It is clear, then, that in the eyes of perhaps the finest fleet leader of his time, and one of the finest France ever had, a man who thoroughly understood the value of concentration, the method of securing it by breaking the line was dangerous and unsound.  In this he thoroughly endorses the views contained in the ‘Observations’ of the Admiralty MS. and the modifications of the standing order which they suggest.  Indeed, Hoste’s remarks on breaking the line are, in effect, little more than a logical elaboration of those ideas and suggestions.  In the ‘Observations’ we have the monition not to attempt the manoeuvre ‘unless an enemy press you on a lee shore.’  We have the signal for a squadron breaking the enemy’s line, but only in order to rejoin the main body, and we have the simple method of parrying the move by tacking with an equal number of ships.  The fundamental principles of the problem in both the English and the French author are the same, and a comparison of the two enables us to assert, with no hesitation, that the manoeuvre of breaking the line was abandoned by the tacticians of that era, not from ignorance nor from lack of enterprise, but from a deliberate tactical conviction gained by experience in war.  In judging the apparent want of enterprise which our own admirals began to display in action at this time, we should probably be careful to refrain from joining in the unmitigated contempt with which modern historians have so freely covered them.  In the typical battle of Malaga, for instance, Rooke did nothing but carry out the principles which were the last word of Tourville’s brilliant career.  Nor must it be forgotten that, although Rodney executed the manoeuvre in 1782, and Hood provided a signal for its revival which Howe at first adopted, it was never in much favour in the British service, seeing that it was only adapted for an attack from to leeward.  The manoeuvre of breaking the line which Howe eventually introduced was something wholly different both in form and intention from what Rodney executed and from what was understood by ‘dividing the fleet’ in the seventeenth century.[6] How far the system of doubling was approved by English admirals is doubtful.  We have seen that an ‘Observation’ in the Admiralty Manuscript distrusts it,[7] but I have been able to find no other expression of opinion on the point earlier than 1780, and that entirely condemns it.  It occurs in a set of fleet instructions drawn up for submission to the admiralty by Admiral Sir Charles H. Knowles, Bart.  As Knowles was a pupil and protege of Rodney’s, we may assume he was in possession of the great tactician’s ideas on the point; and in these Fighting and Sailing Instructions the following, article occurs:  ’To double the enemy’s line—­that is, to send a few unengaged ships on one side to engage, while the rest are fighting on the other—­is rendering those ships useless.  Every ship which is between two, has not only her two broadsides opposed