Note 90 — Chapter V

The carelessness with which naval affairs are too often described by general historians may be illustrated by the account of this battle given by one of the most distinguished. "Lord Howe gained so decisive a success from the adoption of the same principles which gave victory to Frederic at Leuthen, to Napoleon at Austerlitz, and to Wellington at Salamanca, viz.: to direct an overwhelming force against one half of the enemy's force, and making the attack obliquely, keeping the weather gage of the enemy, to render it impossible for the ships to leeward to work up to the assistance of those engaged. By this means he reduced one half of the enemy's fleet to be the passive spectators of the destruction of the other.... Had he succeeded in penetrating the line at all points, or had his captains implicitly obeyed his directions in that particular, and engaged the whole to leeward, he would have brought twenty ships-of-the-line to Spithead." (Alison's "History of Europe.") How an attack upon one half of the line is consistent with penetrating the same line at all points does not clearly appear; but the statement concerning Lord Howe's principle of action on the 1st of June is absolutely contrary to all the facts, although Alison had James's painstaking work before him and refers to it frequently. His statement is that of Jomini's "Guerres de la Révolution Française;" but the latter author writes only as a military man, introduces naval matters merely incidentally, and was doubtless misled in the scanty information attainable when he wrote.