number, could be transported by a fleet of men of war, instead of having to wait for so many contingencies to concur, ere a flotilla of 2000 gun-boats could reach in safety the opposite coast; and that the loss of Ireland would inflict a deep wound on the pride of England, would weaken her resources, and greatly reduce her in the scale of national importance.

It is believed that his imperial majesty, in proportion as he grew discouraged with the immobility of his flotilla, felt the force of all this reasoning; and that, when on the last of August, 1805, he suddenly drew off his legions from the neighbourhood of Boulogne, to be in time for an autumnal campaign against the two continental powers (Austria and Russia) who had coalesced with Great Britain against him, he entertained the hope of being able, at some future and not far distant day, either as a preparatory step towards, or as a substitute for, the invasion of England, to make a French province of the land of Hibernia.

Even had the Battle of Trafalgar not been fought, Napoleon would hardly have marched his soldiers from the midst of their brilliant successes in Germany back to their cantonments on the coast, again perhaps to waste their time in a long course of listless inactivity. Much less would he have done so, now that the ships of that mighty fleet, which he had hoped to assemble in the Channel to convoy his army to its destination, were all captured, destroyed, wrecked, or blockaded. He therefore, having made peace with Austria at Presburg, and since gone to war with Prussia, continued achieving victory after victory over the Prussians and Russians, until he brought them also to his terms by the double treaty of Tilsit.

A seaport town of Western Prussia having, in the course of the war waged against those powers, become the scene of active operations, a British naval force was naturally to be found cooperating with the garrison in their endeavours to repel the invaders. The fortified city of Dantzic, is seated on the western branch of the Vistula, near its entrance into the Baltic; and on the 14th of March, in the present year, was invested by a powerful French army under Marshal Lefebvre.

On the 12th of April the 16-gun ship-sloops Sally (hired), Captain Edward Chetham, Falcon, Captain George Sanders, and Charles (hired), Captain Robert Clephane, arrived off the harbour of Dantzic. As General Kalkreuth, the governor of the fortress, suspected that the besiegers would be supplied with provisions by sea, Captain Chetham detached the Charles to cruise between Rose hind, or head, and Dantzic bay, to intercept any vessels having that object in view ; and on the 16th he anchored with the Sally in the Fair Way, a basin formed between the two mouths of the Vistula. Here the ship was so moored, as to flank the isthmus by which alone the French could attack the works.

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