omise, beloved by his men. His "Children," as he
called them, followed him up the great breach till the bursting of a
French mine destroyed all the leading files, including their general.
Craufurd was buried in the lesser breach itself, and Mackinnon in the
great breach--fitting graves for soldiers so gallant.

Alison says that with the rush of the English stormers up the breaches
of Ciudad Rodrigo "began the fall of the French Empire." That siege,
so fierce and brilliant, was, as a matter of fact, the first of that
swift-following succession of strokes which drove the French in ruin
out of Spain, and it coincided in point of time with the turn of the
tide against Napoleon in Russia. Apart from all political results,
however, it was a splendid feat of arms. The French found themselves
almost unable to believe the evidence of their senses. "On the 16th,"
Marmont wrote to the Emperor, "the English batteries opened their fire
at a great distance. On the 19th the place was taken by storm. There
is something so _incomprehensible_ in this that I allow myself no
observations." Napoleon, however, relieved his feelings with some very
emphatic observations. "The fall of Ciudad Rodrigo," he wrote to
Marmont, "is an affront to you. Why had you not advices from it twice
a week? What were you doing with the five divisions of Souham? It is
a strange mode of carrying on war," &c. Unhappy Marmont!

HOW THE "HERMIONE" WAS RECAPTURED

"They cleared the cruiser from end to end,
From conning-tower to hold;
They fought as they fought in Nelson's fleet--
They were stripped to the waist, they were bare to the feet,
As it was in the days of old."
--KIPLING.

The story of how the _Hermione_ was lost is one of the scandals and the
tragedies of British naval history; the tale of how it was re-won is
one of its glories. The _Hermione_ was a 32-gun frigate, cruising off
Porto Rico, in the West Indies. On the evening of September 21, 1797,
the men were on drill, reefing topsails. The captain, Pigot, was a
rough and daring sailor, a type of the brutal school of naval officer
long extinct. The traditions of the navy were harsh; the despotic
power over the lives and fortunes of his crew which the captain of a
man-of-war carried in the palm of his hand, when made the servant of a
ferocious temper, easily turned a ship into a floating hell. The
terrible mutinies which broke out in British flee