rbor on the lee side, known as Gros Ilot Bay, was
a capital place from which to watch the proceedings of the French navy
in Fort Royal, Martinique. The English captured the island, and from
that safe anchorage Rodney watched and pursued the French fleet before
his famous action in 1782. The islands to the southward were of
inferior military consequence. In the greater islands, Spain should
have outweighed England, holding as she did Cuba, Porto Rico, and,
with France, Hayti, as against Jamaica alone. Spain, however, counted
here for nothing but a dead-weight; and England had elsewhere too much
on her hands to attack her. The only point in America where the
Spanish arms made themselves felt was in the great region east of the
Mississippi, then known as Florida, which, though at that time an
English possession, did not join the revolt of the colonies.

In the East Indies it will be remembered that France had received back
her stations at the peace of 1763; but the political predominance of
the English in Bengal was not offset by similar control of the French
in any part of the peninsula. During the ensuing years the English had
extended and strengthened their power, favored in so doing by the
character of their chief representatives, Clive and Warren Hastings.
Powerful native enemies had, however, risen against them in the south
of the peninsula, both on the east and west, affording an excellent
opportunity for France to regain her influence when the war broke out;
but her government and people remained blind to the possibilities of
that vast region. Not so England. The very day the news of the
outbreak of war reached Calcutta, July 7, 1778, Hastings sent orders
to the governor of Madras to attack Pondicherry, and set the example
by seizing Chandernagore. The naval force of each nation was
insignificant; but the French commodore, after a brief action, forsook
Pondicherry, which surrendered after a siege by land and sea of
seventy days. The following March, 1779, Mahe, the last French
settlement, fell, and the French flag again disappeared; while at the
same time there arrived a strong English squadron of six
ships-of-the-line under Admiral Hughes. The absence of any similar
French force gave the entire control of the sea to the English until
the arrival of Suffren, nearly three years later. In the mean while
Holland had been drawn into the war, and her stations, Negapatam on
the Coromandel coast, and the very important ha