board the Sensible at her capture, was a brass cannon formerly taken from the Turks, and which Louis XIV had presented to the knights of Malta; also a gilt silver model of a galley. After her arrival at Spithead in the following February, the Sensible, on account probably of her age and weakness, was not fitted out as a cruising frigate : as a troop-ship, however, she became useful for some years.

When Rear-admiral Sercey arrived at the Isle of France in June, 1796, * and during his subsequent stay there, the 36-gun frigate Preneuse and ship-corvette Brûle-Gueule were absent on a cruise in the Mosambique channel. Hence it was only on his return to Port-Louis from Batavia in February, 1797, that he was joined by those two ships. With his force thus augmented to seven frigates and a large corvette, the rear-admiral sailed from the Isle of France in the latter end of the summer, having on board the troops, in number, including the artillery, very few short of 1000, that had accompanied the two agents from France ; and which troops the French squadron was now carrying to Batavia, ostensibly to succour the Dutch, but in reality to rid the colony of their presence, they having already attempted to excite an insurrection among the blacks. Rear-admiral Sercey carried the troops to their destination, disembarked them there, and returned to the Isle of France, without any occurrence of consequence.

On the 19th of January, 1798, two ambassadors from Tippoo-Saib arrived at the Isle of France, to solicit succours. They were accompanied by a Frenchman named Debay, as an interpreter, and by another Frenchman named Ribaud ; who having, in the latter end of 1796, with the privateer he commanded, been forced by stress of weather into Mangalore, was arrested and thrown into prison. Questioned soon afterwards by Tippoo, as to the inclination and means possessed by France to second him in the war which he meditated against the British, Ribaud, in order to obtain his liberty, exaggerated the resources of the republic, and assured the sultan, not only that he might, on the part of France, reckon upon a powerful co-operation, but that there were already at the Isle of France an immense body of troops, which only waited his orders. These reports of the wily Frenchman determined Tippoo to commence hostilities, and led, as we shall hereafter see, to his ruin.

The principal part of the troops on the island had already been transported to Batavia. All therefore that the governor could now do, was to forward to France, with the utmost expedition the letters from Tippoo-Saib. Accordingly the frigates Vertu and Régénérée were ordered upon this service ; the latter commanded, as before, by Captain Willaumez, the former by Commodore Magon, late of the Preneuse ; and who, at the

* See vol., i., p. 354.

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