Now France was in the ascendant, and he was in the unenviable position of being outnumbered at sea, should the French ever concentrate and come out. There were no allies left in the First Coalition possessed of anything even approaching a navy; the Neapolitans' feet had gone quite stone-cold after Toulon had fallen in '93, and sat on the sidelines. British troops were still committed to the colonial wars, dying by the regiments of tropical diseases on East and West Indies islands where Jervis himself had held the upper hand.

To guard the Gibraltar approaches, he had to send a part of his fleet west, yet French line-of-battle ships still slipped into the Mediterranean from Rochefort, L'Orient and Brest, on the Bay of Biscay, fresh from the refit yards, some fresh from the launch-ramps. Over twenty-three sail of the line were at Toulon, that he knew of. French grain convoys from North Africa and the piratical Barbary States had to be hunted down and intercepted. He had to hold a part of his fleet in San Fiorenzo Bay, near the northern tip of Corsica, Cape Corse, just in case the French sallied forth from Toulon.

The Barbary States, encouraged by general war, had to be kept under observation, before his supply ships and transports proved to be too great a temptation for their corsairs in their swift xebecs. Then there were the Austrians-goddamn them. They were the only ally left that had a huge army. Even that very moment, they were skirmishing along the Rhine for an invasion of France, and still had enough troops to threaten a second invasion in Savoy, then into the approaches of Toulon. With Toulon his again, he might breathe easier; that French fleet would be burned, properly this time, or scattered to fishing villages in penny-packets.