A French invasion of Great Britain was planned to take place in 1759 during the Seven Years' War, but due to various factors (including naval defeats at the Battle of Lagos and the Battle of Quiberon Bay) was never launched. The French planned to land 100,000 French soldiers in Britain to end British involvement in the war. The invasion was one of several failed French attempts during the 18th century to invade Britain.[1]
The War of the Austrian Succession ended in 1748 with the Peace of Aachen. All of its signatories considered it unsatisfactory; in France "as stupid as the peace" became a catch phrase.[2] Frustrated by the loss of Silesia to the Kingdom of Prussia, Maria Theresa of Austria looked for an alliance which would enable her to recover it. This led Austria to an historic rapprochement with France. France was prepared to ally with her historic enemy because this would, the Conseil du Roi thought, allow her to concentrate her efforts against Great Britain in a future war. In reaction, Prussia, which had emerged from the war as a newly significant European power, allied with her previous enemy, Great Britain.[3] By 1755 Britain and France were fighting an undeclared war at sea and on the Indian frontier of North America; for example: in May, 2,000 British soldiers invaded French North America;[4] in June, the Royal Navy captured nearly 300 French fishing vessels off Newfoundland and their 4,000 crew, both hitting France economically and reducing the French navy's potential recruitment pool of experienced seamen.[5] The invasion of Saxony by Prussian troops, in August 1756, triggered what was later known as the Seven Years' War. France supported Austria and Russia in a land campaign against Prussia, and launched what she saw as her main effort in a maritime and colonial offensive against Great Britain.[6]
By the beginning of 1759 neither alliance had the advantage, in either the land or sea campaigns. Both France and Great Britain were having serious problems financing the war. In 1759 over 60% of French revenue went to service its debt,[7] causing numerous shortages. The French navy in particular was overstretched[8] and suffered from the lack of a coherent doctrine, exacerbated by the inexperience verging on incompetence of the Secretary of State for the Navy, Nicolas René Berryer, a former chief of police.[9] Meanwhile, Britain's war effort over the first three years of the war had been a failure.[10] From the summer of 1757 the British war effort came under the control of William Pitt, who imposed an assertive and coordinated strategy. It consisted of a naval and colonial effort to expel the French from North America and ruin their maritime trade,[11] while dispersing their efforts between fighting Prussia in Europe and attempting to defend the wide range of French overseas possessions. By early 1759 this was beginning to bear fruit.[12]
The Duc de Choiseul was the principal author of the invasion plan, with which he hoped to end the war against Britain with a single masterstroke.
The invasion was planned by the Duc de Choiseul who became French foreign minister in December 1758 and effectively served as Prime Minister during the period of the mooted invasion. He wanted to launch a bold initiative that would knock Britain out of the war with one stroke. French pride had been stung the previous year by the ease with which the British had captured Louisbourg and launched amphibious raids on the French coast during 1758, such as that against Cherbourg. British financial subsidies and military aid to her only ally Prussia had kept that country afloat since 1756. Choiseul's brief as foreign minister was to overturn this situation.
Choiseul was interested in the concept of a French invasion of Britain. He perceived that Britain's strength was its naval power. He saw that if a large French force managed to cross the Channel without being intercepted, it could triumph over the relatively weak British land forces. Choiseul initially ignored perceived wisdom that any invasion would have to involve French warships. He believed that trying to bring warships out of the blockaded port at Brest would cause unnecessary delays, and could be disastrous. A mixed force as he saw it would suffer the same fate as the Spanish Armada. A previous attempt by France in 1744 had to be abandoned.
His conception was relatively simple: a massive fleet of flat-bottomed transport craft would carry an army of 100,000 troops across the Channel where they would be landed on the coast of southern England. An essential component of the plan was speed. The French would wait for a favourable wind and cross the Channel quickly. Once they landed, they believed they would easily overpower the small army Britain retained on home soil and end the war. Choiseul managed to overcome opposition in the French cabinet and the invasion was approved as the cornerstone of French strategy for 1759 along with an attempt to capture Hanover.
Prince Charles Edward Stuart, after a portrait by Giles Hussey
As part of the scheme the French considered trying to start a Jacobite rebellion, as they had in 1745, by sending the heir apparent of the Jacobite movement Charles Edward Stuart with or ahead of the invading forces. A secret meeting was arranged with Charles Stuart in Paris in February 1759, but it went badly. Charles turned up late and drunk, and proved surly and uncooperative. Convinced that the Jacobites were of little material help, Choiseul dropped them from the plan.[13] From then on, any French landing would have to be entirely accomplished by French troops. He did however consider sending Charles to Ireland where he could be declared King of Ireland and lead a rebellion. Eventually the French decided to try to recruit Jacobite supporters without involving Charles directly in the operation – as he was considered a potential liability.
France also sought support from Denmark and Russia to provide troops and naval stores for the expedition, but both declined to participate. Sweden initially agreed to take part in the scheme by sending an invasion force to Scotland, but later backed out of this arrangement. The Dutch Republic, traditionally a British ally but neutral at the time, was deeply alarmed by the French actions, and demanded assurances that the French were not planning to place the pretender Stuart on the British throne, an action they believed would threaten their own security. The French ambassador assured them they were not.[14]
British response
William Pitt was the British war leader, and mobilised Britain's defences against the invasion threat.
The British were well aware of these developments through a well-established network of secret agents. On 19 February the British war cabinet met at Lord Anson's house to discuss the potential invasion. Both William Pitt and the Prime Minister, the Duke of Newcastle, were extremely bullish about the prospects of the campaign. A few proposals were made, such as stationing troops on the Isle of Wight, but the consensus was that existing strategy was already sufficient to deal with the invasion threat.[15] No plans were made for the withdrawal of British troops in Germany or to request that Hanoverian troops be sent to defend Britain.
Pitt was committed to despatching expeditions to French colonies around the world, a policy that had proved successful. It had, however, deprived Britain of necessary troops to defend itself from a European invasion. In response to this the government had pushed through a Militia Act which created a large militia to defend Britain. The fighting capabilities of this force were untested, though it provided the British with a much larger force on paper than her regular troops alone. General Ligonier estimated that he would have only 10,000 regular troops immediately available to resist any French landing.[16]
A tight blockade was maintained on major French ports throughout 1759 under the command of Admiral Edward Hawke. It proved crippling, as it denied France valuable colonial shipping supplies, and the ease with which the Blockaders kept the French fleet bottled up was shattering to French morale.[17] Improvements in supply arrangements had enabled the British to maintain a continuous blockade, something they had failed to accomplish previously. The British shared conventional wisdom that any invasion would have to involve the Brest fleet, but kept a close watch on all potential departure points.
French preparations
French Fleet with French and Imperial German troops in Brest, 1759
During 1759 the French pressed on with their preparations. Hundreds of the flat-bottomed transport craft were constructed in Le Havre, Brest, St Malo, Nantes, Morlaix and Lorient. An estimated 30 million livres was spent on the construction of the boats. A number of small but well-armed escorts were also constructed. By midsummer, more than 325 transports were nearing completion. 48,000 troops were immediately ready to take part in the invasion. Drills were conducted which found the French troops could embark and disembark from the ships in just seven minutes.[18]
Throughout the year, several points of the plan were altered, but it remained the same in essence. In spite of opposition from within the French cabinet (particularly the war minister Belle-Isle), Choiseul insisted on launching the crossing without fleet support. The French decided to launch the invasion force entirely from Le Havre, a large harbour some distance from the blockading British fleet at Brest. A smaller diversionary force would leave from Dunkirk.
In June, French planners agreed that a separate, smaller force would be sent to Scotland to try to gain Jacobite support, and crush British resistance in a pincer movement. The Duc d'Aiguillon was selected to take command of this force. Once landing on the Clyde approximately 20,000 Scottish Jacobites, mostly Highland clansmen, would rise and join him. Command of the larger southern invasion was given to Prince Soubise. Plans called for Soubise's force to wait for good winds, and then cross the Channel speedily from Le Havre, landing in Portsmouth.
A surprise British raid on Le Havre in early July did considerable damage, destroying a number of the transports.[19] However, the success of the venture lured the British commanders into a false sense of security, making them believe it had been a greater setback than it had in fact.[20] The French intended to capitalise on this, but scaled back their initial plans. A War Council in Paris decided to launch the expedition to Scotland first, and if it was successful, send follow-up forces to Portsmouth and Maldon, Essex. Exact details were left vague to enable them to respond to changing circumstances. Delays to the assembly of the invasion force pushed back the date of the launch, and the sea grew rougher and more dangerous to cross. Some French leaders were wary of putting the fleet to sea in potentially bad weather, but the need for a major victory to restore French morale and win an honourable peace overruled their concerns.[21] In October, D'Aiguillon arrived at his command centre at Vannes, near to where much of his army had gathered. For five days after 15 October, the British blockading squadrons were forced to withdraw from the French coast by a storm, leaving the French invasion forces free to sail. Conflans declined to leave harbour, as he believed his fleet was not ready, and on 20 October the British returned to blockade the French Atlantic ports again.[22]
Battle of Lagos
In summer 1759, the French Toulon fleet under Admiral La Clue slipped through the blockade and sailed out through the Straits of Gibraltar. They were caught and defeated by a British fleet at the Battle of Lagos in August. Their intended destination had been the West Indies, but the loss of ships and men stretched the French fleet almost to breaking point, and raised questions about the viability of the invasion.
Battle of Quiberon Bay
The French naval defeat at Quiberon Bay proved a devastating setback to the planned invasion, and was one of the major reasons behind its ultimate cancellation
The invasion plan received a crippling blow in November, when the French Brest Squadron was heavily defeated at the Battle of Quiberon Bay. Conflans had sailed from Brest on 15 November heading a hundred miles down the coast to Quiberon Bay, where the invasion army was now waiting to board his transports. Conflans' fleet became caught in a storm which slowed them down and allowed the pursuing British under Sir Edward Hawke a chance to catch up with them.
Meeting at the mouth of Quiberon Bay on 21 November, the two fleets closed in on each other. Conflans initially formed a line of battle and prepared to engage, but then changed his mind and his ships raced to take shelter in the bay. Hawke pursued, taking a high risk in the middle of a violent storm, and captured or drove ashore five French ships. The remainder managed to find shelter in the bay. They were now blockaded in by the British fleet, and most were abandoned and their guns taken off them. Only three ships ever sailed again, a devastating setback to the French Channel fleet. The crushing defeat at Quiberon Bay ended any real hope of a major invasion of the British Isles.[23]
A privateer, François Thurot, sailed from Dunkirk with five ships to provide diversionary support to the invasion. In 1760 he landed on the northern Irish coast and set up a base at Carrickfergus. Had he not repeatedly clashed with the commander of the land expedition, the force might have captured poorly defended Belfast. Having sailed for home, the Royal Navy killed Thurot and destroyed his squadron in the Irish Channel.[24] By this point, the French had abandoned the invasion. However, many French people took heart from Thurot's expedition as it demonstrated that French forces could land in the British Isles. Madame de Pompadour suggested that France would have won at Quiberon, had Thurot been in command instead of Conflans.[25]
With the Brest fleet destroyed at Quiberon Bay, they were now unable to escort the French troops across the Channel. Some now began pressing Choiseul for a return to the original plan of an unescorted crossing, suggesting that the invasion be postponed to early 1760.
1759 was a disastrous year for the French war effort. They suffered severe defeats in Canada, the West Indies, Europe and India. Choiseul was particularly disappointed by the poor performance of the French navy.[26] As word of these disasters poured in, the extent to which France's forces were now stretched became clear. Realising they needed the French forces earmarked for the invasion elsewhere, particularly in Germany to fight Hanover, Choiseul reluctantly called off the invasion.
He remained hopeful that it might still be possible at some future date, but the war situation continued to deteriorate for France during the next few years particularly when Spain entered the war as a French ally in 1761. Choiseul began in 1762 to plan a fresh invasion, but this was also abandoned when an armistice was signed.[27]
Aftermath
The French fully abandoned the plan in 1763, when the Peace of Paris mandated a general cessation of hostilities. Choiseul continued to advocate a direct strike against Britain as the way to win future wars, and despatched engineers and agents to examine British defences in preparation.[28] During the Falklands Crisis of 1770 he proposed a similar action, but was dismissed by the French King, Louis XV. Further French invasions were planned in 1779 during the American War of Independence, and by Napoleon in 1803–04, but none came to fruition for much the same reasons as Choiseul's 1759 campaign had been abandoned.
Anderson, Fred (2000). Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN9780571205356.
Chaline, Oliver (2011). "Quiberon Bay, 20 novembre 1759". Les cahiers du Pays de Guérande (in French) (53). Société des Amis de Guérande: 17–29. ISSN0765-3565.
La Condamine, Pierre de (2000). Le combat des Cardinaux: 20 novembre 1759, baie de Quiberon et rade du Croisic (in French). La Turballe: L'Esprit large-Éd. Alizés. ISBN978-2911835032.
Ériau, Jean-Michel (2011). "La Bataille du Croisic". Les cahiers du Pays de Guérande (in French) (53). Société des Amis de Guérande: 17–29. ISSN0765-3565.
Middleton, Richard (1988). "Naval Administration in the Age of Pitt and Anson, 1755-1763". In Black, Jeremy & Woodfine, Philip (eds.). The British Navy and the Use of Naval Power in the Eighteenth Century. Leicester: Leicester University Press. pp.109–127. OCLC572510434.
le Moing, Guy (2003). La Bataille navale des Cardinaux: 20 novembre 1759 (in French). Paris: Economica. ISBN978-2717845037.
Charles Edward Louis John Sylvester Maria Casimir Stuart was the elder son of James Francis Edward Stuart making him the grandson of James VII and II, and the Stuart claimant to the thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1766 as Charles III. During his lifetime, he was also known as "the Young Pretender" and "the Young Chevalier"; in popular memory, he is known as Bonnie Prince Charlie.
Edward Hawke, 1st Baron Hawke,, of Scarthingwell Hall in the parish of Saxton with Scarthingwell, near Tadcaster, Yorkshire, was a Royal Navy officer. As captain of the third-rate HMS Berwick, he took part in the Battle of Toulon in February 1744 during the War of the Austrian Succession. He also captured six ships of a French squadron in the Bay of Biscay in the Second Battle of Cape Finisterre in October 1747.
The Battle of Quiberon Bay was a decisive naval engagement during the Seven Years' War. It was fought on 20 November 1759 between the Royal Navy and the French Navy in Quiberon Bay, off the coast of France near Saint-Nazaire. The battle was the culmination of British efforts to eliminate French naval superiority, which could have given the French the ability to carry out their planned invasion of Great Britain. A British fleet of 24 ships of the line under Sir Edward Hawke tracked down and engaged a French fleet of 21 ships of the line under Marshal de Conflans. After hard fighting, the British fleet sank or ran aground six French ships, captured one and scattered the rest, giving the Royal Navy one of its greatest victories, and ending the threat of French invasion for good.
The naval Battle of Lagos took place between a British fleet commanded by Edward Boscawen and a French fleet under Jean-François de La Clue-Sabran over two days in 1759 during the Seven Years' War. They fought south west of the Gulf of Cádiz on 18 August and to the east of the small Portuguese port of Lagos, after which the battle is named, on 19 August.
Hubert de Brienne, Comte de Conflans was a French naval commander.
Quiberon Bay is an area of sheltered water on the south coast of Brittany. The bay is in the Morbihan département.
Étienne Eustache Bruix was a French Navy officer and admiral, and Minister of the Navy.
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François Thurot was a French privateer, merchant naval captain and smuggler who raided British shipping during the Seven Years' War.
An invasion of Great Britain was planned by France in 1744 shortly after the declaration of war between them as part of the War of the Austrian Succession. A large invasion force was prepared and put to sea from Dunkirk in February 1744, only to be partly wrecked and driven back into harbour by violent storms. Deciding that circumstances were not favourable to an invasion, the French government suspended the attempt, and deployed their forces elsewhere.
Great Britain was one of the major participants in the Seven Years' War, which in fact lasted nine years, between 1754 and 1763. British involvement in the conflict began in 1754 in what became known as the French and Indian War. However the warfare in the European theater involving countries other than Britain and France commenced in 1756. Britain emerged from the war as the world's leading colonial power, having gained all of New France in North America, ending France's role as a colonial power there. Following Spain's entry in the war in alliance with France in the third Family Compact, Britain captured the major Spanish ports of Havana, Cuba and Manila, in the Philippines in 1762, and agreed to return them in exchange for Spanish Florida. The Treaty of Paris in 1763 formally ended the conflict and Britain established itself as the world's pre-eminent naval power.
The Trafalgar campaign was a long and complicated series of fleet manoeuvres carried out by the combined French and Spanish fleets; and the opposing moves of the Royal Navy during much of 1805. These were the culmination of French plans to force a passage through the English Channel, and so achieve a successful invasion of the United Kingdom. The plans were extremely complicated and proved to be impractical. Much of the detail was due to the personal intervention of Napoleon, who as a soldier rather than a sailor failed to consider the effects of weather, difficulties in communication, and the Royal Navy. Despite limited successes in achieving some elements of the plan the French commanders were unable to follow the main objective through to execution. The campaign, which took place over thousands of miles of ocean, was marked by several naval engagements, most significantly at the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October, where the combined fleet was decisively defeated, and from which the campaign takes its name. A final mopping up action at the Battle of Cape Ortegal on 4 November completed the destruction of the combined fleet, and secured the supremacy of the Royal Navy at sea.
France was one of the leading participants in the Seven Years' War which lasted between 1754 and 1763. France entered the war with the hope of achieving a lasting victory against Prussia, Britain, and their German allies and with the hope of expanding its colonial possessions.
The Raid on Le Havre was a two-day naval bombardment of the French port of Le Havre early in July 1759 by Royal Navy forces under Rear-Admiral George Rodney during the Seven Years' War, which succeeded in its aim of destroying many of the invasion barges being gathered there for the planned French invasion of Great Britain.
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Jean-François de Sabran, comte de La Clue was a French naval officer best known for his command of the French fleet in the Mediterranean Sea during the Seven Years' War.
The Juste ("Juste") was a 74-gun ship of the line of the French Navy, built on plans by engineer Geslin. She took part in the Battle of Quiberon Bay on 20 November 1759 during the Seven Years' War and was lost at the mouth of the Loire after the battle while trying to rejoin Saint Nazaire.
Le Magnanime was originally a 74-gun ship of the line of the French Navy launched in 1744 at Rochefort. Captured on 12 January 1748, she was taken into Royal Navy service as the third rate HMS Magnanime. She played a major part in the 1757 Rochefort expedition, helping to silence the batteries on the Isle of Aix, and served at the Battle of Quiberon Bay in 1759 under Lord Howe, where she forced the surrender of the French 74-gun Héros. Following a survey in 1770, she was deemed unseaworthy and was broken up in 1775.
HMS Roebuck was a 44-gun, fifth-rate sailing warship of the Royal Navy which carried a main battery of twenty 18-pounder (8.2 kg) long guns. Launched on 21 December 1743, she first served in the English Channel during the War of the Austrian Succession, which Britain entered the following March.
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