glory of Minden should help by his policy as a minister of the Crown to rob England of her great inheritance in America. Yet George III., when the North Cabinet resigned, raised Lord George to the peerage as Viscount Sackville. Minden was a great battle. The French lost 8000 men, thirty pieces of artillery, and thirteen flags. Their whole campaign in Germany was tumbled into wreck. They were driven back, broken and disordered, to the Rhine. But Minden will always be memorable as affording a supreme proof of the fighting quality of the British private. Its contribution to the glory of British generalship may be judged by the performance of Lord George Sackville. RODNEY AND DE GRASSE AT THE ALL BATTLE OF THE SAINTS APRIL 12, 1782 LL through the night of April 7, 1782, a chain of British frigates was stretched across the thirty miles of sea betwixt Martinique and Santa Lucia, and every half-hour or so a flash of light ran as a signal from end to end of the line. Rodney, in his great flagship, the Formidable, with thirty-five ships of the line, was lying in Gros Ilot Bay; De Grasse, with the Ville de Paris, the biggest and most splendid ship of war then afloat, was lying in Fort Royal with thirty-four ships of the line, besides frigates and a convoy of 150 merchant vessels. That chain of watchful signalling frigates might be described as a huge living tentacle which the British admiral stretched across the thirty miles of sea, and by which, in spite of the darkness, he felt each move of his great antagonist. Morning came, as it comes in the tropics, with glow and splendour, and while the stars were still shining, white and faint, in the sky, the look-outs on the mastheads of the outermost British frigates, peering into Fort Royal itself, saw that the French ships were dropping their topsails. With stamp of innumerable feet on the resounding decks, and loud distracted clamour of human voices, 250 ships at once-stately liners and smart frigates, and clumsy merchantmen—were heaving anchor. The French fleet was stirring, and, huge and confused a forest of masts, acres of white swelling canvas-De Grasse led out his ships to what was his last battle. From masthead to masthead, in a flutter of tiny flags, the news sped down the line of British frigates to Rodney in Gros Ilot Bay, and with swift energy, but in characteristic silence, and with the ordered regular movements of a well-drilled regiment deploying, the British came out to what was the greatest sea-battle which, up to that date, the eighteenth century had witnessed. The war growing out of the revolt of the British colonies in America was drawing to a close, and for Great Britain it was closing in disaster and gloom. Her troops had known defeat and surrender in America. There had been rebellion in Ireland; Spain demanded Gibraltar as the price of peace; France, in the accents of a conqueror, was proposing that Great Britain should give up all her possessions in India save Bengal. Only Rodney's sea victories saved the fame of England. He had relieved Gibraltar. He crushed the Spanish fleet off St. Vincent, and the fire of the pursuit with which, through tempest and darkness, he chased the flying Spaniards into Cadiz, had in it, to quote Hannay, "something of the Quiberon touch." It recalled Hawke's fierce and dashing chase of Conflans thirty years before. But the greatest of Rodney's sea victories was that now in sight. De Grasse, with a fleet which represented the utmost naval power of France, and carrying, in addition, 5000 veteran troops, sailed for the West Indies |