ernment and the country demanded that the enemy's
fleet should not reach another friendly port in safety. On the very
day that he was thus following the French, amid dangers and under
conditions that have made this one of the most dramatic of sea fights,
he was being burnt in effigy in England for allowing them to escape.
As Conflans, leading his fleet, was rounding the Cardinals,--as the
southernmost rocks at the entrance of Quiberon Bay are called,--the
leading English ships brought the French rear to action. It was
another case of a general chase ending in a _melee_, but under
conditions of exceptional interest and grandeur from the surrounding
circumstances of the gale of wind, the heavy sea, the lee shore, the
headlong speed, shortened canvas, and the great number of ships
engaged. One French seventy-four, closely pressed and outnumbered,
ventured to open her lower-deck ports; the sea sweeping in carried her
down with all on board but twenty men. Another was sunk by the fire of
Hawke's flag-ship. Two others, one of which carried a commodore's
pennant, struck their colors. The remainder were dispersed. Seven fled
to the northward and eastward, and anchored off the mouth of the
little river Vilaine, into which they succeeded in entering at the top
of high water in two tides,--a feat never before performed. Seven
others took refuge to the southward and eastward in Rochefort. One,
after being very badly injured, ran ashore and was lost near the mouth
of the Loire. The flag-ship bearing the same name as that of Tourville
burned at La Hougue, the "Royal Sun," anchored at nightfall off
Croisic, a little to the northward of the Loire, where she rode in
safety during the night. The next morning the admiral found himself
alone, and, somewhat precipitately it would seem, ran the ship ashore
to keep her out of English hands. This step has been blamed by the
French, but needlessly, as Hawke would never have let her get away.
The great French fleet was annihilated; for the fourteen ships not
taken or destroyed were divided into two parts, and those in the
Vilaine only succeeded in escaping, two at a time, between fifteen
months and two years later. The English lost two ships which ran upon
a shoal (a), and were hopelessly wrecked; their losses in action were
slight. At nightfall Hawke anchored his fleet and prizes in the
position shown in the plate (b).

[Illustration: Pl. VIII.]

All possibility of an invasion of England p