ollanders for joining the coalition by taking the
island of St. Eustachius and three millions' worth of stores and money.
The patriot party at home led by Fox and Burke were ill pleased with
these victories, for they wished us to be driven into surrender. Burke
denounced Rodney as he denounced Warren Hastings, and Rodney was called
home to answer for himself. In his absence Demerara, the Leeward
Islands, St. Eustachius itself, were captured or recovered by the enemy.
The French fleet, now supreme in the western waters, blockaded Lord
Cornwallis at York Town and forced him to capitulate. The Spaniards had
fitted out a fleet at Havannah, and the Count de Grasse, the French
admiral, fresh from the victorious thunder of the American cannon,
hastened back to refurnish himself at Martinique, intending to join the
Spaniards, tear Jamaica from us, and drive us finally and completely out
of the West Indies. One chance remained. Rodney was ordered back to his
station, and he went at his best speed, taking all the ships with him
which could then be spared. It was mid-winter. He forced his way to
Barbadoes in five weeks spite of equinoctial storms. The Whig orators
were indignant. They insisted that we were beaten; there had been
bloodshed enough, and we must sit down in our humiliation. The
Government yielded, and a peremptory order followed on Rodney's track,
'Strike your flag and come home.' Had that fatal command reached him
Gibraltar would have fallen and Hastings's Indian Empire would have
melted into air. But Rodney knew that his time was short, and he had
been prompt to use it. Before the order came, the severest naval battle
in English annals had been fought and won. De Grasse was a prisoner, and
the French fleet was scattered into wreck and ruin.

De Grasse had refitted in the Martinique dockyards. He himself and every
officer in the fleet was confident that England was at last done for,
and that nothing was left but to gather the fruits of the victory which
was theirs already. Not Xerxes, when he broke through Thermopylae and
watched from the shore his thousand galleys streaming down to the Gulf
of Salamis, was more assured that his prize was in his hands than De
Grasse on the deck of the 'Ville de Paris,' the finest ship then
floating on the seas, when he heard that Rodney was at St. Lucia and
intended to engage him. He did not even believe that the English after
so many reverses would venture to meddle with a fleet supe