quite clearly the french fleet was blockaded after Trafalgar and could not hope to restore parity. At the end of the war, the numbers were roughly 95 french to 150 english. And the french had only 80 crews (including dutch) for all their SoL and frigates.

So a complete success of naval strategy.

But the "rotting" fleet is a legend or an exaggeration :

First, a letter citted above, and french memoirs, say that the french used the Toulon bay to exercise, and got a reasonable level - in close shore situation. Militarization improved the quality of french gunnery, which led to some hot frigate fights at the very end of the war.

Second, the career of the french ships built during the napoleon era is available on internet (shipyard, first and last year of service) and in "Le dictionnaire des bâtiments de la flotte de guerre française de Colbert à nos jours", Roche (preview here : www.netmarine.net/dico ).

According to this sources :

- the main loss in 1814 were as follow :

. 28 dutch ships (8 broken or dismissed in the next 5 years)
. 12 ships left to Holland in Antwerp (all broken or dismissed in the next 5 years)
. 8 ships left to Austria in Venice (5 burnt or dismissed)
. 2 ships left to Pïemont unachieved in Genoa (broken)

The dutch decided to break half of Antwerp ships, considering them unserviceable.
But the french took home 12 SoL from Antwerp; of this 6 were dismissed in the next 5 years after a standard 10 years "service", the others had career of more than 15 years, one up to 1842.
It suggest that the french took the best build ships, and/or that the dutch, austrian and piemontese, having no use of a large naval force, dismissed it as not worth the cost.

- the Toulon ships, with 9 large 3-deckers and 21 2-deckers, were never found weak and except for 1 ship, had a long career with multiple missions (conquest of Algeria, Greece, Levant Squadron, Spanish civil war); some of them, equipped with steam, were in service up to 1880's and one up to 1905.

So the english fleet effectively paralyzed the french one, but the legend of bad build ships, rotting in harbours, and designed only to show number, has to be re-examined.

In fact, the victim of "rotting ships" were the english : do to huge needs, the RN had to use north-american wood in addition to scandinavian one; but american wood was contaminated with "dry-rot", which desaggregated the wood, to the point of sinking a ship.
Several measure were tried, including volutarily sinking a whole frigate. In fact "dry rot" came from a micro-mushroom, and the RN had to repair a lot of ships with better wood.

Best regards,

Jean