On the 21st of January, 1793, the French beheaded their king, Louis XVI. ; and on the 24th the French ambassador, M. Chauvelin, as being now the representative of a regicide, government, was ordered to quit England. A few weeks previous to this, a strong spirit of hostility on the part of the new republic had manifested itself against that country. On the 2d of January the British 16-gun brig-sloop Childers, Captain Robert Barlow, was standing in towards Brest harbour, when one of the two batteries that guard the entrance, or goulet, and from which she was distant not more than three-quarters of a mile, fired a shot that passed over her. Captain Barlow, imagining that the national character of his vessel was doubted, hoisted the British ensign and pendant ; whereupon the fort that had fired ran up the French ensign, with a red pendant over it, and the signal was answered by the forts at the opposite side of the entrance. By this time the flood tide, for the want of wind to counteract its force, had driven the Childers still nearer to the two batteries; both of which now opened a cross fire upon her. Fortunately a breeze soon sprang up, and Captain Barlow was enabled to make sail. Being a small object, the Childers was hit by only one shot, a French 48-pounder : it struck one of her guns, and then split into three pieces, but, providentially, did not injure a man.

The pertinacious refusal of the King of England, and of the stadtholder, to partake of the revolutionary benefits which had been so liberally tendered them, provoked the National Convention, on the 1st of February, to declare war against Great Britain and the United Netherlands. The announcement of this important event reached London on the 4th, and occasioned the immediate issue of orders to detain all French vessels in British ports. The French possessed here a decided advantage. When they embargoed their ports, which they did, of course, on declaring war, upwards of 70 British vessels were lying there; but now that a similar measure was adopted in the ports of England, not more than seven or eight French vessels could be found in them. On the 11th the King of England sent down to parliament a message on the subject of the declaration by France ; and on the same day directed, that general reprisals should be made on the vessels, goods, and subjects of the French republic. Notwithstanding this, a French work, of some celebrity, accuses the English of having commenced the war. "Quand le gouvernement britannique nous déclara la guerre en 1793, son ambition, &c." *

The King of Spain having evinced, for the present at least, a similar disinclination to fraternize with democrats, was also doomed to feel the weight of republican wrath. War against