fever, inadequate forces of occupation, and lax blockade
methods on the French coast, which permitted heavy reenforcements
to leave France. General Abercromby, with 17,000 men, finally took
all but Guadaloupe in the next year. As Holland, Spain, and other
nations came under French control, England seized their colonies
likewise--the Dutch settlements at the Cape of Good Hope and Ceylon
in 1795; the Moluccas and other Dutch islands in the East Indies in
1796; Trinidad (Spanish) in 1797; Curacao (Dutch) in 1800; and the
Swedish and Danish West Indies in 1801. By the Treaty of Amiens in
1802 all these except Trinidad and Ceylon were given back, and had
to be retaken in the later period of the war, Guadaloupe remaining
a privateers' nest until its final capture in 1810. Though French
trade was ruined, it was impossible to stamp out privateering,
which grew with the growth of British commerce which it preyed
upon, and the extent of which is indicated by the estimate that
in 1807 there were from 200 to 300 privateers on the coasts of
Cuba and Hayti alone. As for the captured islands, Great Britain
in 1815 retained only Malta, Heligoland, and the Ionian Islands in
European waters; Cape Colony, Mauritius, and Ceylon on the route
to the East; and in the Caribbean, Demerara on the coast, Santa
Lucia, Trinidad, and Tobago--some of them of little intrinsic value,
but all useful outposts for an empire of the seas.

In the Channel and Bay of Biscay, the first year of war passed
quietly. Lord Howe, commanding the British Channel fleet, had behind
him a long, fine record as a disciplinarian and tactician; he had
fought with Hawke at Quiberon Bay, protected New York and Rhode
Island against d'Estaing in 1778, and later thrown relief into
Gibraltar in the face of superior force. Now 68 years of age, he
inclined to cautious, old-school methods, such as indeed marked
activities on both land and sea at this time, before Napoleon had
injected a new desperateness into war. Both before and after the
"Glorious First of June" the watch on the French coast was merely
nominal; small detachments were kept off Brest, but the main fleet
rested in Portsmouth throughout the winter and took only occasional
cruises during the remainder of the year.

_The Battle of the First of June_

Though there had been no real blockade, the interruption of her
commerce, the closure of her land frontiers, and the bad harvest
of 1793, combined to bring France in the