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The peace of 1815 left France with her naval and colonial power broken apparently beyond hope.  Even in the thirteen years preceding that peace England had taken or destroyed not less than six hundred of her war-ships.  In the Mediterranean, on the Atlantic, amid the islands of the West Indies, in the far-off golden East, wherever contending, fleet against fleet, or ship with ship, everywhere she had been vanquished and driven from the sea.  That boundless colonial empire, of which Dupleix in the East dreamed, and for whose establishment in the West Montcalm fought and died, had shrunk to a few fishing-ports off the Gulf of St. Lawrence, a few sugar-islands in the West Indies, and some unarmed factories dotting the coasts of Africa and the shores of Hindostan, and existing by British grace and permission.  To so low an estate had fallen that towering ambition which thought to exercise uncontrolled dominion over this continent, to rule with more than regal sway the rich islands and peninsulas of Asia, and to dictate peace to fallen England from the guns of her armadas.  After five wars waged with no craven spirit in less than three-quarters of a century, after she had exhausted every resource and more than once banded against her island foe every naval power in Europe, she was forced to succumb to British perseverance and to the gallantry of British sailors.  The peace, which came not a moment too soon, found her with a navy literally annihilated, and with little remaining of her colonial empire but the memory.  When we compare this hopeless failure with the mercantile activity and naval force of Modern France,—­when we call up, in imagination, her new colonies, the germs almost of empires,—­we cannot admire too much the courage and energy which have called into existence such magnificent resources.  To what are we to attribute this stupendous change?  What have been the methods of this growth?  By what steps has this grand progress from weakness to strength been achieved?

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In such a work of restoration, France had everything to create,—­ships, armaments, machinery, and sailors even, to replace those who had fallen in the front of battle.  To produce capacity of production was her first work,—­to establish new ports or replenish old ones, to build docks, to rear workshops, to gather materials.  This is what she has been doing.  Silently and steadily she has been laying the foundations of maritime greatness.  Her ports, in everything which contributes to naval efficiency,—­in size, in mechanical appliances, in concentration upon one spot of all the trades and all the resources necessary for the construction and repair of war-ships,—­excel all other naval depots in the world.