A mistake.
Mr. Geo. Fitzhugh, in the extract published by us on Tuesday, tells us that ‘"
Bonaparte, when
England had destroyed his navy, had too much good sense to begin to build up another."’ This is a very great mistake, and if pushed home by our authorities it might prove a very serious one.
From the day of the battle of
Trafalgar,
Bonaparte began to build ships-of-the-line, and at the time of his fall he had already completed a large number.
They had not taken the sea, only because he found a difficulty in obtaining crews.
The harbor of
Cherbourg, one of the most extraordinary works in the world, begun by Louis XIV., but neglected by his successors, was pushed forward during his reign with amazing energy.
Had that reign been protracted it would not have been left to be completed by Napoleon Ill.--He calculated upon having one hundred ships-of-the-line riding at anchor in
Cherbourg within a given time, the building proceeding at the rate of a certain number every year.
He had selected crews from the conscription, and had made arrangements to exercise them in the best manner he could in the harbors, since they could not venture to sea. He reigned only nine years after the battle of
Trafalgar, and the long time it took at that period to build a ship of-the-line, and the long time it took to form seamen for the old service, prevented him from perfecting and using his navy.
But that he was bent upon it, and used the most powerful means to accomplish it, cannot be doubted.
He saw but too plainly that the freedom of the seas was essential to the prosperity of
France, and that the conquest of the whole continent could not supply that one want.
He was a great and original genius, but it never entered his head that the best way to contend with a great naval power was to blow up all his ships.
That idea is of later origin, and deserves all the credit for originality that can be claimed by the admirers of
Homer and
Shakespeare for the most original of their conceptions.
Any man who will take the trouble to consult
Leanne's Journal, in that part which relates to the harbor of
Cherbourg, will see with what prodigious energy
Napoleon pushed his naval preparations long after the battle of
Trafalgar had destroyed the
French marine.
The
Spartans never thought of destroying the ships of their allies in the Peloponnesian war because the Athenian were the stronger at sea. Notwithstanding the disaster at
Syracuse, where a whole army was captured, the Peloponnesian gained no advantage over the Athenian for twenty-three years when they had accumulated a fleet equal to theirs.
Than, and then only, the naval battle of
Egos Potamoi overthrew the power of
Athens.
Instead of blowing up our ships, we think it would be better to imitate the Peloponnesian, and get together as many as we can.
