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In the meantime, the gates were opened wide, and, file after file, the weary soldiers marched into the city; and dashing homeward after his brilliant assault, Condé and his squadron galloped in the last: but when the ponderous bars were once more drawn across the portals, it was felt that the combatants indeed were saved, but that the Fronde was destroyed.
The latter had done nothing, although its co-operation had been promised; except Nelson's little squadron, in which was but one small ship-of-the-line out of the twenty-three under Hotham's command, it had not been seen. Nelson was determined, as far as in him lay, to remove all grounds for reproach. He urged the admiral to send him more ships, and abounded in willingness towards De Vins.
Admiral Villeneuve, uniting the Spanish ships with his own squadron from Toulon, drew Nelson in pursuit to the West Indies, and then suddenly returning to Cadiz, hastened to form a junction with the French squadron at Brest and to crush the English fleet in the Channel.
"On the 16th of March he appeared before Lewis in his vessel, the Poictiers, and pointing her guns toward the town sent a note addressed to the first magistrate demanding twenty live bullocks and a proportionate quantity of hay and of vegetables for the use of his Britannic majesty's squadron. He offered to pay for them, but threatened in the event of refusal to destroy the town."
Favoured by a calm sea, the squadron, extended in close order to a distance of about five knots, made for the entrance of the Firth of Forth. Full of expectation, the expeditionary army saw the vast, bold undertaking develop before its eyes. For nine hundred years no hostile army had landed on the coast of England.
After many fruitless attempts, he was eventually introduced, through the means of James Hutton, Secretary to the Brethren's Unity in England, to Sir Hugh Palliser, Governor of Newfoundland, and Commodore of the squadron which sailed annually from England.
He did exactly what Jefferson would not have done, sent the charges all duly formulated to Hamilton, and asked him his opinion about them. As the accusations thus made against the policies of the government and the Secretary of the Treasury were all mere wind of the "monarchist" and "corrupt squadron" order, Hamilton disposed of them with very little difficulty.
A report reached him that a second squadron, of fourteen French and Spanish ships from Ferrol, had arrived at Martinique. He said frankly that he thought this very doubtful, but added proudly: "Powerful as their force may be, they shall not with impunity make any great attacks.
As an illustration of the operations then possible, on the 26th of August, six weeks after the naval battle of July 13, the "Agamemnon," with her little squadron, anchored in the Bay of Alassio, three cables' length from the fort in the centre of the town, and with her boats took possession of all the French vessels in the harbor.
Providentially for Syracuse, Gongylus, the commander of the galley, had been prevented by an Athenian squadron from following Gylippus to South Italy, and he had been obliged to push direct for Syracuse from Greece. The sight of actual succor, and the promise of more, revived the drooping spirits of the Syracusans.
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