class might comprise attempts on a greater scale, necessitating the employment of a considerable body of troops and meriting the designation ‘Invasion.’  Some of these attempts were to be made in Great Britain, some in Ireland.  In every proposal for an attempt of this class, whether it was to be made in Great Britain or in Ireland, it was assumed that the invaders would receive assistance from the people of the country invaded.  Indeed, generally the bulk of the force to be employed was ultimately to be composed of native sympathisers, who were also to provide—­at least at the beginning—­all the supplies and transport, both vehicles and animals, required.  Every plan, no matter to which class it might belong, was based upon the assumption that the British naval force could be avoided.  Until we come to the time when General Bonaparte, as he then was, dissociated himself from the first ‘Army of England,’ there is no trace, in any of the documents now printed, of a belief in the necessity of obtaining command of the sea before sending across it a considerable military expedition.  That there was such a thing as the command of the sea is rarely alluded to; and when it is, it is merely to accentuate the possibility of neutralising it by evading the force holding it.  There is something which almost deserves to be styled comical in the absolutely unvarying confidence, alike of amateurs and highly placed military officers, with which it was held that a superior naval force was a thing that might be disregarded.  Generals who would have laughed to scorn anyone maintaining that, though there was a powerful Prussian army on the road to one city and an Austrian army on the road to the other, a French army might force its way to either Berlin or Vienna without either fighting or even being prepared to fight, such generals never hesitated to approve expeditions obliged to traverse a region in the occupation of a greatly superior force, the region being pelagic and the force naval.  We had seized the little islands of St. Marcoff, a short distance from the coast of Normandy, and held them for years.  It was expressly admitted that their recapture was impossible, ’a raison de la superiorite des forces navales Anglaises’; but it was not even suspected that a much more difficult operation, requiring longer time and a longer voyage, was likely to be impracticable.  We shall see by and by how far this remarkable attitude of mind was supported by the experience of Hoche’s expedition to Ireland.

Hoche himself was the inventor of a plan of harassing the English enemy which long remained in favour.  He proposed to organise what was called a Chouannerie in England.  As that country had no Chouans of her own, the want was to be supplied by sending over an expedition composed of convicts.  Hoche’s ideas were approved and adopted by the eminent Carnot.  The plan, to which the former devoted great attention, was to land on the coast of Wales from 1000 to 1200