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Updated: June 17, 2025
Vincent, the French Ministry hurried its ships to sea on the 4th of June; Admiral d'Orvilliers, Keppel's opponent, still in command. His orders were to cruise near the island of Cizarga, off the north-west coast of Spain, where the Spaniards were to join him. On the 11th of June he was at the rendezvous, but not till the 23d of July did the bulk of the Spanish force appear.
She evidently sympathizes in the disappointment which, as she reports to the empress, is generally felt by the public at the mismanagement of the admiral, M. d'Orvilliers, who, with forces so superior to those of the English, has neither been able to fall in with them so as to give them battle, nor to hinder any of their merchantmen from reaching their harbors in safety.
I was awaiting orders, I had just returned from the Huron Country and Michillimackinac, and d'Orvilliers called me to his rooms and showed me the order. 'Now, he said, 'who in the devil is meddling at Quebec? I did not know; I do not know yet. But there was the order. He turned it over to La Grange, with instructions to wait until some offence should give him an excuse."
In 1778 he joined the Channel fleet, and his ship was placed by the celebrated Keppel as one of his seconds in the order of battle, and immediately astern of the admiral's ship, the Victory, on the 27th of July, in the drawn battle off Ushant with the French fleet commanded by D'Orvilliers.
It was not, however, with such cautious views that the new king at first sought to impress his admirals. In the instructions addressed to the Count d'Orvilliers, commanding the first fleet sent out from Brest, the minister, speaking in the name of the king, says:
Malo to invade England so soon as the British Channel fleet should have been defeated; but, though Sir Charles Hardy had only forty sail under his orders, D'Orvilliers and his Spanish colleague retreated before him, and at the beginning of September, from fear of the equinoctial gales, of which the queen here speaks with such alarm, retired to their own harbors, without even venturing to come to action with a foe of scarcely two-thirds of their own strength.
The French, starting from a better formation, had come out in better shape. But, after all, it seems difficult wholly to remedy the disadvantage of a policy essentially defensive; and d'Orvilliers' next order, though well conceived, was resultless. This signal was not seen by the leading ship, which should have begun the movement.
Keppel's idea seems to have been that the French should have waited for him to come up abreast, and then go at it, ship for ship, in what was to him the good old style; D'Orvilliers was too highly trained to be capable of such action.
As it was, no efficient blockade of Brest was established, and twenty-eight French sail-of-the-line went out unopposed June 3, 1779, under D'Orvilliers, Keppel's opponent of the year before. The fleet steered for the coasts of Spain, where it was to find the Spanish ships; but it was not till the 22d of July that the full contingent joined.
The disappointment, due to bad preparation, mainly on the part of Spain, though the French ministry utterly failed to meet the pressing wants of its fleet, fell, of course, upon the innocent Admiral d'Orvilliers. That brave and accomplished but unfortunate officer, whose only son, a lieutenant, had died of the pestilence which scourged the allies, could not support the odium.
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