In answer to the question, why Captain Foote himself did not demand to be tried, that ill-used officer says thus: " I was inclined to request, that a public inquiry should take place, upon what concerned my signing the capitulations. But, before taking this step; I understood from a naval member of the Admiralty, and many other respectable friends, that, by urging a public investigation, I should act injuriously to my country, and in some measure attach myself to a party ; for which there seemed to me to be good ground, in consequence of the speech which the late Honourable Charles James Fox made on the 3d of February, 1800, on the address thanking his majesty for refusing to negotiate." Respecting the policy of agreeing to a capitulation with the garrisons of Uovo and Nuovo, Captain Foote remarks, " These facts and reasonings may show, that there was nothing so very weak, or senseless, in agreeing to such measures as tended rather to reconcile men to each other, than to urge them to a savage fury, to which all were at this time so ferociously bent ; and this may be further corroborated by the situation of the castle of St.-Elmo, which so completely overlooked and commanded the whole city of Naples, that the fire of that castle could have reduced the greatest part of it to a heap of rubbish. The French, at the time of the capitulations in question, were in possession of this castle, with no probability of being forced to surrender, and the arrival of their fleet being expected, whilst I was in daily expectation of being compelled to make a precipitate retreat." * Let us now quit this painful subject, and hasten to narrate occurrences, more creditable to the character, and more congenial to the habits, of the officers and seamen of the British navy.

Since the surrender of the castles of Nuovo and Del' Uovo, the French troops had evacuated the city of Naples ; but a detachment of them, amounting to about 800 officers and men, under Major-general Méjan, still garrisoned the fort of St.-Elmo. An immediate attack upon the latter was therefore resolved upon ; and on the 29th Captain Troubridge, having two days before landed at the head of a detachment of British and Portuguese marines, with a part of which he had since garrisoned Nuovo and Del' Uovo, opened his trenches. A summons was then sent to the commandant of fort St.-Elmo ; but the latter expressed his determination to stand a siege. Captain Troubridge, on the other hand, was equally determined to storm the fort, as soon as two practicable breaches could be made. Accordingly, on the 3d of July, he opened a battery of three 36-pounders and four mortars within 700 yards of the walls, and, on the 5th, another battery of two 36-pounders. On the same day the Russians, under Captain Baillie, an Englishman, who had entered the Russian service at the conclusion of the first American war, and

* Vindication, pp. 8 and 83.

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