8 - French Wars III, 1783–1815

Summary

After 1783 both Britain and France were exhausted yet again, but the British financial and commercial systems were better organised and more robust than those of France, so its recovery was correspondingly quicker and less disruptive. France even by 1787 was incapacitated by increasing internal difficulties, and soon sank into its revolution. One of the casualties of these difficulties was the French navy, an expensive institution. In Britain, by contrast, even though the country had been defeated and was internationally isolated during and after the American War, a mainly stable government and an active diplomacy brought it back into play in the European system fairly quickly. With its power reduced, and chastened by defeat, it did not seem so dangerous.

The Royal Navy was one of the elements in the British system which was, for once, well attended-to during the peace. The number of its line-of-battle ships rose from 117 in 1785 to 145 in 1790, and cruisers from 82 to 131, which made it the most powerful single naval force in the world. This was largely the result of defeat in the preceding war, no doubt, during which on several occasions enemy fleets had reached the Channel in sufficient strength to force the Channel Fleet to avoid a fight – the ‘fleet-in-being’ option normally despised by British sailors; the need for a fleet to dominate the Channel had thus been demonstrated in the most graphic way. After 1783, however, Britain was also in naval competition with other countries, almost all of whom were busy building up their ship numbers at the same time; together, the fleets of Britain's most persistent enemies, the allies Spain and France, outnumbered the Royal Navy by 1790. In Europe as a whole the number of line-of-battle ships of the major naval powers, except Britain, increased by well over a hundred between 1780 and 1790, to which a dozen or more built by minor powers could be added.

Three crises between 1783 and 1793 signalled the re-emergence of Britain on to the international scene, and at the same time, brought an end to the Franco-Spanish association for a time.