r before, and was now in sore want, the
provisions being scanty and bad, the biscuits weevilly, and the meat
tainted. Amid the horrors and uproar of one of the longest and most
exciting sieges of history, the sufferings of the combatants were
intensified by the presence of many peaceful inhabitants, including
the wives and families of soldiers as well as of officers. A great
fleet of twenty-eight ships-of-the-line sailed from Portsmouth on the
13th of March, convoying three hundred merchant-ships for the East and
West Indies, besides ninety-seven transports and supply-ships for the
Rock. A delay on the Irish coast prevented its falling in with De
Grasse, who had sailed nine days after it. Arriving off Cape St.
Vincent, it met no enemy, and looking into Cadiz saw the great Spanish
fleet at anchor. The latter made no move, and the English admiral,
Derby, threw his supplies into Gibraltar on the 12th of April,
undisturbed. At the same time he, like De Grasse, detached to the East
Indies a small squadron, which was destined before long to fall in
with Suffren. The inaction of the Spanish fleet, considering the
eagerness of its government about Gibraltar and its equal if not
superior numbers, shows scanty reliance of the Spanish admiral upon
himself or his command. Derby, having relieved Gibraltar and Minorca,
returned to the Channel in May.

Upon the approach of the combined fleet of nearly fifty sail in August
following, Derby fell back upon Torbay and there anchored his fleet,
numbering thirty ships. De Guichen, who held chief command, and whose
caution when engaged with Rodney has been before remarked, was in
favor of fighting; but the almost unanimous opposition of the
Spaniards, backed by some of his own officers, overruled him in a
council of war,[162] and again the great Bourbon coalition fell back,
foiled by their own discord and the unity of their enemy. Gibraltar
relieved, England untouched, were the results of these gigantic
gatherings; they can scarcely be called efforts. A mortifying disaster
closed the year for the allies. De Guichen sailed from Brest with
seventeen sail, protecting a large convoy of merchantmen and ships
with military supplies. The fleet was pursued by twelve English ships
under Admiral Kempenfeldt, an officer whose high professional
abilities have not earned the immortality with which poetry has graced
his tragical death. Falling in with the French one hundred and fifty
miles west of Ushant