ed
for defence and large sums were subscribed for raising troops, equipping
privateers, and other patriotic purposes. The Spaniards at once
blockaded Gibraltar, then under the command of General Eliott, and began
that three years' siege which is one of the most honourable incidents in
our military history. Though the home fleet, under the command of Sir
Charles Hardy, lay in the Bay of Biscay on the look out for the allied
fleets, they effected a junction, got between him and Plymouth, and in
August sixty French and Spanish ships of the line and a crowd of smaller
vessels paraded before the town. English pride was deeply wounded, and
the landing of the enemy was daily expected. But the vast fleet
accomplished nothing save the capture of one ship of the line. Its crews
were wasted by sickness, and when a change of wind enabled Hardy to
enter the Channel, the enemy did not follow him into its narrower waters
and early in September left our shores.

[Sidenote: _VARIOUS INCIDENTS OF NAVAL WARFARE._]

The war was carried on in many parts of the world, and was full of
incidents which, as they had little or no effect on its issue, must only
be noticed briefly. In October, 1778, Pondicherry was taken by the East
India Company's troops, and the French lost all their settlements in
India. One of them, Mahe, was claimed by Haidar as tributary to him, and
its capture afforded him a pretext for making war on us. He overran the
Karnatic in 1780, defeated a British force, took Arcot, and reduced
Madras to great straits. In the spring of 1779 the French made a feeble
attack on Jersey, and were repulsed by the 78th regiment and the
militia of the island. The British factories at Senegal were seized by
the French, and Goree by the English. The Spaniards expelled our logwood
cutters from Honduras in August, and about the same time the Spanish
governor of Louisiana reduced West Florida, which was thinly inhabited
and almost undefended. The enemies of England hoped to break her power
by destroying her commerce, but it was too large and various to be
ruined by casual losses, and too carefully protected to incur a series
of them. While the trade of France with the West Indies was almost
ruined, the English Jamaica fleet reached home in safety a few days
after the enemy left the Channel. Privateers and king's ships did so
much damage to the commerce of France and Spain in 1779 that it was held
to counterbalance the loss of St. Vincent and Gre