The Sun.
London, England, 1859-01-12 00:00:00

THE STEAM NAVY OF FRANCE.

The following letter has been addressed to the
editor of the Times :

Sir,—ln the leading article on the navies 'of
England and France in the Tines of. Saturday last
you gave a very accurate summary of facts, respect-
ing the strength, of the French steam navy. If
you can spare me the required space; I shall be
happy to set forth in detail the successive steps
by which that navy has attained its formidable
proportions. This I am enabled to do by the
receipt of information which reached me .too late
for insertion in my paper on the navy read at
the School of Arts. I shall draw no political
inferences from the facts before me, but simply
give numbers and dates for the guidance of those
who may desire to draw them.
On Jan. 1, 1850, the steam navy of France con-
sisted of 20 frigates and 86 corvettes and despatch
vessels. Of the frigates two were of 650, two 540,
and 16 of 450-horse power each ; of the smaller
vessels one only was of more than 320-horse power
and most of them were of less than 200. There was
not a single line-of-battle steamship then afloat in
any harbour of France, but during the year the
Napoleon,. of 900-home, was launched, and the Mon-
tebello, a sailing ship, was converted into a steamer,
with engines of 140-horse power only. Two smaller
vessels—either corvettes or despatch vessels—were
likewise launched in 1850. During the year 1851
no ships of the line and no frigates were added to
the French navy ; four small vessels formed the
only increase of that period. In Dec., 1851, there-
foie, the nu mber of vessel's composing that navy was
114 in all. In 1852 three ships of the line were
added—the Austerlitz, of 500-horse power, and the
Charlemagne and Jean Bart, of 450-horse power.
Besides these one frigate, of 260-horse power, and
two smaller vessels, each of 400-horse power, were
launched. In 1853 four more ships of the line floated
in French ports, each 'of 640-horse power—the
Fleurus, Prince Jerome, Duquesne, and Tourville ;
and to these were added seven corvettes and de-
spatch Vessels, three of them of 400-horse power each,
The next year, 1854, brought an increase of five
line of battle ships—one of them, the Bretagne, a
new ship of.no less than 1,200 nominal horse power,
and the other four each of 650 horse power, com-
prising the Ulm, the Navarin, the Wagram, and
the Souverain. The number of smaller vessels re-
mained stationary during that year. In 1855 the
increase in the line of battle ships was six—
,viz,, the Eylau, the Redoubtable, the, Arcole, and
theAlgesiras, all new ships. with engines of 900
horse power each, and the Tilsitt and Breslau, con-
verted ships of 500 horse power each. This year,
the most active year of the late Russian war, also
brought into existence five floating batteries, 28
gunboats, and 14 screw transports. (I would, in
passing, correct an error in the article from the
Conversations Lexicon respecting the floating bat-
teries; The writer says :—" The English batteries
were complete failures, and could not even be pro-
pelled ; the French, on the contrary, were excellent,
and answered their purpose." The truth is, the
English and French floating batteries were, to the
number of four or five—l forget, at the moment,
which—built from precisely the same lines, and
were in all their main features alike.) In 1856
seven additional line of battle ships were floated ;
of these the Imperial and the Alexandre were new,
and of 900 and 800 horse power respectively; while
the Louis Quatorze, the Tage, the Duguay Trouin,
the Donawerth, and the Duguesclin were converted
and fitted with engines varying in horse power from
600 to 450. During the same year 12Trizates, five
of them of 800 horse power, were added, and the
number, of corvettes and despatch vessels was re-
duced by 10. The number of floating batteries and
gunboats remained the same as in 1855, and has,
indeed, continued the same until now. The screw

transports were not added to this, year. The Vile
de Paris and the Turenne, each of 600 horse power,
and the St. Louis, of 450. were the only line of bat-
tle ships added in 1857. The frigates were in-
creased by four, the corvettes by one, and the trans-
ports by six in that year. In 1858 the Ville de Nantes,
of 900 horse power, and the Fontenoy, of 650, both
new ships of the line, with four corvettes and three
transports, were launched.
If the foregoing numbers be brought together,
they give these results—viz., that during the last
seven years—that is, since the flash of the coup
d'etat prepared the world for the Empire's thunder
—the number of French steamships of war has
been more than doubled (being 114 in Jan., 1852,
and 230 in Jan., 1859), and the number of steam
line-of-battle ships raised from two to 32. To com-
plete the statement of the case it is necessary to add
that at the present moment eight ships of the line,
and 25 frigates and smaller vessels are building in
the French dockyards. The line-of-battle ships are
the Intrepide, the Ville de Bordeaux, the Ville de
Lyon, the Gloire, the Invincible, and the Norman-
die, 900-horse power each ; and the Massena and
Castiglione, 800 each. The Gloire, the Invincible,
and the Normandie are building on the lines of the
Napoleon razeed, and are to be sheathed with thick
iron plates. The order for the conversion of two
other ships of the line, the Friedland and the Bayard
has been issued, but the works have not yet been
commenced.
From the foregoing facts it appeaTs that since
the supreme power of the French nation has been
in the hands of Louis Napoleon the French navy
has received an average increase of from four to five
steamships of the line annually ; and the number of
similar ships now on the stocks gives an unmistake-
able proof of his intention to exceed thßt average
this year. In your article of Saturday last you have
shown with perfect clearness that, notwithstanding
these great strides, we have the strongest steam
navy in the world; wadi endeavouredin the Society
of Arts paper to prove that with an efficient Chan-
nel fleet we should stand in no peril of invasion.
But the steady and enormous increase of the French
steam navy in large ships appears to point to some-
thing very different from a sudden and unsupported
descent upon our coast, Two-deck and three•deck

steamships are by no means the most fittirig vessels
for effecting such an operation. They are intended
as! their name implieS, for the line of battle, and
their. production in large numbers by the French
Emperor is equivalent to a declaration that if we
have to.meet his forces at all, it will not be on our
coasts or in our harbours alone. Ife is nifestiv
pr6paring 'to meet us, if need be, or if. occasion ,serve
.on the open sea, and to contend there for a iim.stcry
of infinitely greater value to him than any mere
momentary advantage.
These are not z..larmist notions, bat plain matters
of fact ; and they raise the question—ls England,
with her home interests, her Mediterranean ports
and islands; and her widespread colonies, to see her-
Self surpassed, or even.equalled, in her lines ,of
battle, by a neighbouring •Power which has but
little save its own seaboard to defend P.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,
London, Jan. 10. E. J. REED.

ITALY.

"An Italian " writes as follows :—The sudden
rising of a Russian naval establishment on the coast
of Italy 'strikes every one with surprise. The more
sanguine and impetumis hail it with unreflecting
joy, as a. sign•which portends hostility to Austria.
It is enough for them. The more intelligent go
further, and see in it an hostility. directed not so
much against, Austria as against England. While
on the one hand they wonder at the unexpected as=
sociation of constitutional Piedmont with autocratic
Russia, on the other they view with heartfelt dis-
appointment the untoward fatality which threatens
to bind together once more the freemen of England
with those Austrian intruders whose presence in
Italy is a standing calamity for the country and a
perpetual danger for Europe. Men who have been
brought up in the love of liberty, and in respect for
the principle of nationality, ask, with bitter. amaze-
ment, " Are we now to turn our admiration and our
hopes from England to Russia ?. Are we now to ex-
tend that hatred we cherish- for Austrian despotism
to its occasional. British supporters 9" The hearts of
liberal-minded men struggle against the unnatural
feelings, as well of aversion as of sympathy, which
the fatal combination of events is forcing upon
them. They have been constantly preaching to their
younger friends and political adherents that English
principles and English patronage were for them the.
only unerring' guides to gradual reform and final
independence. Now they may be shortly compelled
to unlearn that lesson and to adopt the very oppo-
site one—that despotism alone, earnest and silent
despotism, can keep the promises it makes, and can
realise those prospects which Parliamentary discus-
sion puts forward only as subjects for rhetorical
amplification and peroration. In this ebb and flow
—in this eternal pro and con Italy is dragged'
backwards and forwards, till the most clever and
conscientious of her sons appear to the world as
complete fools. For many a generation, Italy, the
seat of Papacy, and therefore the eddying whirl-
pool of all religious and political plots and counter-
plots, has offered to the word a sad comedy of errors
in which every Christian nation,_ willingly or un-
willingly, played a deceitful part Instead of re-
peating those crude and frivolous judgments which
many are passing daily upon the unpractical and
fantastic Italians, as they delight in calling
them, the practical and sensible Englishman
ought to appreciate the immense complication,
and consequent obscurity and difficulty, of Italian
polities. In this central labyrinth of European
intrigue, Machiavel , himself, lost the clue,
and at the close of his life stood hesitating and
wavering between the comparative expediency of
liberty or tyranny, as the means to attain his great
aim, that of freeing Italy from foreign rule. Eng-
lish diplomacy, it must be confessed. has been at
work these 60 or 60 years, to what visible increase
of English influence in Italy we would. desire to
know—certainly not to any real satisfaction of
reasonable Italians. And now a new Russian co-
efficient is coming in-to disturb and alter all former
calculations, and to undo, if possible, everything
that the, several English Ministries could flatter
themselves to have accomplished. •
There is a fact which those who hold the reins of
government in England ought to -take into serious
consideration. It is evident that Russia is con-
stantly enlarging the circle of her moral influence.
By her form of religion she throws a secret spell
over all the Christian communities of the Turkish
empire, amounting to no less than 13,000,000 souls.
By a new ethnolooical theory, Panslavism, she
spreads the feeling of a common origin over a com-
pact mass of 70,000,00() of credulous, obsequious
tribes—the double 'of the population of France.
However much alienated by difference of religion
and the memory of ancient feuds and recent in-
juries, they are gradually led to acknowledge
themselves as the members of an immense military
brotherhood, predestined to march from the distant
strongholds of the North to the conquest of the
East and the West. The Polish youth are regularly
trained up to behold Russia as their natural mother
and careful guardian, striving to prepare for all her
united children a .heritage: of boundless extent.
Besides the recognised weapons Ofpithodoxy and
Panslavism, the:Autocrat is now employing a . new
series of political devices.' By.conformity,of prin-
ciple and priority of action he fascinates and allures
the new French dynasty. He laVishes on her those
flattering courtesies which his proud father so un-
wisely withheld. He encourages her to assume a
half hostile countenance towards England. By the
manifestation of a strong resentment against Austria
he gains the warmest sympathies of all those nations
whom this improvident Government is steadfastly
goading into disaffection and revolt. He sustains
by his condescending patronage an aspirin.. Italian
State which Austria would willingly reduceb into
its formerinsignificance ; through the agency of this
State' he 'insinuates -himself into the profoundest
mysteries of Italian party polities.
After-the hurried .flight of the Austrian police.
from Venice in 1848 there were found among the
papers they left behind curious proofs that at the.
time of the Greek war of independence 'Austria
watched with, the same anxious jealousy both Eng-
land and Russia. The Enghsman whom they
honoured with their particular suspicion was Lord
Byron. Up to the present time. events have justified
us in declaring that. the generous instinct of the
poet would have been for English politics of those
days a far more sagacious guide than the calculating
shrewdness of Lord Castlereagh..

It is a hard and melanchaly truth that at the
same rate at which Russia has been gaining ground
England has been losing it. Her diplomacy in-
dulged in au inconsiderate attachment for the in-
dividuals, themselves who wielded despotic power.
She fOrwarded everywhere the interests of Kings
and Pontiffs. -She disdained the broad easy path
of popularity, and neglected the rights of nations.
She affected a scornful iernorance of their existence
as moral ,beings, perfectly distinct. from their acci-
dental Governments. Nationality, the most eminent
moral fact of our age, seems to be still for statesmen
a terra ineognita, or an unknown sea, on which they
dare not venture.. English agents, in obscure cor-
ners, picked up paltry quarrels, such as Don
Pacifico's, and for such insignificant concerns they
overlooked the more important interests of their
country, and wounded the sensitive feelings of
nations rising into existence. Greeks, Illyrians,
Hungarians, Roumans, Armenians would not have
bowed to the Siberian autocrat and conqueror of
nations if their rights had found a steady wotection
from another quarter. Meanwhile ttussia was
cautiously and carefully cherishing what England
was proudly disregarding. Russia now begins to
retrace the same path which she followed in Italy
tall 1820, and unwisely abandoned after the Con-
gress of Laybach. She seems now disposed to take
a leading part in Italian interests, while France,
by the protection she engaged to lend to an unman-
ageable theocracy that stands in the way of any
reasonable reform, has been raising up against
herself artificial difficulties.
It is a matter of fact that the first symptoms of
Russian interference have given a strong impulse to
public spirit throughout Italy. The people begin to
turn on the Austrian garrisons the same looks of
defiance as in 1848, and with much fiercer feelings
of retaliation and revenge. The first effective com-
motion will propagate itself from the Alps to Sicily.
The moral barriers which Prince Murat has not yet
been able to remove will be thrown down. The
resources of Italy, which, in the hands of the Pope,
the Austrians, and the Bourbons, are slumbering
in passive inefficiency, will be put into energetic
action when astrong popular outbreak throws them
into the mighty hands of 'France. Be it only for a
moment it will be sufficient for those who are to
profit by it.
It is now a statistical fact that Italy equals the
British Islands in population. What her inhabitants,
skilfully guided, are able to do may be read in many
a book of many an age. All this strength, if France
and Russia only know how to get hold of the living
principle that pervades it, could be easily turned
against England in the Mediterranean, and against
her allies there, and everywhere, by land by sea. The
oViaion of thinking Italians. is; that it would be