History of The French Navy - Louis XIII and Richelieu

—Cardinal de Richelieu

During the reign of Henry IV, France was in an unstable state, and striving to guarantee her independence from Spanish and papal influences. This prompted both an emphasis on land forces, which drained resources, and an alliance with England, which would have unfavourably seen France challenging her naval supremacy.

When Richelieu became Minister of the Navy, he decided on a plan to rebuild a powerful navy, divided into two distinct forces.

The Mediterranean force was to be completely composed of galleys, to take advantage of the relatively calm sea. Initially, the plan called for 40 galleys, but was downsized to 24 of them, notably because of a lack of galley slaves — each galley was 400 or 500 slave strong.

The Oceanic force was to be composed of men-of-war. The designs were moderately large ships, for a lack of harbours fit for very large units, but very heavily armed with large calibre guns; these ships displaced between 300 and 2000 tonnes and bore up to 50 24-pound cannons, firing 150mm-round shots. The first ships were ordered from the Dutch, and French production started with the famous Couronne, a prestige ship typical of this era.

In 1627, the Navy was not ready to challenge the English fleet Siege of La Rochelle, which led to the construction of a seawall to establish a blockade. Fleets of this period were often largely composed of merchant vessels, hastily loaded with canons, undercrewed and poorly handled.

With newly built ships, designed as ships of war and crewed by sailors and trained gunners, fighting experience was gained in the Franco-Spanish War and the Thirty Years' War with notable victories at the Battle of Cádiz (1640) won by Frances First, Grand Admiral Armand de Maillé-Brézé son of Marshall Urbain de Maillé-Brézé . The Navy built a French empire, conquering the "Nouvelle-Guyenne" (now Acadia), "Nouvelle France" (now Canada), Tortuga, Martinique, Guadeloupe, The Bahamas and several other islands in the Caribbean, and Madagascar.

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