nto British hands; and the alliance of Holland with the
French threw open to English attack the far more valuable settlements of
the Dutch. The surrender of Cape Town in September gave England the
colony of the Cape of Good Hope, the nucleus of what has since grown
into a vast southern settlement which is destined to play a great part
in the history of Africa. At the close of the year the Island of Ceylon
was added to our Indian dependencies. Both of these acquisitions were
destined to remain permanently attached to England, though at the moment
their value was eclipsed by the conquest of the Dutch colonies in the
Pacific, the more famous Spice Islands of the Malaccas and Java. But,
important as these gains were in their after issues, they had no
immediate influence on the war. The French armies prepared for the
invasion of Italy; while in France itself discord came well-nigh to an
end. A descent by a force of French emigrants on the coast of Brittany
ended in their massacre at Quiberon and in the final cessation of the
war in La Vendee; while the royalist party in Paris was crushed as soon
as it rose against the Convention by the genius of Napoleon Buonaparte.

[Sidenote: Pitt's effort for peace.]

But the fresh severities against the ultra-republicans which followed on
the establishment of a Directory after this success indicated the
moderate character of the new government, and Pitt seized on this change
in the temper of the French Government as giving an opening for peace.
The dread of a Jacobin propagandism was now all but at an end. In spite
of an outbreak of the London mob, whose cries meant chiefly impatience
of dear bread, but which brought about a fresh suspension of the Habeas
Corpus Act and the introduction of a Bill "for the prosecution of
seditious meetings," the fear of any social disturbance or of the spread
of "French principles" in England was fast passing away from men's
minds. The new constitution which France accepted in 1795 showed that
the tendencies of the French themselves were now rather to order than to
freedom. The old grounds for the struggle therefore had ceased to exist;
while the pressure of it grew hourly more intolerable. Pitt himself was
sick of the strife. The war indeed had hardly begun when he found
himself without the means of carrying it on. The English navy was in a
high state of efficiency; but the financial distress which followed the
American war had brought with it a neglect