But with Tourville's name is associated not only a high level of
professional management, but a caution in professional action not far
removed from timidity, so that an impatient Minister of Marine of his
day and nation styled him "poltroon in head, though not in heart." His
powers were displayed in the preservation and orderly movement of his
fleet; in baffling, by sheer skill, and during long periods, the efforts
of the enemy to bring him to action; in skilful disposition, when he
purposely accepted battle under disadvantage; but under most favorable
opportunities he failed in measures of energy, and, after achieving
partial success, superfluous care of his own command prevented his blows
from being driven home.

Tourville, though a brilliant seaman, thus not only typified an era of
transition, with which he was contemporary, but foreshadowed the period
of merely formal naval warfare, precise, methodical, and unenterprising,
emasculated of military virility, although not of mere animal courage.
He left to his successors the legacy of a great name, but also
unfortunately that of a defective professional tradition. The splendid
days of the French Navy under Louis XIV. passed away with him,--he died
in 1701; but during the long period of naval lethargy on the part of the
state, which followed, the French naval officers, as a class, never
wholly lost sight of professional ideals. They proved themselves, on the
rare occasions that offered, before 1715 and during the wars of Hawke
and Rodney, not only gallant seamen after the pattern of Tourville, but
also exceedingly capable tacticians, upon a system good as far as it
went, but defective on Tourville's express lines, in aiming rather at
exact dispositions and defensive security than at the thorough-going
initiative and persistence which confounds and destroys the enemy.
"War," to use Napoleon's phrase, "was to be waged without running
risks." The sword was drawn, but the scabbard was kept ever open for its