory is very apparent;
but it is quite conceivable that had the French admiral thought less
of Mahon and used the great advantage luck had given him to take, or
sink, four or five of the enemy, the French people would have
anticipated the outbreak of naval enthusiasm which appeared too late,
in 1760. During the remainder of this war the French fleets, except
in