sanguine than
the nation. Great preparations were made. The allied fleet, having been
speedily refitted at Portsmouth, stood out again to sea. Rooke was sent
to examine the soundings and the currents along the shore of Brittany.
[317] Transports were collected at Saint Helens. Fourteen thousand
troops were assembled on Portsdown under the command of Meinhart
Schomberg, who had been rewarded for his father's services and his
own with the highest rank in the Irish peerage, and was now Duke of
Leinster. Under him were Ruvigny, who, for his good service at Aghrim,
had been created Earl of Galway, La Melloniere and Cambon with their
gallant bands of refugees, and Argyle with the regiment which bore
his name, and which, as it began to be rumoured, had last winter done
something strange and horrible in a wild country of rocks and snow,
never yet explored by any Englishman.

On the twenty-sixth of July the troops were all on board. The
transports sailed, and in a few hours joined the naval armament in the
neighbourhood of Portland. On the twenty-eighth a general council of war
was held. All the naval commanders, with Russell at their head, declared
that it would be madness to carry their ships within the range of the
guns of Saint Maloes, and that the town must be reduced to straits by
land before the men of war in the harbour could, with any chance of
success, be attacked from the sea. The military men declared with equal
unanimity that the land forces could effect nothing against the town
without the cooperation of the fleet. It was then considered whether it
would be advisable to make an attempt on Brest or Rochefort. Russell
and the other flag officers, among whom were Rooke, Shovel, Almonde
and Evertsen, pronounced that the summer was too far spent for either
enterprise. [318] We must suppose that an opinion in which so many
distinguished admirals, both English and Dutch, concurred, however
strange it may seem to us, was in conformity with what were then the
established principles of the art of maritime war. But why all these
questions could not have been fully discussed a week earlier, why
fourteen thousand troops should have been shipped and sent to sea,
before it had been considered what they were to do, or whether it would
be possible for them to do any thing, we may reasonably wonder. The
armament returned to Saint Helens, to the astonishment and disgust
of the whole nation. [319] The ministers blamed the commanders;