and the number of seamen and marines voted for the service of the year 1799, was 120,000.†

The opening of the present year saw France with a second coalition formed against her. Naples and Sardinia had, as we have seen, recommenced hostilities with no great éclat; but Austria was preparing to lend them her powerful aid, and Russia had already united with Turkey in revenging Buonaparte's flagrant attack upon Egypt. France, on the other hand, was making great exertions to withstand the host of foes which, thus aroused, had again confederated against her ; and, among other measures taken, orders had issued, since the 25th of the preceding November, for the construction of 16 ships of the line, 18 heavy frigates, and 12 corvettes.

Vice-admiral Eustache Bruix, the French minister of marine, also went down from Paris, with money to pay the seamen at Brest, and remained at that port superintending the equipment of the ships. In consequence of this, the utmost activity pervaded every department, and, towards the middle of April, 25 ships of the line and several frigates were ready for sea. The minister addressed a proclamation to the seamen, much in the same style as the "instructions" transmitted from the directory at the commencement of the year 1794. Vice-admiral Bruix adverted to the splendid actions of the Charente and of the Baïonnaise, as well as to the vigorous resistance made by the Seine, and by the squadron under Commodore Bompart. The address, or that part of it at least, which promised that the families of the seamen should be provided for in their absence, and that a third part in value of the prizes should be paid to them immediately after capture, drew the seamen from the privateers to the national ships, and thus answered the purpose intended.

In the first three or four months of the present year, the British force cruising-off Brest consisted of a squadron of eight or nine sail of the line, under the successive command of Vice-admiral Sir Charles Thompson, baronet, in the Formidable 98, Vice-admiral Lord Hugh Seymour, in the Sans-Pareil 80, and Rear-admiral the Honourable George Cranfield Berkeley, in the Mars 74. On the 16th of April, at 6 p.m., a French convoy, consisting of the armed store-ships Dromadaire and Nécessité, and 50 other vessels, escorted by Captain Pierre-Marie Le Bozec, with the corvettes Etonnante, Société, Mignonne, and Cigogne, and lugger Vautour, were chased by Rear-

† See Appendix, No. 18.

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