The Croisière de Bruix (also known as Bruix' expedition of 1799) was the principal naval campaign of the year 1799 during the French Revolutionary Wars. The expedition began in April 1799 when the bulk of the French Atlantic Squadron under Vice-admiral Étienne Eustache Bruix departed the base at Brest, evading the British Channel Fleet which was blockading the port and tricking the commander Admiral Lord Bridport into believing their true destination was Ireland. Passing southwards, the French fleet narrowly missed joining with an allied Spanish Navy squadron at Ferrol and was prevented by an easterly gale from uniting with the main Spanish fleet at Cádiz before entering the Mediterranean Sea. The Mediterranean was under British control following the destruction of the French Mediterranean Fleet at the Battle of the Nile in August 1798, and a British fleet nominally under Admiral Earl St Vincent was stationed there. Due however to St. Vincent's ill-health, operational control rested with Vice-Admiral of the Red Lord Keith. As Keith sought to chase down the French, the Spanish fleet followed Bruix into the Mediterranean before being badly damaged in a gale and sheltering in Cartagena.
Bruix successfully evaded Keith's pursuit, briefly putting in at Toulon and then operating off the Italian coast in June. Keith belatedly followed Bruix' trail, his progress obstructed by distant orders from St Vincent and disobedience from Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson who commanded a separate squadron at Palermo and refused to participate in the campaign due to his preoccupation with the political situation in Naples. By the time Keith reached Toulon the French admiral had sailed westwards once more, joining with the Spanish force at Cartagena to form a fleet of 40 ships of the line. In early July, unaware that Bruix had returned through the Straits of Gibraltar to the Atlantic, Keith was joined by a heavy reinforcement sent by Bridport and reprovisioned his force at Port Mahon and Gibraltar before renewing the chase. During late July and early August Keith pursued Bruix into the Atlantic and rapidly closed the gap between the fleets as they crossed the Bay of Biscay. Ultimately however Bruix reached Brest on 13 August, just one day ahead of Keith, unopposed by the remainder of Bridport's fleet which was stationed off Rochefort blockading a Spanish squadron from Ferrol anchored there.
Although Bruix achieved the union of the French and Spanish fleets, his operation made little difference to the ongoing strategic situation, the combined allied fleet remaining inactive at Brest for the next two years. During his time in the Mediterranean Bruix failed to exert any significant influence on the region: in June he escorted a supply convoy to the Northwestern Italian coast, but the smaller British and Russian forces operating off Malta, Corfu and Alexandria were left unmolested, and those blockades continued with minimal disruption. In the aftermath Keith was criticised for his failure to bring the French and Spanish fleets to action, although interference and disobedience among his fellow commanders also contributed heavily to Bruix' escape.
Background
At the start of 1799 the Royal Navy exercised dominance in European waters during the French Revolutionary Wars. In Northern Europe the Channel Fleet blockaded the French Navy's Atlantic Squadron, with the squadron's base at Brest in Brittany especially targeted. Although the Brest fleet was strong, numbering 25 ships of the line with five more nearing completion, it had suffered a series of defeats that had left it demoralised. In June 1794 seven ships had been lost at the battle of the Glorious First of June when it sallied out to successfully protect a grain convoy, five more sank in winter storms during the disastrous Croisière du Grand Hiver operation early in 1795 and in June of that year three more were lost at the Battle of Groix. During the Expédition d'Irlande in December 1796 another two ships were lost, a ship was lost in the approaches to Brest itself at the Battle of the Raz de Sein in April 1798 and in October 1798 a belated attempt to influence the Irish Rebellion had been crushed at the Battle of Tory Island, with further losses. British squadrons patrolled the approaches to Brest and the other harbours along the Bay of Biscay, supported by the main body of the Channel Fleet, consisting of 19 ships of the line under the command of the 72-year-old Admiral Lord Bridport.
In Southern Europe the French position was altogether more desperate. In the summer of 1798 the French Mediterranean Fleet had departed its base of Toulon escorting a large fleet of transports carrying an army under General Napoleon Bonaparte for the Invasion of Egypt. The French had believed that their passage would be unopposed as the Royal Navy had abandoned the Mediterranean Sea in 1796 following the Treaty of San Ildefonso, under the secret terms of which the Kingdom of Spain had made peace with the French Republic and declared war on Great Britain. Retreating to the base at Lisbon, the British Mediterranean Fleet under Vice-Admiral Sir John Jervis had concentrated on blockading the main Spanish Fleet based at Cádiz. On 14 February 1797 the Spanish had suffered a defeat at the Battle of Cape St Vincent, for which Jervis was made Earl of St Vincent, and the Spanish retreated to Cádiz, remaining in harbour for the next two years.
To intercept the French expedition to Egypt, Lord Spencer at the Admiralty in London ordered Earl St. Vincent to dispatch a fleet of his own under Rear-Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson. Nelson tracked the French across the Mediterranean but was unable to discover the invasion fleet until after the troops were ashore. On 1 August 1798 Nelson attacked the French fleet anchored in Aboukir Bay near Alexandria. The ensuing Battle of the Nile was a crushing victory for Nelson: eleven of the 13 French ships of the line were captured or destroyed and Napoleon's army was trapped in Egypt. The destruction of the French fleet encouraged the allies to form a new coalition against the French and the War of the Second Coalition began soon afterwards. Royal Navy forces returned to the Mediterranean and blockades were imposed on the principal French bases, including Alexandria and Malta under the command of Nelson at Palermo with three ships on each station. The Spanish base at Port Mahon on Menorca was captured by a British expeditionary force in November 1798 and it was there that St. Vincent, suffering from a prolonged bout of ill-health, had retired, leaving command of the Cádiz blockade fleet to Vice-Admiral of the Red Lord Keith. Keith mustered 16 ships of the line and could potentially call on Nelson and the squadron under Rear-Admiral John Thomas Duckworth at Menorca should he require their assistance. The 19 ships of the Spanish fleet at Cádiz were the only remaining force in Southern Europe that could trouble British control of the Mediterranean.
Expedition
Departure from Brest
In early 1799 the French Directory ordered the commander of the Atlantic Squadron, Vice-admiral Étienne Eustache Bruix, to take his fleet to sea with the express intention of ending British naval dominance in the Mediterranean and relieving Napoleon's trapped army in Egypt. The force Bruix mustered was one of the most numerous and strongest fleets to sail during the French Revolutionary Wars. It included four ships of more than 100 guns, two 80-gun and nineteen 74-gun ships of the line accompanied by six frigates, two corvettes and two avisos. The ships were fully manned, the 100-gun ships carrying more than a thousand crew each and the total number of sailors estimated at 23,761 with an additional 100 soldiers. Unusually for a French fleet of this era, the crews were also experienced men; many having served in the squadrons of French gunboats that defended the coast against the blockade squadrons of the Royal Navy.
Bruix' orders were to reclaim the Mediterranean by relieving Malta and the island of Corfu which, unbeknownst to the French, had just fallen to a Russian expeditionary force. The fleet was then instructed to convoy supplies and reinforcements to the army in Egypt. The destination of this force was well hidden: French newspapers announced the intention of the fleet was to convey another expeditionary force to Ireland following the failure at Tory Island in October 1798. On 27 April 1799, when the French fleet was already at sea, the chasse-marée Rebecca allowed herself to be captured by the British hired armed lugger Black Joke. On board Rebecca was a French Navy captain who was carrying false dispatches that identified Ireland as the intended target. This information encouraged the British Admiralty to consider Ireland the most likely target. They consequently ordered Bridport to make the defence of Ireland his highest priority, although many naval officers questioned the circumstances in which Rebecca was captured, correctly guessing that the dispatches were fakes.
The blockade of Brest had been prosecuted since January 1799 by a large battle squadron while the majority of the Channel Fleet waited for the calmer spring weather: Bridport's main force departed the anchorage at St Helens on 13 April. On 16 April the blockade squadron sighted and chased a French resupply convoy, which reached Brest unmolested; Bridport arrived the following day. on 25 April he sent scouts to investigate Brest, discovering 18 ships of the line ready to sail. Due to strong northeasterly winds, Bridport then ordered his fleet to sail out of the Iroise Passage at the entrance to Brest Roadstead and hold station instead to the southwest of the island of Ushant. Bridport's movement had left a significant gap in the blockade: taking advantage of the empty Iroise, Bruix ordered his fleet to sea on the evening of 25 April passing through the Iroise and then southwards around the Saintes Rocks. On the morning of 26 April the patrolling British frigate HMS Nymphe under Captain Percy Fraser discovered the French fleet and immediately sailed in search of Bridport, discovering the Channel Fleet at 13:00 and signalling the presence of the French to HMS Dragon, which passed the message on to the admiral. Bridport's first reaction was to return to the Iroise and determine the truth of Fraser's report. On discovering that the French had indeed sailed, he sent messages to the Admiralty, Lord Keith and Earl St. Vincent and then turned his ships north with instructions for reinforcements to join him off Cape Clear. By 30 April he had mustered 26 ships of the line off the Irish Coast in anticipation of the arrival of the French force, which he still expected imminently despite warnings from British merchant captains that the French had been sighted sailing southwest.
Cádiz
Bruix was not sailing to Ireland. Passing far out into the Atlantic, the French fleet, described as "one of the best manned and best found fleets that ever issued from a French harbour", turned southwest on 30 April for the coast of Spain, passing the base at Ferrol. Bruix had hoped to bring out the five ships of the Spanish squadron in the port, but these ships had already sailed to Corunna in anticipation of Bruix' arrival and the two forces missed one another. Continuing southwards, Bruix' force sighted a sail on 1 May while 105 nautical miles (194 km) west of the Portuguese city of Porto. Bruix sent frigates in pursuit of the stranger but was unable to catch it, and the new arrival, the British frigate HMS Success under Captain Shuldham Peard was able to escape to the south at 16:00 on 2 May. Peard sailed directly for the Cádiz blockade fleet under Keith, which had just returned to its station after replenishing its supplies at Tétouan and on 3 May he notified the admiral of the size of the approaching fleet. Although Keith had only 15 ships under his command, he ordered his force to prepare for battle.
At 08:30 on 4 May the French fleet was sighted to the northwest. With the British fleet deployed in a line of battle between Bruix' force and Cádiz, the French admiral ordered his ships to tack to port towards the northeast. Keith, who later said that he was "between the devil and the deep sea", manoeuvred his forces so that his fleet was sailing parallel with the French, still blocking access to Cádiz in the face of a rising storm. Recognising that access to the port was blocked and that conditions made it impossible for the Spanish fleet, trapped in Cádiz by the wind, to join his force, Bruix followed his standing orders to avoid delay through battle and turned his fleet away to the southwest. By 17:00 the French force had disappeared, although four stragglers were sighted on the morning of 5 May. As Keith maintained station off the Spanish port, Bruix made use of the storm to blow his ships straight through the Straits of Gibraltar, from where they were sighted at 17:00 on 5 May. As they passed through the straits, two of the French fleet collided with one another and were badly damaged, concerning Bruix sufficiently to alter his plans and steer for Toulon. As the French pushed eastwards, Keith cast south for them on 6 May, cruising off Cape Spartel. The British fleet returned to Cádiz on 8 May and observed that the Spanish fleet was not ready to put to sea, although a French ship damaged in the storm, Censeur, had managed to enter the port for urgent repairs. On 9 May Keith received orders from St Vincent to abandon the Cádiz blockade and pursue Bruix into the Mediterranean and so he sailed for the Bay of Gibraltar. Due to the storm, dispatch vessels could not sail westwards through the Straits and St Vincent was forced to send the orders overland, arranging special diplomatic passage for a courier to Lisbon who made his way to Faro and from there procured passage to Cádiz Bay.
At Gibraltar, St Vincent had sent a flurry of instructions, recalling HMS Edgar from Tétouan and ordering the seriously ill Rear-Admiral Thomas Frederick to make it his flagship. Warnings were sent to the other British officers commanding stations in the Mediterranean, including Duckworth at Menorca, Nelson at Palermo, Alexander Ball at the Siege of Malta and Sir Sidney Smith off Alexandria. Additional support was also urgently requested from Bridport, although reinforcements from that quarter would take weeks to arrive. The only immediate response was from Nelson, who withdrew Ball's forces from Malta and took a station off Marettimo with seven ships, pledging that "the squadron under my command shall never fall into the hands of the enemy; and before we are destroyed the enemy shall have their wings so completely clipped they shall be easily overtaken by you." Keith's force arrived at Gibraltar on 10 May and by 11 May was reprovisioned and ready to continue the pursuit with St. Vincent now in command, passing through a severe gale on 17 and 18 May to unite with Duckworth's four ships off Menorca on 20 May. The only ship damaged in the storm was Edgar, which had grounded and was forced to make repairs in Port Mahon.