HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

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it hardly deserved the name of a victory, off Malaga, gave so complete anascendancy to the Confederates, that they scarcely appeared to consider, afterthat time, whether their enemy had any naval force in the same quarter or not.

The system adopted by the French King on the side of the Atlantic was muchmore successful. Instead of collecting the principal part of the naval force hepossessed into one mass, he divided it into light squadrons, which were fta-tioned at Dunkirk, at Brest, at Rochefort, and other ports, under the commandof the most experienced officers in his sen ice. He was admirably furnithedin this respect—Jean Du Bart; the Count de St. Paul; the Chevalier de Forbin ;and M. du Guay-Trouin progressively conducted the flying armaments em-ployed in this desultory kind of war ; and the deaths of the two flrst-mentlonedChefs D’Escadre, though very deservedly esteemed two of the ablest officersFrance had ever produced, appeared to create no confusion in the conduct of thewar, their stations being so admirably well filled by those who were their suc-cessors. The policy of the conduct adopted by Louis, in respect to his marinearrangements on the northern and western coasts of France, was manifest, fromthe success which, in spite of very heavy and reiterated losses, attended them.At the very commencement of hostilities, the misfortune he sustained at Vigo nearlyequalled all he experienced on the side of the Mediterranean, where he possesseda powerful fleet, during the whole of the war *; yet the destruction of so for-midable a squadron, as that which had been under the Count de Chateau Renaud,seemed to produce no sensible inconvenience ; while in the oppofite quarter, allthe naval genius and spirit of the French appeared in one instant overthrown ; asthough they considered their measures had been so deeply laid, that, failingof success on an occasion when they had exerted every nerve to procure it,little advantage was to be expected from any similar attempt fruitlessly repeated.

To counterbalance the ill-fortune in that quarter, the active spirit of Forbinand his coadjutor harassed, almost incredibly, the commerce of Britain; theycaptured the ships appointed to protect its fleets, and afterwards made them-selves masters of no inconsiderable portion of those very fleets also. The Graftonand Hampton, of 70 guns each, were taken at one time, after a most resolutedefence against Forbin, whose squadron consisted of ten ships of the line, a frigate,and four small vessels. 'Within an interval of less than six months, the united arma-ments under Forbin and Du Guai Trouin fell-in with a second Lisbon fleet, and,

,* Including that occasioned by the victory off Malaga, which appeared to paralize all the naval,efforts of France in that quarter.

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