time is lost by him.  When the decision to land is reached, he is clear as to the possibility of landing; but when the generals think it impossible to effect certain results, he replies that is their business, on which he does not pretend to judge.  In his evidence before the Court afterwards, he said, “Whether they should land or not, he constantly thought it the part of the generals to determine.  He could not but suppose they were infinitely better judges of their own business than he could be.”  Their conduct was marked by vacillations strange to him, and which apparently displeased him; the troops being, on one occasion, embarked in the boats for some hours, and yet returning to the ships without proceeding.  He then addressed a formal letter to the commanding general, saying that if he had no further operation to propose the fleet would return at once to England, and he declined to attend a Council of War to decide either of these points.  The Army should decide, alone, whether it could effect anything by landing; if not, he, without asking counsel, would stay no longer.  On October 7th he reached Spithead.

Pitt, who had espoused Byng’s cause against the previous administration, followed its precedent in throwing the blame on the military and naval leaders.  In Parliament, he “declared solemnly his belief that there was a determined resolution, both in the naval and military commanders, against any vigorous exertion of the national power.”  For far less than this accusation Byng had been condemned; but in fact the fault at Rochefort lay clearly on those who issued the orders,—­upon the Cabinet; upon the character of the expedition itself,—­a great risk for a secondary and doubtful object; upon the inconsiderate haste which disregarded alike the season and the inadequate knowledge; upon defective preparation in the broadest sense of the words.  Diversions, in truth, are feints, in which the utmost smoke with the least fire is the object.  Carried farther, they entail disaster; for they rest on no solid basis of adequate force, but upon successful deception.  Pitt’s angry injustice met with its due rebuke the next year at St. Cas.  It can scarcely be doubted that words such as those quoted were responsible, in part at least, for the disastrous issue of that diversion, the story of which belongs, if to the navy at all, to the life of Howe.

That Hawke resented this language can scarcely be doubted, and none the less that he evidently himself felt that something might have been attempted by the troops.  He was clear of fault in his own consciousness; but in the general censure he was involved with his associates—­known, so to say, by his friends, implicated in the meshes of a half-truth, where effort to clear one’s self results in worse entanglement.  He had the manly cast of character which will not struggle for self-vindication; but his suppressed wrath gathered force, until a year later it resulted, upon occasion of official provocation, in an explosion that has not a close parallel in naval history.