'Depuis le debut de la crise,' says
Captain Chevalier, 'les ministres de la Grande Bretagne s'etaient
montres inferieurs a leur tache.' An impressive result of this was
the repeated appearance of powerful and indeed numerically superior
hostile fleets in the English Channel. The war--notwithstanding
that, perhaps because, land operations constituted an important
part of it, and in the end settled the issue--was essentially
oceanic. Captain Mahan says it was 'purely maritime.' It may
be true that, whatever the belligerent result, the political
result, as regards the _status_ of the insurgent colonies, would
have been the same. It is in the highest degree probable, indeed
it closely approaches to certainty, that a proper use of the
British sea-power would have prevented independence from being
conquered, as it were, at the point of the bayonet. There can be no
surprise in store for the student acquainted with the vagaries of
strategists who are influenced in war by political in preference
to military requirements. Still, it is difficult to repress an
emotion of astonishment on finding that a British Government
intentionally permitted De Grasse's fleet and the French army
in its convoy to cross the Atlantic unmolested, for fear of
postponing for a time the revictualling of the garrison beleaguered
at Gibraltar. Washington's opinion as to the importance of the
naval factor has been quoted already; and Mahan does not put
the case too strongly when he declares that the success of the
Americans was due to 'sea-power being in the hands of the French
and its improper distribution by the English authorities.
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