In 1795 the British were persuaded by French émigrés that a monarchist uprising against the revolutionaries could easily be started in France, and that it would soon sweep the country, to the glory of Britain and her throne. The British backed a handful of braided and powdered French officers with phony French money printed by the solid Bank of England. These cadres were also supplied by the British with arms and uniforms for 17,000 infantrymen and 6,000 cavalrymen, who were supposed to be waiting for their chance. When the expedition arrived at Quiberon Bay, it found less than half the recruits it expected, its staff work was atrocious, and the expedition was a blood-saturated flop.
The British have a weakness for lost causes like that of Quiberon. There have been others—Barcelona in 1705, Toulon in 1793, Norway in 1940. But the worst of them all, because the job looked so easy and the repercussions of failure were so drastic, was last week's fiasco at Dakar.
Some time ago General Charles de Gaulle, leader of the émigrés of 1940, went to see Brigadier General Edward Louis Spears, a tall, hearty, wealthy part-owner of shoe and cement factories and of a hotel chain, then (as in World War I) liaison officer between French and British High Commands. The British had just about concluded that General de Gaulle was a mediocrity, who by accident had achieved world prominence, not to be taken very seriously. But his story to General Spears was entirely plausible.
The French colonies in Equatorial Africa, he said, had declared for him and the cause of continued resistance. But French West Africa, an area eight times as big as France, had not. He had good reason to believe that the Germans were much interested in West Africa, had indeed sent more than 300 technicians and advisers into the area to develop pro-Axis airfields, garrisons, sentiment. Therefore he proposed that he personally lead a French force to Dakar, the capital, and subdue it by persuasion. He was sure that overwhelming opinion favored him rather than the Germans. General Spears took the idea to the Prime Minister; and Winston Churchill, the author of Gallipoli, approved—even ordered a supporting British force. If De Gaulle succeeded, the adventure would be a spectacular coup; if he failed—well, nothing risked, nothing gained.