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CHAPTER XVIII.

The last scene of that dear memory is rising now. Summer had heralded all the changes--all the eventful periods of our little history. Again it was summer, and the gate of Trevenna's house opened once more for a procession. The bells were ringing merrily. There were schoolboys, too, in the lane, and the light shades were chasing one another across the blue sky, and the rooks were cawing and whirling round. Quamino was present, too, more gorgeous than ever, having taken advantage of a license to order his own livery, by making every strip of lace broader, and deepening every colour; and strutted out with a dignity quite above and beyond noticing any remarks about cockatoos or peacocks, or pickle herring, which might come from Beelzebub and other friends.

All was as before, save that the

young life which was then borne forth in hope and fear, now moved out in the fulness of joy, a fair young bride, beside him who was to be her husband. And the elders, the fathers and mothers, were around them, no longer anxious or doubtful of a future, but assured and happy.

Thus the light passed from the hearth, but left its brightness behind -a brightness which shone there on and on o'er long happy years, and set only when life set; and then, even then, leaving, as the sun does, a lingering glory.

And has it shed no brightness on me-me, the lone man? Yes; Rose's children have climbed on my knee; the light of her happiness has floated around me; and her memory, her spirit, have gleamed again and again in dark hours, as now, a light on this lonesome, lonely hearth.

CHERBOURG-THE PORT AND FORTRESS.

A SEABOARD is a great power; it is also a great responsibility. It opens to a people a second empire, a great thoroughfare of expansion and possession; it involves, also, a necessity of defence and protection. Before, however, it becomes a power or a necessity of defence, it has been an outlet for the wants and the supplies of a population. Fishermen have drawn their food and found their livelihood along the shores, and merchants have built their barks and laden them in the ports and harbours, long ere the policies of national interests or international balances have recognised them as necessary and useful agents in their systems. The fisher-boats and the merchantbarks are the regular antecedents of vessels of war and naval armaments; they first show the value of a seaboard, and suggest its conservation; in them are nurtured and prepared the elements of maritime offence and defence. To some people it is a possession eagerly adopted as a point

of egress, a means of extending and developing their resources and strength; by some it is accepted merely as a boundary and frontier incurring exposure and demanding security. In either case it is a possession which imposes on a nation aspiring to take a high place among the principalities and polities of the world the destiny of becoming sooner or later a naval power, and, as a natural consequence, its ports and harbours become docks, arsenals, and fortresses.

To France, at first, her extensive seaboard was rather a difficulty, and a responsibility, than a power. Her ambitions and tendencies were all rather territorial than maritime. Her inland frontier and her army were the great objects of her attention and concern. To push forward the one, to maintain and develop the other, was the great aim of national aggrandisement, the great effort of national resources. The pressure of competition with a rival powerful on the seas, the

enlargement of political systems, the opening of communications with new worlds, forced her beyond the sphere of Continental economies, and compelled her, in assertion of the position of a great power, to create and possess a navy. The genius of her great princes and statesmen long foresaw this necessity, and had fixed on the strategic points where the great ports militaires should be constructed. Their plans were many years in abeyance; circumstances delayed their fulfilment, but the judgment of posterity and the course of events confirmed their choice of positions. The fact that they were ever strategic, ever selected with military aim and purpose, with a view to the balance of power rather than the development of a marine, and were ever parts of certain bases of attack or defence, insured the recognition of their importance by those who inherited or adopted the polities which they represented. It also made the locality a greater object than the natural fitness. The position was chosen, and the port must be made.

The creation of a marine must be ever a great work-a work which, aided by natural facilities and national influences, must necessarily be slow in its progress; but when undertaken as a measure of statecraft, and in defiance of obstacles, must be a conquest of difficulties to be achieved only at great cost of time and energy. Such was it with France. The maritime population of an extended coast offered a fair supply of the man-power, though not equal, perhaps, to that which the demand of more commercial nations afforded; but the popular favour and the national tastes helped not to foster the formation of a marine, and every stage in its advance was a decree of state. The seaboard, too, presented few natural advantages; and it was only a succession of great and continuous efforts which established on it the grand cordon of the ports militaires. The last of these efforts would seem to have burst on the world as a surprise; and yet the history of the nation for the last two centuries shows it to be only the part of a fixed and persistent purpose. In some nations the government decrees, and

in others the people wills and the result is, that in one case the action will be more constant and consistent; in the other, that the power to sustain it will be more elastic and enduring. The decretal system has produced the navy of France; it has clothed it with abundant materialhas harboured it in magnificent ports; yet the lifeblood which should feed it should give it full vitality and vigour-must flow from the impulses, and receive a movement from the pursuits of a people. Spite, however, of obstacles natural and national, spite of reverses and defeats, it has raised a naval power, formidable in appearance, formidable in reality, more formidable, perhaps, in its structure than in its resources, yet formidable ever as the assertion of the resolve of a great nation.

The seaboard had three faces-one, opening to the Mediterranean, touched on the coast-lines of the continental kingdoms of the south, and abutted on the African shores; another broadly fronted the Atlantic, and a third looked forth on the coast of England. Polities gave the earliest and most prominent importance to the first. The Mediterranean was then the great outlet of commerce, the great arena of navies; Spain was a naval power holding and commanding its entrance; Carthagena and Gibraltar were to be balanced, the corsairs of Algiers and Barbary checked, the commercial influences of the Italian cities controlled, in order that France might maintain among its maritime neighbours the position which its military force gave it on land. To effect this, the statesmanship of Henri Quatre designed the construction of a great war-port. Toulon was fixed upon as offering the greatest natural and strategic advantages. Marseilles, which had been the harbourage of the old galleys, was given over to the requirements of commerce. Louis XIV. recognised the design as suited to his system, and resolutely advanced it. Vauban planned its defence; the events of the time furthered its progress. Thus, following the fluctuations of the French marine, and the changes of polities, sometimes neglected and overlooked,

sometimes rising into temporary prominence-at last, under the vigorous administration of the Empire, Toulon became the chief, as it had been the first, of the five grand ports militaires. Here have since been organised, and hence have started, great expeditions of conquest and colonisation, proving its import, and justifying the forecast of the rulers who had selected it as a nursery and a point d'appui for the naval force of France. The Atlantic, however, had become about the same period a great field of naval enterprise, a great roadway of discovery and commerce; and the genius of Richelieu decided that on this face of the seaboard, also, the maritime power of his nation must have its development in a port and arsenals. As a salient point which offered an egress both to the Atlantic and the English Channel, the extremity of Brittany seemed most eligible for the purpose. Here was found a splendid, spacious, natural harbour, opening into a large and well-sheltered roadstead, so little known and used, that the town which stood on it was a little insignificant place without commerce and without trade. The iron-mines and forests in the neighbourhood afforded all the material for construction; and, shortly, the little village of Brest rose to be a chief naval station, the site of docks and storehouses, forts and barracks. The project of Richelieu was for a while almost forgotten and abandoned, until Louis XIV., whose policy gave ever vitality and impulse to the creation of a marine, revived it. Under the direction of his minister Colbert, the admiral Duquesne was intrusted with the organisation of an arsenal; and to him, and a local engineer, 'Lindu,' belong the honour of planning and originating the great works, which have since been brought to such completion. The great movements and operations of which the Atlantic was for years the scene, prevented Brest from ever again falling into obscurity, and it became in import and efficiency, on that seaboard, what Toulon was on the Mediterranean.

Rochefort was another point on the same base. It was a part of the same policy, an emanation of the

same will. From the inspirations of Colbert, and the resolve of his master, sprang most of the conceptions which, in their maturity and perfection, have made the naval greatness of France. Ever with their designs were associated the name and talent of Vauban. Strategy was the idea of their conception, and the master mind of the great strategist was a fitting agent for their achievement.

Rochefort was unhealthy. What matter!-it was strategic. The malaria of the marshes spread death. Long to breathe the air was to die. Men disappeared there by hundreds. What were men to the glory and greatness of France? So the work went on. In time the swamps were drained; the average mortality prevailed in its barracks and hospitals; and, in virtue of its "position geographique," it took its place among the great ports. Betwixt this place and Brest, on the coast of Brittany, and at the confluence of the rivers Scorf and Blavet, was a harbour which the enterprise of the merchants trading to the East had seized upon for the entrepôt of their merchandise, and the great port of their commerce. There they constructed their docks and quays, built their workshops and magazines. As long as they flourished, it flourished, grew wealthy, great, and populous. The reverses of trade fell on the company, and the government stepped in, purchased and took possession of the readymade locality and properties, and L'Orient became another link in the cordon of the ports.

Still there would be a great break. Along the whole northern face, from the Isle of Ushant to Dunkirk, there was no war-port, no harbour of refuge even capable of receiving vessels of the line. Opposite were the coasts of a great rival power, gradually rising to maritime supremacy, and her chief ports commanding the Channel, and offering ever, to squadrons of observation or attack, points of ready egress and easy access. Brest was scarcely a counterbalance to these. Its position was not favourable for a point d'appui on the Channel, and the prevalence of westerly winds would render it uncertain and

difficult to fetch, as a place of refuge or retreat. Thus one base, and that the one most open to operations, would remain a defect in the strategic principle, a weakness to the "politique extérieure" on which the maritime system of France was to be founded and constructed. Its great projectors perceived this, and the coast-line was searched and examined along its whole extent for a place which should have at once the advantages of a harbour and position. The shores offered nought save bays filled with sand, or bristling with rocks, and roadsteads open to the winds and the surf. The position therefore became the chief consideration; the port was to be created. Vauban selected the bay of La Hogue; the seamen of the period favoured Cherbourg, in consequence of its having such an even depth of water, and affording such good holdingground. Both were equally strategic; both were situated on salient points of the coast of Normandy; both were commanding stations from which ships could depart, or to which they could return, at almost any season, and with any wind. The question was long debated-bureaux and councils divided on it-conflicting interests and opinions were agitated on either side-circumstances and changes of policies delayed the decision. At last Cherbourg was chosen as the site of another port militaire, which, surpassing original design, was afterwards, by its magnitude and capacity, as well as by the energy and resolve evinced in its construction, to excite the suspicion of nations, and be interpreted as a menace of war. Thus completed, the strategic system showed a seaboard surrounded by a cordon of ports militaires-every front was an armed base-and possessed its point of defence or attack. The policy, too, which had resolved the institution of France as a great naval power, was fulfilled. Within these ports had grown a navy, strong in material and means, strong in equipment and organisation, strong in the supply of men-a navy which, from a state of confessed inferiority, had risen in a few years to challenge comparison, and compete for supre

the

macy, with that of the great maritime people of the world.

The means by which such ends have been accomplished, the motives for which they were undertaken, the real nature of the results achieved, are well worthy of consideration. Let us study them as represented in the port of Cherbourg. To do this we must view it in its different aspects as a port, as a fortress of defence, as a point of aggression. First as a port. Cherbourg Road, as it presented itself to the explorers for a situation, was an open space formed between Querqueville Point and Pelée Island, distant about four miles, and lying E.S.E and W.S.W. of each other. Hills, which form a high and precipitous coast, terminating in cliffs of grey rock and ledges near Querqueville, run to the south-eastward. Between their spurs and the sea lies a low narrow plain, bordered by a shore broken by rocky banks and sandy indents, which, after sweeping along for some distance in a curve, makes a sudden turn, and hollows into the bay of Cherbourg. The Point d'Hommet, the western extremity, was a mass of rock which was continued along the western side. At the head of the bay the small river Divette ran into the sea, but made no harbour. Here, too, stood the town. In front of this south side was a low sandy beach, which extended until the shore trends towards the east and north, where the rocks Des Flamands lie, uncovered at low-water, and running off in shoals to the northward. Beyond this again was the Pelée Island, a flat of bare rocks which had evidently been separated from the coast by the action of the waves, leaving a channel nearly half-a-mile wide, so shallow and broken as to be impassable by vessels. This Ile Pelée and the Querqueville Point are the extremities which defined the Road of Cherbourg, though they did not shelter it. Betwixt them was an area equal to about a square league, affording more than a thousand acres of good holdingground, at a depth of four fathoms and upwards, and capable of containing fully twenty sail of the line, besides frigates and smaller craft.

But it was quite swept by all the northerly and north-westerly winds, and heavy swells rendered the anchorage unsafe, and at times impossible. This was then the position which art and policy determined on. There was ample space, an anchorage with good firm bottom, but no protection, and offering no natural facilities for a port or arsenal, in which ships of war could be constructed or fitted. The advantages, however, were too great to be abandoned without an effort, and a great one too, at overcoming the difficulties and obstacles. The first step was evidently to shelter the Rade, to give it an artificial protection from the winds, especially those of the north and north-west-the most dangerous and most frequent on those coasts. The idea of a breakwater was accordingly projected. As this structure, to effect the required purpose, would be extended across the base of the roadstead from Querqueville to Pelée, leaving intervals sufficient only for entrances and passages, and must be sunk in a depth of from six to seven fathoms, in the midst of a sea ever turbulent and tempestuous, the undertaking appeared stupendous from its vastness and novelty, and the government hesitated long before they entered on it. The energy and the convictions of men of talent at last inspired confidence in the enterprise. The names of the workers should live ever with their work-it is unjust to separate them. MM. de la Bretonnière, Capitaine de Vaisseau, was the first who gave real form and purpose to the idea of a breakwater. It was the project of M. de Cessart, engineer, which originated its creation. His design was to lay down a line of caissons of the shape of cones filled with stones, at certain distances from each other, under the supposition that these would so break and divide the action and force of the sea as to produce within a harbourage sufficiently calm and smooth for vessels to lie there in safety. This was begun in 1784. Eighteen cones had been laid, each having a diameter of one hundred and twenty feet at the base, and sixty feet at the top, when it was found that even these

masses were unequal to resist the violence of the winter storms, and that the waves, washing and surging betwixt them, had such powerful effect as to overthrow and overwhelm them utterly, so that after a while they lay heaped at the bottom in a sloping mound. The defeat of one design only suggested another. It was now decided to erect a solid mass, by depositing stone "à pierre perdue," on the foundation furnished by the wreck and rubble of the cones, and it was thought that the immense deposits beneath might be consolidated by raising on them large blocks of masonry. A fort, too, capable of holding a garrison, and being mounted with twenty guns, was also to be constructed in the centre. This was effected, and the success seemed approved, when, in 1808, the great storm of the 12th February tried its strength and solidity, and once more the sea was conqueror. The waves, driven by the fury of the north-west wind, broke and swept with irresistible violence against the parapet. Every shock became fiercer and heavier; the waters at every surge grew mightier and more terrible, until the yielding masonry gave them an entrance, and then they burst furiously through the breach, destroying and overwhelming everything in their course. Huge blocks of stone were hurled from one side of the Digue to the other; buildings and ramparts were borne away like trees in a whirlwind, and the destruction of the whole work seemed impending. During this storm the Digue was the scene of a little romance of peril and heroic daring. At its commencement there were more than two hundred workmen and soldiers there, who were surprised and overtaken by the suddenness and violence of the tempest. Hour by hour they saw the danger growing greater; the waves swept nearer and nearer; every moment a roar, louder and deeper, told of a breach in their rampart, or a shock to the foundation of their houses. Then a comrade was swept away; then others fell crushed by falling ruins; then little bands, driven from point to point, seeking one refuge after another, sunk worn out by the cold and the struggle. No help

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