1813	Capture of the Iphigenie and Alcmene	259

protected them ; but at midnight the French set fire to the Régulus and her companions, and the whole were destroyed. Before the 9th the batteries of Pointe Coubre, Pointe Nègre, Royan, Sonlac, and Mèche were successively entered and destroyed by a detachment of seamen and marines under Captain George Harris of the 38-gun frigate Belle-Poule.

The entry of the allies into Paris on the 31st of March, and the preliminary treaty entered into between England and France on the 24th of April, put a temporary stop to the miseries of war in Europe. Louis XVIII. landed at Calais from Dover the same day ; and on the 28th of April Napoleon embarked at Fréjus in Provence on board the British 38-gun frigate Undaunted, Captain Thomas Ussher, who, on the 4th of May, landed his passenger in safety at Porto-Ferraro in the Isle of Elba.

In the succeeding August the Scheldt fleet was divided in the following manner : 12 sail of the line were allowed to be retained by France ; three were restored to Holland, as having formerly belonged to her ; and seven others were also given to her, to be held in trust, until the congress at Vienna should decide how they were to be disposed of. The ships, generally, were a good deal broken in the sheer, and having been constructed of green wood, were in bad condition. The nine sail of the line, including two three-deckers on the stocks, were to be broken up.

Light Squadrons and Single Ships.

On the 20th of October, 1813, the two French 40-gun frigates Iphigénie and Alcmène, Captains Jacques-Léon Emeric and Alexandre Ducrest de Villeneuve, sailed from Cherbourg on a six months' cruise. The two frigates proceeded first off the Western Isles, and then to the coast of Africa ; where they captured two guineamen, laden with elephants' teeth, &c. After taking out the most valuable parts of the cargoes, Captain Emeric burnt the ships. From Africa the Iphigénie and Alcmène sailed to the Canary Isles, in the vicinity of which they took six other prizes. On the 16th of January, at 7 a.m., when cruising off these islands, the two French frigates fell in with the British 74-gun ship Venerable, Captain James Andrew Worth, bearing the flag of Rear-admiral Philip Charles Durham, on his way to take the chief command at the Leeward-Islands, 22-gun ship Cyane, Captain Thomas Forrest, and prize-brig Jason, a French letter-of-marque captured 17 days before, and now, with two guns (having thrown 12 overboard in chase) and 22 men, in charge of Lieutenant Thomas Moffat, belonging to the Venerable.

The two frigates, when first descried, were in the north-east ;

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