, notwithstanding a dearth of provisions,
and the approach of winter, till the latter end of November, when the
chevalier de Soto entered the place with six hundred fresh men.
This incident was no sooner known than the princes abandoned their
enterprise; and leaving their sick and wounded to the mercy of
the Piedmontese, marched back to Demont. Having dismantled the
fortifications of this place, they retreated with great precipitation to
Dauphine, and were dreadfully harassed by the Vaudois and light troops
in the service of his Sardinian majesty, who now again saw himself in
possession of Piedmont. The French troops were quartered in Dauphine;
but Don Philip still maintained his footing in Savoy, the inhabitants of
which he fleeced without mercy.

RETURN OF COMMODORE ANSON.

After the action at Toulon, nothing of consequence was achieved by the
British squadron in the Mediterranean; and indeed the naval power of
Great Britain was, during the summer, quite inactive. In the month of
June, commodore Anson returned from his voyage of three years and
nine months, in which he had surrounded the terraqueous globe. We
have formerly observed, that he sailed with a small squadron to the
South-Sea, in order to annoy the Spanish settlements of Chili and Peru.
Two of his large ships having been separated from him in a storm before
he weathered Cape Horn, had put in at Rio de Janeiro, on the coast of
Brazil, from whence they returned to Europe. A frigate commanded by
captain Cheap, was shipwrecked on a desolate island in the South-Sea.
Mr. Anson having undergone a dreadful tempest, which dispersed his
fleet, arrived at the island of Juan Fernandez, where he was joined
by the Gloucester, a ship of the line, a sloop, and a pink loaded with
provisions. These were the remains of his squadron. He made prize of
several vessels; took and burned the little town of Payta; set sail from
the coast of Mexico for the Philippine Isles; and in this passage the
Gloucester was abandoned and sunk: the other vessels had been destroyed
for want of men to navigate them, so that nothing now remained but the
commodore's own ship, the Centurion, and that but very indifferently
manned; for the crews had been horribly thinned by sickness. Incredible
were the hardships and misery they sustained from the shattered
condition of the ships, and the scorbutic disorder, when they reached
the plentiful island of Tinian, where they were supplied with the
nece