Thursday in the Morn

DESCRIPTION: "Thursday in the morn, the nineteenth of May, Recorded be forever the famous ninety-two! Brave Russell did discern... The lofty sails of France advancing now." The English win the battle. "Now we sing, Bless the King! Let us drink to every British tar,"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1798 (The Echo: Or Federal Songster)
KEYWORDS: navy battle drink
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
May 19-23, 1692 - Battle of La Hougue (Barfleur)
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Simpson-TheBritishBroadsideBallad, pp. 707-708, "Thursday in the Morn" (1 tune)
Roud #18039
NOTES [2719 words]: The Battle of La Hougue (sometimes, especially in English accounts, "La Hogue"; also called the Battle of Barfleur) was a pivotal event in English history that somehow seems to get very little attention in the history books -- I haven't found a single English-language book specifically about it or about the admiral in charge, Edward Russell (1653-1727).
The context was the War of the League of Augsburg, or the Nine Years' War, with Louis XIV of France, as usual, fighting just about everybody, including the England of William III and Mary. (Loius was called "The Sun King," but a better name would have been something like "the acquisitive megalomaniac"). France had the world's most advanced navy, and was threatening to use it to invade England and restore the deposed Catholic King James II to the throne. The British and Dutch navies fought to hold off the French.
France was, at this time, the strongest country in Europe -- and it was throwing its weight around. A particular target was the Netherlands, which was governed by William of Orange. Louis had already fought one war against them, starting when William was just a boy; William had managed to pull the country through and even increase his power as a result (Van der Kiste, pp. 21-23. That somehow seemed to be the story of most of Louis's wars: he would start with all the advantages, and have great success at first, and then somehow end up not winning because everyone was afraid of him and he really wasn't very smart.)
In the late 1680s, Louis was conducting a trade war with the Netherlands, and threatening real war (Herman, p. 212; Kishlansky, p. 277). William of Orange was doing all he could to fight back; someone wrote "The depression of France was the governing passion of his whole life" (Kishlansky, p. 277). Ten of the thirteen years of William's reign in England were spent fighting France (Kishlansky, p. 288). The Netherlands had some land allies (this was the League of Augsburg that gave its name to the war), but few of them had much in the way of a navy. The Dutch needed to be safe at sea, but their navy was smaller than France's (Herman, p. 212). And if the English navy joined the French, that would be the end of things right there.
And there was a real possibility that the English navy would join the French, because, in 1685, James II had succeeded to the throne of England. And James was Catholic, and in April 1687 had issued a Declaration of Indulgence, suspending the penal laws for religious non-conformity (a noble idea in theory, but not the way James was using it!). This produced such a backlash that, in July 1687, James dissolved parliament.
Without parliament, James was short of funds and had no way to raise more. He could summon a new parliament -- or he could take a subsidy from Louis XIV. Having the standard Stuart belief in the Divine Right of Kings To Be Idiots, he went for the latter (Kishlansky, p. 277). This put William of Orange in a delicate position; James was his uncle and his father-in-law (William's mother was James's sister, and William's wife was James's older daughter Mary), but James was clearly putting his own desires ahead of his son-in-law's needs. And so it was that William began to work for James's deposition, resulting in the Glorious Revolution of 1689. There was a lot more going on, e.g. James had finally had a son, who would grow up to be a Catholic heir, but that doesn't affect this song. (For background on this, see "The Vicar of Bray"; also "Trelawny.") For the moment, let us simply say that James was out and William and Mary were in in England from 1689. And, in 1690, William won the Battle of the Boyne (for which see "The Battle of the Boyne (I)," etc. Around 1690, with James II forced out of Ireland, William appeared to have the upper hand in the war.
But the French were doing well on the continent (Kishlansky, p. 305), and if they could invade England, the anti-French coalition might still collapse.
One of the seven lords who had invited William to England to overthrow James was Edward Russell (van der Kiste, p. 93), whose brother William had been executed in 1684 for his part in the "Rye House Plot" to eliminate Charles II and James II (van der Kiste, p. 72). Russell became a member of the nine-man regency council William appointed for England while he was away in Ireland (Van der Kiste, p. 136), but he was first and foremost a sailor.
Russell had joined the navy in 1671, serving in the second Anglo-Dutch war before William II ascended the throne (OxfordCompanion, p. 708). He started visiting the Netherlands in 1687 to consider plans to overthrow James (Herman, p. 213). Another English admiral, Arthur Herbert, actually conveyed the coded "invitation" that several English nobles sent to William (van der Kiste, p. 93). Despite Russell's part in supporting William, he found himself part of a conflict between Whigs and Tories, which cost him his command (Kishlansky, p. 304. According to Rodger, p. 201, as an admiral, Russell tried not to be partisan, but he was thought to be partisan -- and neither side liked him).
Britannia at this point certainly didn't rule the waves. In 1689, the French navy had more ships, better-armed and faster ships, and for the first and only time in its century-long confilct with its British rival, better and more experienced admirals. "The French formula for success was simple. Build the best ships, train the best officers and seamen, and you will win the day" (Herman, p. 217). They even started to prepare a catalog of standard maneuvers that they could practice. "Between 1672 and 1690, 216 million livres (about £16,500,000) were spent on it, creating a fleet of over eighty ships of the line, at least equal in numbers to the English, and on average considerably larger and more heavily armed" (Rodger, p. 142, though he adds that there were not sufficient facilities to maintain these ships). Not that the Dutch or English navies were all that they might have been; the Dutch navy was running out of money, and its ships were slow (Rodger, pp 142-143), and the English "ships of the line were very heavily armed, but lacked the seaworthiness and weatherliness for operations in the Atlantic -- not least because they were overloaded with overloaded with guns.... [T]here was a notable lack of senior officials with any recent fighting experience. The Navy's logistical system was based largely in the Thames and Medway, and it had no naval yard west of Portsmouth. The administration, for all Pepys's reforms, had never manged to keep large fleets operational even in the North Sea, close to its bases, and the victualling system was especially fragile" (Rodger, p. 143). At times some ships couldn't even sail, because the crews hadn't been paid and refused to obey orders.
There had been several sea battles before La Hougue. In 1689 the French and English fleets had met in Bantry Bay, with the English fleet under Admiral Herbert. "This action won Herbert the title of earl of Torrington, but it can scarcely be accounted a victory" (Clark, p. 158); the English fleet had to retire to lick its wounds, while the French regretted a missed opportunity (Rodger, p. 143).
In 1690, the French sent a large fleet into the English Channel, and Torrington avoided battle (Herman, p. 218, says he was outnumbered 74 to 58 in ships of the line). This caused the government to order him to fight (Rodger, p. 145). "Off Beachy Head on June 30 the battle was fought.... [Torrington's] own squadron held off from the enemy while the Dutch had the hardest fighting. The French did not lose a single ship, and the allied losses were not heavy when they drew off and made for the Thames. Including ships which they destroyed on their retreat in order to save them from capture, the English lost one and the Dutch four" (Clark, p. 159; Herman, p. 219 however says that the Anglo-Dutch fleet lost 15 ships; Van der Kiste , p. 140 says seven English ships and ten Dutch ships, plus two Dutch admirals, were lost). The damage to the Dutch fleet was so bad that the English had to apologize and offer compensation (Rodger, p. 146).
The defeat didn't really matter, partly because the French, short of supplies, didn't invade, and partly since the Battle of the Boyne took place the next day, and William won that; word of that dissipated the disappointment of Beachy Head. Still, Torrington was thrown into the Tower and court-martialed. He was acquitted, to the shock of William's government, but was out of a job (Rodger, p. 146).
In 1691, the English won the battle of Aughrim (for which see "After Aughrim's Great Disaster"), and Ireland ceased to be a theater of war. From then on, it was Britain figthing France directly, which made the Navy truly a key service. In place of Torrington William chose Edward Russell to be Britain's chief admiral.
By 1692 the French were ready to try another invasion, and had built up an army at La Hougue in the Contenin Peninsula, a few miles east of Cherbourg and just south of Barfleur. James II was with it, ready to return to England (Clark, p. 159) -- though he did his usual job of shooting himself in the foot by issuing a declaration saying, in effect, "I'm going to do just what I always did." It was so aggressively stupid that Queen Mary actually publicized it to remind people of why James had been kicked out (Van der Kiste, p. 150). The French also seem to have believed that some in the English fleet would support James rather than William (Ogg, p. 367), which was just the sort of delusional thinking that was rampant at Louis XIV's court.
This time, the English and Dutch fleets were ready. And the French weren't. "Everything depended on speed of execution and surprise. Louis lost the first due to the problem he and his ministers had ignored for too long: the French navy's crippling lack of manpower. For all its impressive size, magnificent ships, and complicated bureaucratic rules, it could never find enough sailors. Manning ninety-three ships of the line and thirty-eight frigates demanded 45,000 sailors out of a total seafaring population of 55,000" (Herman, p. 223). Their logistic difficulties also made it hard to concentrate the French fleet (Rodger, p. 148). Louis at last ordered Admiral Tourville to go to La Hougue, take whatever ships he could, and fight. Tourville -- whom Herman, p. 223, calls "a better admiral than his master deserved" -- called in his captains, showed them Louis's order, and apparently told them that he knew it wasn't going to work but they had to do it (Herman, p. 223. Rodger, p. 149, doesn't mention this letter, and says that Tourville had some discretion but that his orders implied he was a coward, so perhaps he was being shamed into fighting. Rodger also says the morning was foggy, so he may not have realized what he was up against).
Between the English and the Dutch fleets, Russell's force included 82 ships of the line and 17 frigates; Herman, p. 224, says there were about 40,000 seamen and 7000 guns (Ogg, p. 368, says 6736 guns, to 3240 in the French fleet). Russell himself was admiral in charge of the Red Squadron; the Dutch constituted the White Squadron, and Vice Admiral Rooke led the Blue Squadron. Rear admirals Cloudsley Shovel and Richard Carter (who would die in the battle) were second-in-commands of the Red and Blue Squadrons. Against this Admiral Tourville could assemble only 44 French ships of the line.
Russell's fleet put to sea on May 17, headed for the Contenin. Tourville saw then on May 19 and had no choice but to give the order for battle.
The French ships suffered severely, but it's very hard to sink a wooden wall. Many had to be towed from the battle site, but they stayed afloat. However, stuck in harbor or beached or crawling along the coast, they were vulnerable to attack by fireships, which the Anglo-Dutch fleet used with great success (Herman, p. 225).
The battle lasted six days, and resulted in the loss of fifteen French ships of the line (Clark, p. 159). The transports that were to carry the invasion army mostly went up in smoke, too (Harman, p. 225). In the aftermath, Russell would be made Earl of Orford (Clark, p. 160). His instructions for the battle became British doctrine for the next century (Herman, p. 226).
The victory at La Hougue did not end the war -- it didn't end until 1697 -- but the French fleet was out of it. England was safe from invasion for the rest of the conflict. This song was presumably written soon after.
Ironically, Russell was soon out of a job, though explanations vary for why. Herman, p. 227, says the government wanted the navy to invade France, and Russell thought it too dangerous; Rodger, p. 153, blames it on his unwillingness to work with William III's supporter Lord Nottingham; similarly, Ogg, p. 327, says that Russell (who was a Whig) was unwilling to follow the orders of a Tory administration. In any case, Russell was about out of ideas. After La Hougue, the French adopted a policy of commerce raiding -- the guerre de course -- that did great damage to the British and Dutch, and which their fleets were unable to stop (Herman, p. 227), though they did not entirely give up hope of naval fleet actions until 1707b(Rodger, pp. 171-172). The commerce-raiding briefly brought Russell back yet again, but he had no answers (Herman, p. 229). Eventually everyone gave up and made peace: "Financial exhaustion led to the peace of Ryswick in 1697, but settled none of the original causes" (Rodger, p. 163).
For Louis XIV, it was only a very temporary pause. In 1700, Carlos II ("Carlos the Bewitched") of Spain died without any offspring, and the War of the Spanish Succession began the next year: The rest of Europe had reached an agreement on distributing the Spanish possessions, but the chosen heir died young, and instead of accepting a fallback plan, the French king decided once again to assert what he thought were his rights. "It took a characteristic display of Louis' blundering arrogance to create another coalition against France" (Rodger, p. 164).. The British navy would be heavily involved, but the fleets would be led by Russell's old subordinates such as George Rooke and Cloudesly Shovell, plus John Benbow, not Russell. And William III himself died in 1702; the War of the Spanish Succession was mostly Queen Anne's war, occupying effectively all of her reign.
Ogg, p. 371, says Russell was "an extremely truculent admiral who, after his victory, seems to have judged that, for his own reputation, the less he did the better." At the end of the reign of William III, he became part of the Whig "Junto" that directed that party in the years to come (Gregg, p. 134) -- although he quit his job at the Admiralty in 1699 as William III's Whig supporters abandoned ship (Ogg, p. 450). He was impeached late in William's reign, though the Lords refused to convict him (Van der Kiste, pp. 241-242; Ogg, p. 465), and the Whigs regained power when the War of the Spanish Succession began. Even so, as a member of the Junto, he was promptly kicked off the Privy Council when Queen Anne took the throne (Gregg, p. 156) -- only to force his way back as First Lord of the Admiralty (a post he also held at the beginning of George I's reign) when the Whigs forced their way into government (Gregg, p. 284). Despite all that, when he died in 1727 (the same year George I died), he was the last survivor of the Junto (Gregg, p. 400). He had actually matched the VIcar of Bray, having been around in the reign of Charles II and been politically active in the reigns of James II, William III and Mary, Anne, and George I -- though, unlike the Vicar, he never changed his attitude. He died without issue, and the Earldom of Orford went (temporarily) extinct (OxfordCompanion, p. 708).
Was Russell a great admiral? It's easy to look good when you outnumber the enemy two to one. His one other naval expedition, which was supposed to be a marine incursion into France, was a flop, though it didn't hurt the navy (Ogg, pp. 393-394). He was hard to work with, and he didn't have any solutions to the problems of commerce raiding. I'm not really impressed with his record. But he won the battle that had to be won. And it's that battle, not the rest of his career, that this song remembers. - RBW
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