II. return from Waterloo. Wordsworth has related, in the CHAP. 'Prelude,' his finding a discharged soldier, utterly destitute, painfully endeavouring to find his way home to his distant friends. Every Englishman was proud of the glorious triumphs which the British soldier had achieved. But the British soldier was the very last person whom any Englishman desired to take either into his household or into his employment. The unpopularity and distrust with which the private soldiers were regarded, did not affect the officers. The military profession was the most gentlemanlike in which it was possible for anyone to engage. A boy with brains might possibly be sent to the Bar; a boy with interest might do very well for the Church; a boy with land might hope to represent the family borough. But a boy who had not brains, interest, or land, was generally sent into the army. If he were killed he required no further provision; if he survived his comrades the pecuniary value of his commission became a small fortune. Boys, it must be remembered, who had any interest at all, did not starve for many months on the pay of a subaltern. Sir Charles Stewart was by no means the most unduly favoured of his generation, and his career is not a bad example of the promotion which young men of good family might obtain in the British army at the close of the eighteenth century. Sir Charles Stewart was an ensign at thirteen, a lieutenant at fifteen, a captain at sixteen, a major at seventeen, and lieutenant-colonel at less than nineteen years of age. When he received his first commission he was an Eton boy, and no one thought it necessary to take the boy from school because he happened to be receiving pay in his country's service.1 1 Vide for this section of the work Clode's Military Forces of the Crown; Moyle's Argument against a Standing Army; Trenchard's History of Standing Armies, published in State Tracts, published in the reign of Wil- СНАР. II. The navy was perhaps a less popular profession among the highest classes than the army. It was officered in The Navy. the main from the upper middle class. Parents hesitated to part from their sons at the tender age at which boys went to sea; and they, therefore, preferred a service in which the severance from home ties was usually deferred to a later age. There was, moreover, no purchase system in the navy. The rich man in this profession had no undue advantage over the poor one; and the wealthy preferred a calling in which a full purse was likely to be an advantage. If, however, the army were the more popular profession in the very highest ranks of society, the navy was much more popular among the British people. Three out of every four of the population had probably never seen the sea; but three out of every four entertained the most sincere conviction that at sea they were invincible. Campbell really only expressed the deliberate belief of the nation when he declared Britannia needs no bulwarks, No towers along the steep: Her march is o'er the mountain waves, The country gentleman, sheltered in his patrimonial es- Yet England, at the time of the great war, had not been a formidable naval power for more than two centuries. In the reign of the Tudors the daring of her sons had carried her flag to the remotest territories of the globe. But the Spanish, the Portuguese, and the Dutch had vied with the British; and England possessed no naval force which could compare with the fleets of Spain. The admirable skill and bravery of the British sailors had enabled our English fleet to contend with the formidable Armada. But, though the engagement was a glorious one for the British navy, the destruction of the Armada was rather due to the storms of heaven than the bolts of the English. A century later the Dutch for a time obtained undisputed mastery of the Channel; and, though Blake subsequently achieved a memorable victory over Van Tromp, De Ruyter n 1667 sailed up the Thames, and insulted the capital of the feeble monarch who disgraced the throne of England. In the war which succeeded the Revolution of 1688-9 the French were at first able to contend on equal terms with the combined fleets of Holland and England; but the great victory of Russell off La Hogue destroyed the naval power of France; and with the commencement of the eighteenth century the English commenced their glorious course of unbroken success at sea. The War of the Succession produced Benbow and Rooke; the war with Spain, Sir George Byng; the Spanish war, Hawke and Anson; the American war, Parker and Rodney. The Spanish and the French were swept from the seas by these great commanders; and the English, used to a career of constant success, shot the captains who hesitated to support their admiral, or the admiral who hesitated to engage the enemy. The triumphs of the British sailors had been great, but the lustre which surrounded Hawke and Rodney was to pale before the rising of an even greater luminary. France twice succeeded in combining the navies of the world against this country, and twice the mighty armaments were destroyed by the British sailors. Howe defeated the French off Ushant, Jervis the Spanish at St. Vincent, Duncan the Dutch off Camperdown. The marvellous successes of Nelson confirmed the impression, which these victories had produced, that the British sailor was invincible; and the battles of the Nile and Trafalgar made this country undisputed mistress СНАР. II. CHAP. II. of the seas. Once again, after Trafalgar had apparently decided the question for ever, Napoleon endeavoured to array the navies of the world against the British empire. But the Danish fleet was captured at Copenhagen; the Russian fleet surrendered in the Tagus; and the flag of England waved supreme over every sea. These brilliant successes had made the British sailor regard himself as invincible, and had made his enemies afraid to attack him. It is hardly possible to doubt that the British in many instances owed their success to the terror which their deeds inspired. Admiral Duncan, deserted by all his ships, blockaded the whole Dutch fleet. A British merchantman defeated four privateers, and, with twenty-six men, took 170 prisoners. No odds seemed too great for the British sailor to encounter, no exploit too difficult for him to undertake. An universal faith in his invincibility made him invincible, and the reputation which he had achieved filled his enemies with alarm. Yet the men, of whom the nation was thus proud, were raised in a manner and treated with a severity which already appear incredible. The captain, who required sailors to man his ship, sent a press-gang into the streets of any seaport, and swept any ablebodied sailors whom he found into the service. The slightest disobedience was punished, on many ships, with the lash, and floggings were administered with merciless severity. Men, driven into the service by force, and flogged into submission, might have been expected to have lived in a state of chronic mutiny. Fortunately, however, for the navy, the great majority of commanders were as humane as they were brave; and, with some exceptions, the men consequently clung to them with affection. Seafaring men, however, used every exertion to escape impressment, and the devices to which they resorted ultimately occasioned a new war with the only powerful country with which Britain had remained at peace. British sailors, fearing impressment, entered the American merchant service as naturalised Americans; the United States refused to allow her merchantmen to be searched. A dispute, created in this way, was intensified by other differences. War broke out between the United Kingdom and the United States: and in this war the British navy did not increase its reputation. The American navy was manned by men of the same origin as those who had fought at Copenhagen and Trafalgar, and American sailors proved their capacity to contend on equal terms with their opponents. America, indeed, had no fleets which could venture to attack the British navy. But American privateers, scouring the seas, fought a series of battles with British cruisers; and the advantage in these contests did not always or even usually lie with the British. The reputation of the British navy was tarnished by these reverses at the very moment at which the fame of the British army was raised to the highest eminence by the strategy of Wellington. The laurels which had been won by the navy were suddenly transferred to the army, and the lustre which had surrounded one service was paled by the light of the more recent victories achieved by the other. The sword, however, was not to be finally sheathed till the navy had had a new opportunity of marking its prowess. On the extreme north of the Coast of Africa a warlike and piratical state menaced the peaceful operations of the Mediterranean trader. The name of Barbary was indiscriminately applied to the states of Algeria, Morocco, Tripoli, and Tunis, occupying the portion of the African coast which was bounded by the Atlantic on the west, by the Mediterranean on the north, by Egypt on the east, and by the Great Desert on the south. The most powerful of these states was Algeria: and its great fortresses of Oran and Algiers, from their situation and their strength, were a standing menace to the Spanish kingdom. At the com CHAP. II. The expe dition to Algiers, |