Did France EVER have a chance against Britain at sea?

[Destraex]

Revolutionary and Napoleonic France seems to be entirely dominated by Britain with every single battle being won by the British.

Even if the French came close to winning they seem to have retreated. I recall one battle where the British pretended to signal a larger fleet and the French ran for it.

 

I am interested in hearing about the glimmer of hope, a spark. Anything that indicated the French could win against the British. I really do not want to be stereotypical in a game like this and play the invincible British. I was considering playing the French. But the fact that they did not even win a single engagement that I can see really discourages me. I basically am not a fan of revisionist history, which is what I would be making by winning as the French. I want to at least know it would have been possible. But reading about it makes it seem impossible.

 

I suppose if the Spanish were on the French side before the French Mediterranean fleet was destroyed by the combined fleets....

 

In this case, in this time period. I am afraid the "bad guys" so to speak really are like storm troopers. Can't shoot and are ineffective in battle.

 

It seems 1715 is the cut off for even minor French success making it a non contest. There is no doubt they fought bravely. But things like the aristocracy who made up the competent naval officers being gone and the crew having the right to argue captains orders could not have helped. Combined with being blockaded and unable to practice their trade for years at a time and a penchant for shooting at sails and rigging instead of hull made the excellent French ships of the line an impotent force. It is surprising they did ads well as they did when they finally did appear for operations like the Nile landing or joining up with the Spanish fleet at Trafalgar.

 

I have asked here several times for any books or stories of French success and their is simply very little to tell in that regard. Should it be possible to change that in this game? 

Should the lack of French experience and crew quality be reflected? Personally I think not. But am interested to know if people think the French had a chance at all of beating the Brits in this period from a historical standpoint.

 

The French to me in this period have always seemed to be a noble breed of people in the throes of creating the groundwork for modern society. People that could make fine ships but simply had not the experience or organisation that the British fleet mustered. In fact a huge proportion of the English fleet ended up being French ships! They were fast and big but lacked staying power (room for supplies and ability to withstand weather and stay at sea). Technically in a game like this the French ships should give them a marked advantage. But I suspect that all ships will at least to begin with be allowed to all major Nations.

[Chromey]

well I would like people to post here all of the French Naval victories in the Napoleanic era if they could..

 

Here is one right before Bony took over the Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Chesapeake

 

helped USA defeat the English once and for all during the American Revolution.    Wasn't a decisive victory but it was a large enough battle to note and it did help win a war!

[BrutishVulgarian]

They just needed a more naval focused emperor. These continental despots never learn, take out Britain first, then Russia.

[Captain Armstrong]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grand_Port

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_Algeciras

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_of_14_December_1798

[Chromey]

wow that last battle in Dec 1798 is a real doozie!

 

I hope the devs allows boarding from the bowspirit as well!

[Robert Danforth]

Well, there were two major issues:

 

1. A huge portion of the experienced naval officers in France were killed or imprisoned during the revolution because they were aristocracy. That meant the navy had very poor leadership to begin with, and....

2. Napoleon was a micromanager who knew nothing about naval warfare.

 

Those two combined basically means no, they really had no chance.

[Barberouge]

Napoléon in exile at Sainte-Hélène, 1816:

 

"Oh, why could not this man (admiral Suffren, 1726-88) have lived in my time! Or why could I not find someone of his mold? I would have made him our Nelson, and things would have had a different turn . But I spent all my time looking for the man the navy needed without ever finding him. There is in the naval profession a specialized, technical mentality which blocked all my plans. ......According to them, one has to be born in the navy to understand anything about it."

[Captain Armstrong]

^no wonder Napoleon never invaded England

[Robert Danforth]

Napoleon's quote sort of shows that, even after defeat, he still never got it.

 

He'd send orders, very detailed orders that weren't really possible, and then change them within a day. There'd be packet ships chasing packet ships with all these changes.

 

He did the same on land, but it worked for him, largely because he knew what he was doing, but also because on land, terrain and weather are more constant and matter less. At sea, that's not the case, and what he really needed was to trust that his admirals (Villeneuve, for example) knew what the hell they were doing, and that they weren't "disobeying" his orders for no reason.

[Crankey]

Vast amounts of funding and manpower were invested in the British fleet in order to prevent the French and indeed all other nations combined of ever having supremacy.

 

Add to that the British policy of seek and destroy or blockade, and you can also see why more often than not the experience of the British ships gave them even more advantage.

 

That is not to say that France never had her victories, merely not sufficient to gain supremacy indeed a long way from it.

 

http://www.napoleonguide.com/navyind.htm

[Destraex]

wow that last battle in Dec 1798 is a real doozie!

 

I hope the devs allows boarding from the bowspirit as well!

As you can see there is really nothing there.

One frigate battle really.

I would not count a battle where harbour defences seem to have played a major part. It's really funny that the brits were able to keep the french follow up from capturing even surrendered ships!

The battle to allow French re-enforcements to get into American Harbours and win the war was not a win tactically or technically. But does give some hope.

[Destraex]

Finally some good news for the french

Some captains to look up.

http://www.thedearsurprise.com/the-french-navy-during-the-napoleonic-era/

 

"This is interesting that already in 1813 the French navy was back at its pre-war strength.

“Although Napoleon ‘lost’ the war at sea effectively from 1805, his naval strategy against Great Britain remained surprisingly effective. … By keeping his surviving squadrons ready for sea (or capable of being rapidly made so) at Brest, Rochfort, or Toulon, he kept the Royal Navy at full stretch on blockade duties, and the task of hunting down a small French break-out force was incommensurately expensive in terms of vessels and effort.” – Chandler, 

Dictionary of the Napoleonic Wars

The French corsairs of the Napoleonic Wars enjoyed numerous successes against the British ships. Many captains made names for themselves – L’Hermitte, Leduc and Troude, for example. St. Malo, Nantes and Marseille were some of the premier corsair ports. Their activities caused a considerable panic in British commercial circles."

[Robert Danforth]

While that may be true, British commerce was barely disrupted at all, and the British had the money to spend on their Navy. Even the Continental System, which embargoed good leaving Europe, only reduced British trade by 7% in the first year, and by the following year it increased 27%.

 

Like throwing a deck chair off the Titanic.

 

E: I don't mean to entirely belittle France, they certainly had their small victories during Napoleon, it just didn't amount to much. Prior to the revolution, and I'd imagine after Waterloo, they were a force to be reckoned with, and fortunately this game does include ships from those periods (even if right now all the ships are Napoleonic).

[HilarioHarpplayer]

Bony sound like another, more recent, "little corporal," doesn't he?    

[William the Drake]

My understanding is that, at least the events leading up to the Battle of Trafalgar, there were a myriad of reasons that France (And Spain in this case) were doomed.

 

First, as stated before, Most of the French Navy's officer corps had been hauled off to the guillotine, and their successors were chosen based on their patriotic fervor, not their skill as captains. Any attempt to return to the old ways as far as practice and command goes would have been considered unpatriotic/anti-revolutionary, ans they too would have met the same face as their predecessors.

 

Second, and I'm basing this off of the book Decision at Trafalgar by Dudley Pope, which claims that the very materials that England had at its disposal to build ships were superior to France's. He claims that the French ships were in a deplorable state of neglect compared to the English Fleet (Both Fleets had ships with issues originating from lack of maintenance and upkeep, however it was asserted that France's condition was far worse than England's)

 

Lastly, the English sailors would have had the greater reason to fight (at least in the case leading up to Trafalgar): The defense of their home. The English crews were considered to be more seasoned and better trained than their French and Spanish counterparts. The English were renowned for their gunnery skills and accuracy.

 

Ultimately, I think the brunt of the blame falls on French leadership. France had the tools and potential to be great at sea, however they shot themselves in the foot militarily speaking with the Revolution. (Again, I emphasize that this viewpoint is based on knowledge leading up to Trafalgar)

[Robert Danforth]

You know, I completely forgot about Comte D'Estaing, you could read about him, too.

[Dagann]

There was a real difference between  the Royal Navy budget and La Royale (the french navy).

From to 1800 to 1814, the english budget is 2 times to 6 times larger than the french budget, most of the year, it's 3X or 4X times

 

For the figures, have a look on this french article, p3 :

http://crhael.univ-littoral.fr/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/les-vaisseaux-francais-en-1805.pdf

[Chustler]

What do real life french victories and losses have to do with being french in a game like this?  Losing a lot in real life does not have any bearing on wheather french will win battles in game.  It should not be discouraging at all. 

[Sir John Longshanks]

What do real life french victories and losses have to do with being french in a game like this?  Losing a lot in real life does not have any bearing on wheather french will win battles in game.  It should not be discouraging at all. 

 

And that's just what you would have to convince people of who are trying out the game

[Dagann]

What do real life french victories and losses have to do with being french in a game like this?  Losing a lot in real life does not have any bearing on wheather french will win battles in game.  It should not be discouraging at all. 

Indeed, it's up to the players to play in a different  clever way than Villneuve did.

Playing the RN will not make you a Nelson, or playing La Grande Armée (in other games ) will not make you a Napoléon.

[Meneldil]

I was considering playing the French. But the fact that they did not even win a single engagement that I can see really discourages me. I basically am not a fan of revisionist history, which is what I would be making by winning as the French. I want to at least know it would have been possible. But reading about it makes it seem impossible.

 

How can this be in any way relevant? It's like not playing Russia in Napoleon:Total War, because Russia hardly won an actual battle at the time, or not playing German tanks in World of Tanks because the Germans lost in the end. Play as the nation you like, using the ships you like.

That being said, the utter defeat of the French navy during the Napoleonic wars didn't pop out of nowhere, and wasn't caused entirely by the Revolution either. It has deeper roots, that go back to the inner workings of the French kingdom.

And oddly, the French navy of the 17th and 18th century faced a fate not unsimilar to what happend to the German navy during the first part of the 20th. 

 

Like Germany, France spent millions to become a naval superpower between 1661 and 1690. And like Germany, she suffered a few defeats, which came as a complete shock. Those defeats convinced Louis XIV that he should protect his costly brand new fleet, which from now on mostly avoided open battles, and pretty much abandonned the Atlantic and the northern seas.

It's noteworthy too that, like Germany too, France favored quick raids against trading vessels, though she used corsaires and not submarines.

 

The end result was that, by 1715, despite some nice victories during the Spanish succession war, the French navy - still largely dominated by men whose main talent was their blue blood - had spent years rotting in her harbours, while the British, a mid-sized power 50 years earlier, now had experienced admirals and sailors. France could maybe have caught up, but Louis XV, lacking both foresight and willpower, didn't do anything to fix the situation. End story is: neither good admirals nor discipline disappeared with the Revolution: they hardly existed to begin with. But it's true that the Revolution was he nail on the coffin.

 

Then, there's also the - often conveniently overlooked, albeit absolutely decisive - fact that France, being a continental country stuck between half a dozen rivals, had no choice but to field the largest land army in Europe, something the British could avoid. Given that military expenditures sometimes reached as high as 60% of the budget between  1661 and 1776, the country could hardly afford to spend as much on her navy as the UK did, especially after the first industrial revolution kicked in in the UK. Had France been an island too, I think history would have been vastly different

But in the end, despite all this, France - especially when supported by Spain - was pretty much the only country that could threaten British supremacy on seas during Naval Action's timeframe. And probably the country that designed some of the finest ships of the era.

[Dagann]

During the Louis XVI reign, the french navy was developed thanks to huge efforts and a strong willpower, so that the french navy was able to stand up against the english navy. See the American Revolutionary war. Then came the Révolution which broke its rise.

[mouse of war]

The English fought well because they were very well motivated. Just finished reading lots of accounts of brig, sloop and frigate actions and I got the impression that the chance of a prize was like Christmas to them.

 

Capture a French brig and even an ordinary sailor could get something like £180 - enough to buy a small pub and retire on. Which was doubly attractive because they were mostly total alcoholics

[Grim DeGrim]

I've been holding off on this topic wanting to be able to contribute to a quality discussion.  Really wishing to do some justice to the topic (eg, more than my normal M.O, copy & paste from wiki), I picked up a book:

 

The Age of the Ship of the Line:  The British & French Navies, 1650-1815

 

I am enjoying the book.  I have not yet come to the Napoleonic War, as I've just completed the 7 Year War (up to 1762 in the book).  Thus far in the book, I will offer up the author's opinion based on the historical facts presented, at a macro "nation v. nation toe-to-toe" level.....No, France did not stand a chance at war with Britain at Sea.  This is not to say they did not have victories and that they did not have the potential, it is to say that economics and pure fleet size perhaps play a larger role than that of "pure skill, naval genius, or that of better ships".  More to come...

 

So new M.O., I'm not copying out of a wiki....I'm copying from the book:

 

 

 

 

"...It was rare for a superior fleet size to lose a decisive defeat.  Sir Cloudesley Shovell, one of the leading admirals at the beginning of the 18th century, claimed that without a miracle, numbers would gain a victory.  Although generally British ships were studier and their crews better trained that ere the French, the difference in quality were not enough to produce a major victory unless there was a substantial difference in numbers....  Decisive battles, such as the Battle of Quiberon, usually came when the quality of French crews had drastically declined.  Admiral Horatio Nelson's defeat of the larger Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar was due less to his genius than to the poor quality of the fleet opposing him....  In most cases the key factor in a battle was numerical superiority."

 

 

 

The book covers alot.  How the navies were managed.  What the political climate was like in each period of time.  The intricacies of the leaders.  A very common trend was feast or famine for the French navy in terms of funding.  Frequently, funding was pulled from the navy, and utilized for the Army.  I point this out because that meant they needed to "shelf" ships, and not do the required up keep on old vessels.  To give an idea of the size difference between British and French navies at the beginning of the 7 year war (1755-1762)...you will quickly grasp that on a pure numerical basis, France as a stand alone naval power could not match Britain (I am purposely excluding potential allies...and not addressing the quality crew shortage issues as experience at Quiberon Bay):

 

 

"The crisis of 1754 caught the French navy by surprise.  Reduced to only 33 ships of the line on 1 January 1749, it had grown to 57 ships of the line by 1 January 1755....  On 1 January 1755, however, the British navy contained more than 100 ships of the line....  When war broke out, the British navy was not only far larger than the French navy but was also better prepared for war.  Moreover, it had the expert guidance of the brilliant Anson, who became first lord of the admiralty in 1751."

---

Footnote...Spain's naval power for the same period was 46 ships of the line by 1754...so even on a combined basis, Britain still had an equal or superior numerical advantage (my paraphrase)

 

 

 

On ships actually in service during the period:

 

[regarding war in Canada]  "...France virtually had no chance of winning an extended predominately naval and colonial war against Great Britain...  it was greatly inferior in financial resources and badly outnumbered in both sailors and ships of the line.  Sixty-one British ships of the line were in service  on 1 June 1756 against 33 French, 96 were in service on 1 June 1757 against 42 French, and 104 were in service on 1 June 1758 against 25 French".

 

 

So, from a fleet perspective no chance.

 

 

I love the history.  True fact, I love the RN...very rich with tradition.  Many great stories.  My grandmother was from England.  But, I love France in this period of time as well.  The underdog one could say.  Anways, I'm sure there will be more references at some point, especially after I complete the book!

 

Toodles.

 

GRIM

[Wimbley]

The French sold a lot of ships to England. They were known to be the best ship designers of that era. The British just had a superior drilling technique, and this made their gunnery speed of fire superior(which won those broadside battles).