1670 - Enlistment of the Seafarers in France

The late steep rise of the French navy requires hands aboard the warships in unheard-of quantities. The French have thereby imagined an original system of recruitment to substitute for impressment which prevails in Britain.  

The seafarers have already been called for register through a previous ordinance enacted in 1668. By now, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, 51 years old, Secretary of State, enacts an ordinance which imposes on the seafarers to serve in turn on the royal vessels. Besides, another ordinance creates a monthly pension for them as soon as they have served.

This pension amounts to two écus, or six livres tournois or 120 sols, which equate to about four British shillings. As a comparison, a building worker in Paris earns around three and a half écus a month. A four-pound loaf of bread costs eight sols. The monthly pension therefore allows the mariner to afford such a loaf every two days. The daily consumption of bread in France sets between one and two pounds per person. Colbert supplies the subsistence level for two frugal adults.

We may not leave the moral question aside : impressment is a denial of freedom for humble people. It is therefore unlawful in France and in the United Provinces, while it has become usual and formalized in Spain and in England from the middle of last century under the necessity of crewing a large number of warships with seamen for lean wages. It has even accented in England for twenty years with the advent of the line of battle which requires more hands aboard the ships.

Colbert expects efficiency from his system. Effectively it has immediately appealed Breton seafarers to the Enlistment. There are now four times more enlisted Breton seafarers than in the first year (1668). Yet it is far from being the case in the other regions of the class system, i.e. Guyenne, Normandy, Picardy, Poitou, Saintonge, Aunis, Ré, Oléron, Charente, Languedoc, and Provence, which altogether have enlisted a third only of the men enlisted in Brittany. Wages are lower on warships, around ten écus a month, than on merchant ships where an able seaman can make up to fifteen écus a month and even more if he migrates. Manning warships therefore remains very difficult.

¤ The wages of a seaman on a British warship amount to 60 shillings a month, which equate to 30 écus. It is 12 guldens on a Dutch warship, that is 240 shillings.

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IN RETROSPECT FROM TODAY

NOTE A - On system sustainability.

Colbert laid the foundation of the social welfare system for mariners. It will withstand the test of time, century after century.

NOTE B - On system efficiency.

When the Franco-Dutch war breaks out in 1672, the Dutch ambassador in France reports that the French cannot man more than forty vessels, a third of their whole fleet in numbers. It will prove to be rather true and explains some thrift in navy usage in the 1670s. After a short upturn, situation progressively worsens owing to the Édit de  Fontainebleau (1685) which revokes the Édit de Nantes (1598) – an edict which settled tolerance in religion affairs – and pushes Protestant seafarers to flee.

However, the system will partly fail its goal : France can never man the large fleet it built to rival the United Provinces and Britain. The largest fleet it succeeds to put to sea is the one gathered for the campaign of 1690, especially at the battle of Beachy Head, with 75 ships of the line, six frigates and a few fireships manned by 28,000 hands – an outstanding peak. It was the beginning of the Nine Years war. France cannot afford war losses which come soon and never lines up such a force afterwards. A doubtful figure of 21,000 seamen is given for the French fleet at Barfleur (1692), which had only 44 ships of the line at sea for lack of hands. At the battle of Velez-Malaga (1704) during the war of the Spanish Succession, France still achieves to line up 50 ships of the lines, six frigates, 19 galleys and a few fireships manned by 24,000 hands, amongst whom some 6,000 oarsmen are prisoners.

On their own, the Dutch achieved to embark 25,000 sailors on their warships from 1665 to 1695. Of course, the wages were much higher than in France and in England, which explains that we can find foreigners on Dutch warships. It does not suffice to explain this feat since wages aboard merchant ships were even higher.

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SUGGESTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Jaap Bruijn - Manning the Dutch navy in the second half of the Seventeenth Century in L'Invention du Vaisseau de Ligne - Paris, 1997

Michel Vergé-Franceschi – Inscription Maritime in Dictionnaire du Grand Siècle 1589-1715 – Paris, 2005

Hervé Drévillon – Raison Militaire, Raisons d’État 1660-1789 in Histoire Militaire de la France – Paris, 2018