It is indeed difficult to understand the admiration with which his _campagne au large_ has been treated in France. He kept the sea off the mouth of the Channel for fifty days in the summer of 1691, and for forty of those days our Channel fleet was making no systematic effort to seek him out. He had been sent to sea in hope of intercepting our great "Smyrna convoy," which was then the backbone of our oversea trade. Russell with the British main fleet simply took positions to cover its approach until it was safe, knowing presumably that Tourville must come to him if he wished to accomplish his purpose. When the convoy was safe Russell proceeded off Ushant, that is, between the enemy and his base. Tourville's communications were thus cut, his line of retreat threatened, and he seized the first opportunity to elude Russell and to return into port. Beyond taking a few ships from one of the West India convoys, he accomplished nothing. The central French offensive in Ireland was broken at the battle of the Boyne, and the prestige of England at sea was restored. It is true our trade suffered in the North Sea, but this was not directly due to the concentration which Tourville's cruise forced upon us, but rather to the failure of the Dutch--apparently by a misunderstanding-to provide for an effective blockade of Dunkirk.
To British eyes it will seem that the heresy which was latent in Tourville's instructions was a seed that choked all the finer aspirations of the French navy. In 1691 the plan of his cruise may possibly be defended as sufficiently aggressive, since, seeing how unstable was William's new throne, a resounding blow at British trade, combined with an expected victory in Ireland, might have been enough to upset it. But afterwards the idea was stretched to occasions it would not fit. It seems to have bred a belief that where the object of the war plainly depended on winning a real command of the sea, that object could yet be attained by naval defensive operations. Many times it is true a policy which had starved the navy of France left no other course open to her seamen, and had they in their inferiority attempted the offensive, the end must have been swifter if not more certain. In criticising the maritime history of France we must be careful to distinguish policy from strategy. It was not always the defensive strategy that was bad, but the policy that condemned her admirals to negative operations. Seeing that she was a continental Power with continental aspirations, it was often a policy from which her military exigencies permitted no escape. Nevertheless the policy was twice accursed: it cursed her when she was weak, and cursed her when she was strong. The prolonged use of the defensive bred a habit of mind which seems to have rendered her incapable of striking hard when she had the strength. In no other way at least can we account for the behaviour of so high-spirited a nation when her chance of revenge came in the War of American Independence.