How France lost naval expertise before the coalition wars

France still possessed warships, but lacked enough experienced officers and noncommissioned personnel to employ them effectively. Louis XIV's exclusion of Huguenots is estimated here to have removed roughly 30 to 40 percent of the career naval officer corps and driven talent toward Britain, Russia, and America. Some families involved in founding the American Navy came from this diaspora. The Revolution then removed another generation through exile, imprisonment, and execution. Institutional memory could take far longer to replace than physical fleet strength.