e of a large number of her seamen in trading-vessels
all over the world. The Mediterranean was therefore neglected; and the
French, while making loud demonstrations on the Channel, quietly
equipped at Toulon twelve ships-of-the-line, which sailed on the 10th
of April, 1756, under Admiral la Galissoniere, convoying one hundred
and fifty transports with fifteen thousand troops, commanded by the
Duke of Richelieu. A week later the army was safely landed in Minorca,
and Port Mahon invested, while the fleet established itself in
blockade before the harbor.

Practically this was a complete surprise; for though the suspicions of
the English government had been at last aroused, its action came too
late. The garrison had not been reinforced, and numbered a scant three
thousand men, from which thirty-five officers were absent on leave,
among them the governor and the colonels of all the regiments.
Admiral Byng sailed from Portsmouth with ten ships-of-the-line only
three days before the French left Toulon. Six weeks later, when he
reached the neighborhood of Port Mahon, his fleet had been increased
to thirteen ships-of-the-line, and he had with him four thousand
troops. It was already late; a practicable breach had been made in the
fortress a week before. When the English fleet came in sight, La
Galissoniere stood out to meet it and bar the entrance to the harbor.

The battle that followed owes its historical celebrity wholly to the
singular and tragic event which arose from it. Unlike Matthews's
battle off Toulon, it does afford some tactical instruction, though
mainly applicable to the obsolete conditions of warfare under sail;
but it is especially linked to the earlier action through the effect
produced upon the mind of the unfortunate Byng by the sentence of the
court-martial upon Matthews. During the course of the engagement he
repeatedly alluded to the censure upon that admiral for leaving the
line, and seems to have accepted the judgment as justifying, if not
determining, his own course. Briefly, it may be said that the two
fleets, having sighted each other on the morning of the 20th of May,
were found after a series of manoeuvres both on the port tack, with an
easterly wind, heading southerly, the French to leeward, between the
English and the harbor. Byng ran down in line ahead off the wind, the
French remaining by it, so that when the former made the signal to
engage, the fleets were not parallel, but formed an angle of