hreatened with invasion, and
we had a distinct preponderance at sea. In short, we have to recognize the
fact that the methods of the Seven Years' War were revived when the
problems and factors of that war were renewed. As those problems grew more
intense, as they did after the Peace of Amiens, and the threat of invasion
became really formidable, so did the rigour of the close blockade increase.
Under Cornwallis and Gardner it was maintained in such a way as to deny, so
far as human effort could go, all possibility of exit without fighting. In
spite of the importance of dealing with the enemy's squadrons in detail no
risks were taken to bring Ganteaume to decisive action. Our first necessity
was absolute local command. The acuteness of the invasion crisis demanded
that the Brest fleet should be kept in port, and every time Ganteaume
showed a foot the British admiral flew at him and drove him back. Once only
during the continuation of the crisis was the rigour of this attitude
relaxed, and that was to deal with what for the moment was the higher
object. It was to meet Villeneuve on his return from the West Indies, but
even then so nicely was the relaxation calculated, that Ganteaume was given
no time to take advantage of it.

The analogy between the conditions of the blockade which St. Vincent
inaugurated and those of the Seven Years' War becomes all the more
significant when we note that while Cornwallis and Gardner in home waters
were pressing close blockade to its utmost limit of rigour, Nelson in the
Mediterranean was not using it at all. Yet with him also the chief concern
was to prevent an invasion. His main function, as he and his Government saw
it, was to prevent a descent from Southern France upon Neapolitan or
Levantine territory. Why, then, did he not employ close blockade? It is
usually assumed that it was because of his overpowering desire to bring the
Toulon squadron to action. Occasional expressions in his letters give
colour to such a view, but his dispositions show clearly that his desire to
bring the fleet to action was kept in scientific subordination to the
defensive duty with which he was charged. Close blockade was the most
effectual means of securing this end, but in his case one of the
conditions, which we have found always accompanying successful close
blockade, was absent. He had no such preponderance of force as would enable
him to nourish it up to the point of perfect continuity. In the
circumst