thus putting into practice that fine saying of Montesquieu, 'Adversity
is our mother, Prosperity our step-mother.'. By the year 1769 was seen
in all its splendor that brilliant galaxy of officers whose activity
stretched to the ends of the earth, and who embraced in their works
and in their investigations all the branches of human knowledge. The
Academie de Marine, founded in 1752, was reorganized." (1)

----
1. Gougeard: La Marine de Guerre; Richelieu et Colbert.
----

The Academie's first director, a post-captain named Bigot de Morogues,
wrote an elaborate treatise on naval tactics, the first original work
on the subject since Paul Hoste's, which it was designed to supersede.
Morogues must have been studying and formulating his problems in
tactics in days when France had no fleet, and was unable so much as to
raise her head at sea under the blows of her enemy. At the same time
England had no similar book and an English lieutenant, in 1762, was
just translating a part of Hoste's great work, omitting by far the
larger part. It was not until nearly twenty years later that Clerk, a
Scotch private gentleman, published an ingenious study of naval
tactics, in which he pointed out to English admirals the system by
which the French had thwarted their thoughtless and ill-combined
attacks. (1) "The researches of the Academie de Marine, and the
energetic impulse which it gave to the labors of officers, were not,
as we hope to show later, without influence upon the relatively
prosperous condition in which the navy was at the beginning of the
American war."

----