Within ten years of the peace of 1788 came the French Revolution; but
that great upheaval which shook the foundations of States, loosed the
ties of social order, andx drove out of the navy nearly all the trained
officers of the monarchy who were attached to the old state of things,
did not free the French navy from a false system. It was easier to
overturn the form of government than to uproot a deep-seated
tradition. Hear again a third French officer, of the highest rank and
literary accomplishments, speaking of the inaction of Villeneuve, the
admiral who commanded the French rear at the battle of the Nile, and
who did not leave his anchors while the head of the column was being
destroyed:--

"A day was to come [Trafalgar] in which Villeneuve in his turn, like
De Grasse before him, and like Duchayla, would complain of being
abandoned by part of his fleet. We have come to suspect some secret
reason for this fatal coincidence. It is not natural that among so
many honorable men there should so often be found admirals and
captains incurring such a reproach. If the name of some of them is to
this very day sadly associated with the memory of our disasters, we
may be sure the fault is not wholly their own. We must rather blame
the nature of the operations in which they were engaged, and that
system of defensive war prescribed by the French government, which
Pitt, in the English Parliament, proclaimed to be the forerunner of
certain ruin. That system, when we wished to renounce it, had already
penetrated our habits; it had, so to say, weakened our arms and
paralyzed our self-reliance. Too often did our squadrons leave port
with a special mission to fulfil, and with the intention of avoiding
the enemy; to fall in with him was at once a piece of bad luck. It was
thus that our ships went into action; they submitted to it instead of