April to October 1711.—Disastrous expedition under Sir Hovenden Walker against Quebec.
These two lists are not exhaustive. They do not include minor operations against the French coast in the Channel, nor do they mention all the subordinate parts of the colonial expeditions. It is also necessary to bear in mind that the Grand Fleets were the fleets of the allies, not of England alone. The Dutch always contributed a part of the strength, and their share of the common force was nowise inferior in spirit, or skill, to ours. In one of the elements which go to make efficiency they were not rarely superior. Their health was too often better, since, to the deep discredit of British administrations of that time, we did not on the average feed our men as well as the Dutch. The colonial expeditions were our own, and the work was done at an awful cost of life by disease.
In these circumstances the cruises of the allied Grand Fleets could only be the successive exercises of an overwhelming superiority, directed against an enemy whose resistance must needs be passive, with rare and fitful efforts at retaliation. Year after year the great combined naval armaments of England and Holland sailed south in the spring. Before the Peace of Ryswick (1697) they went once to aid the Spaniards, who were contending feebly against the French in Catalonia. After the renewal of the war, they went repeatedly to aid the Hapsburg pretender, who was endeavouring to drive the Bourbon King of Spain, Philip V., from the throne he occupied by right of inheritance and the will of Charles II., the last of the Austrian dynasty. They also served to cover the movements of English and Dutch commerce by mewing up the only fleet which Louis XIV. endeavoured to maintain in Toulon. Incidentally they enabled us to secure what Cromwell had hoped for, and what our Charles II. endeavoured to obtain by his marriage treaty—namely, a port of war near the Mediterranean, where an English fleet could keep its stores, repair damages, and find a safe anchorage without being dependent on the goodwill of an ally.
The interest of a conflict between strength and weakness cannot be in proportion to the importance of its results. These campaigns must therefore (considerations of space being also of much weight) “speak by their foreman”; by the typical examples. None seem more representative than the first great cruise into the Mediterranean in 1694, and that expedition of ten years later which put us in possession of Gibraltar.