ne in the Atlantic. There had consequently been
little privateering; and the voyage to New England or Jamaica had been
almost as safe as in time of peace. Since the battle, the remains of
the force which had lately been collected under Tourville were dispersed
over the ocean. Even the passage from England to Ireland was insecure.
Every week it was announced that twenty, thirty, fifty vessels belonging
to London or Bristol had been taken by the French. More than a hundred
prices were carried during that autumn into Saint Maloes alone. It
would have been far better, in the opinion of the shipowners and of the
underwriters, that the Royal Sun had still been afloat with her thousand
fighting men on board than that she should be lying a heap of ashes
on the beach at Cherburg, while her crew, distributed among twenty
brigantines, prowled for booty over the sea between Cape Finisterre and
Cape Clear. [321]

The privateers of Dunkirk had long been celebrated; and among them, John
Bart, humbly born, and scarcely able to sign his name, but eminently
brave and active, had attained an undisputed preeminence. In the country
of Anson and Hawke, of Howe and Rodney, of Duncan, Saint Vincent and
Nelson, the name of the most daring and skilful corsair would have
little chance of being remembered. But France, among whose many
unquestioned titles to glory very few are derived from naval war, still
ranks Bart among her great men. In the autumn of 1692 this enterprising
freebooter was the terror of all the English and Dutch merchants who
traded with the Baltic. He took and destroyed vessels close to the
eastern coast of our island. He even ventured to land in Northumberland,
and burned many houses before the trainbands could be collected to
oppose him. The prizes which he carried back into his native port were
estimated at about a hundred thousand pounds sterling. [322] About the
same time a younger adventurer, destined to equal or surpass Bart, Du
Guay Trouin, was entrusted with the command of a small armed vessel. The
intrepid boy,--for he was not yet twenty years old,--entered the estuary
of the Shannon, sacked a mansion in the county of Clare, and did not
reimbark till a detachment from the garrison of Limerick marched against
him. [323]

While our trade was interrupted and our shores menaced by these rovers,
some calamities which no human prudence could have averted increased the
public ill humour. An earthquake of terrible violence la