sails hung from the broken yards in shot-torn rags; more slain or wounded men lay around her guns than through Rodney's whole fleet. At six o'clock, with his own hands, the unfortunate De Grasse lowered his flag. A cutter pushed out from the stern of the Barfleur, and pulled to the shot-torn sides of the Ville de Paris, and De Grasse stepped into it a prisoner. He was the first French commander-in-chief, by land or sea, taken in conflict by the British since Marlborough packed Tallard and two other French generals into his coach at Blenheim.

The battle of the Saints abounds in picturesque incidents which cannot be told here. Thus, when the two giant ships of the battle, the Formidable and the Ville de Paris, were exchanging broadsides with each other at pistol-shot distance, a French shot smashed to pieces a coop of fowls on the British ship's deck. A little bantam cock, released by the shot, fluttered on to the poop railing, and with the roar of every British broadside flapped its wings in triumph, and crowed in notes so shrill as to be heard even through the crowded decks. That intelligent and patriotic fowl was, by Rodney's solemn orders, kept in fatness and ease till it died a natural death.

Rodney has been blamed for not pursuing the fragments of the broken French fleet with greater vigour. Douglas strongly urged him to pursue, and was rebuffed with the remark that he had offered advice once too often that day already. But the battle had raged thirteen hours with scarcely a moment's interval; Rodney was old and gouty and weary, and contented with his gains; and when night fell he signalled to his

fleet to lie to. Six French ships were captured; but Rodney brought only two of his prizes-the Ardent and the Jason-into port. The Glorieux, according to an eye-witness, when boarded, " presented a scene of complete horror. The number of killed were so great that the surviving, either from want of leisure or through dismay, had not thrown the bodies of the killed overboard, so that the decks were covered with the bodies and mangled limbs of the dead as well as the wounded and the dying." The Glorieux foundered on its passage home; so did the Hector, and so did the great prize of the battle, the Ville de Paris. The César had a still more tragical ending. She took fire, by some accident, immediately after her capture, and burned to the water's edge. The English prize-crew perished in her, the lieutenant in command being "seen in the stern fighting the fire to the last. No boat dare approach; the sharks were swarming under the counter, and he staid to die in the flames at his post."

The French loss is reckoned at 3000 killed, whereas the loss of the British in killed and wounded together was less than 1000. The French refused to believe that the British loss was so slight, and Blane tells the story of how he took an incredulous French officer round the Formidable and showed him how slight was the damage done by French shot before he could persuade him that the British returns were accurate. The French fire, one of the Formidable's officers wrote, "slackens as we approach, and is totally silent when we are close alongside"; whereas the British fire was fiercest when the ships were almost touching each other.

The battle brought great fame to Rodney. "It is

odd," he wrote to his wife the day after the battle, "but within two little years I have taken two Spanish, one French, and one Dutch admiral. Providence does it all, or how should I escape the shot of thirty-three sail of the line?" Rodney, it may be added, had taken a French admiral in the midst of the greatest French fleet then in existence, and on board the finest three-decker in the world. More liners," says Hannay, “had struck to him than to any British admiral of his generation." But the public results of Rodney's great fight were of the highest character. As with the stroke of a thunderbolt, the whole prestige of French fleets in the New world was shattered. Jamaica was saved. Peace followed, and in the treaty Gibraltar remained a British possession, and the British power in India was acknowledged. Rodney's battle, too, stamped its fierce impress on the sea strategy of British ships in all future time "It marked," says Hannay, "the beginning of that fierce and headlong, yet well-calculated style of sea-fighting which led to Trafalgar and made England the undisputed mistress of the sea."

H

LORD HOWE AND THE FIRST OF JUNE

1794

"So spake our fathers. Our flag, unfurled,
Blew brave to the north and south;

An iron answer we gave the world,

For we spoke by the cannon's mouth."

-NESBIT.

IN his " Autobiography," Prince Metternich tells how, on May 2, 1794, from the summit of a hill behind Cowes, he watched a great and historic spectacle. More than 400 ships-great three-deckers, smart frigates, bluff-bowed merchantmen-were setting sail at once. Their tall masts and widespread canvas seemed to fill the whole sea horizon. It was the Channel Fleet under Lord Howe, with a huge convoy of merchantmen. "I consider this," wrote Prince Metternich, "the most beautiful sight I have ever seen. I might say, indeed, the most beautiful that human eyes have ever beheld! At a signal from the admiral's ship the merchantmen unfurled their sails, the fleet for the West Indies turned to the west, the fleet for the East Indies passed to the east side of the island, each accompanied with a portion of the royal fleet. Hundreds of vessels and boats, filled with spectators, covered the two roads as far as the eye could reach, in the midst of which the great ships followed one another, in the same manner as we see great masses of troops moved on the parade ground,”