French boatswain and one of their midshipmen. The Leander commenced the action with 282 men and boys, of whom 35 were killed and 57* wounded; and the Genereux, whose crew numbered 936 men and boys, sustained a loss of about 100 killed and 188 wounded.

No sooner had the republican crew taken possession of their prize than a general scene of plunder was presented-the English officers and men were even stripped of their private property, and nothing left them but the clothes on their backs; the surgeon was robbed of his instruments, so that he was unable to perform the necessary operation for removing a musket-ball from Captain Thompson's arm; in fact, the greatest inhumanity was displayed by the victors, and the sufferings of the prisoners did not cease with their arrival at Corfu, to which island the two ships proceeded t. While lying in that harbour the Genereux was squadron, and Captain Lejoille tried to induce the Leander's men to assist him in forcing his

blockaded by a Russian

Captain Thompson was amongst the latter, having been severely wounded in three places. Captain Berry, the officer charged with the dispatches, received a singular wound, a part of a man's skull having been driven through his arm.

The different charges against the French appear almost incredible; we are told, for instance, that Captain Lejoille refused Captain Thompson, although so badly wounded, even his cot, and when the latter remonstrated with the Frenchman, pointing out the opposite treatment shown to the French officers taken prisoners at the Nile, he only replied, "I am sorry for it, but the French are good pillagers ;" and such he showed himself, for when Captain Berry asked to have some pistols returned, of which he had been plundered, Captain Lejoille, when they were produced by the man who had taken them, very coolly secured them for himself.

way to sea. Promises of reward, which were bountifully proffered, proved unavailing, and one man in particular, a main top-man, named George Bannister, replied, "No, you d-d French rascal, give us but our little ship, and we will fight you again till we sink." The Leander was retaken by the blockading squadron, and presented by the Russian Emperor to this country, and subsequently added to her career of glory-winning fresh laurels at Algiers; thus being first and last to distinguish herself in the war.

On returning to the shore, after his trial by court-martial, Captain Thompson was saluted by three cheers from all the ships in harbour, and his merits were acknowledged by his sovereign by the honour of knighthood and a pension of 2001. per annum.

DEFENCE OF ACRE.

In the year 1799, when Buonaparte—having achieved the conquest of Egypt-turned his thoughts of conquest towards regions further east, and when England was alarmed for the safety of its Indian empire, our Ministers entered into a treaty of alliance with the Sublime Porte, under the provisions of which a Turkish army was to traverse Asia Minor, in order to threaten the French general's rear, while advancing towards British India. Buonaparte,

having intelligence of the arrangement, determined to forestall it, and, by commencing offensive operations, prevent the combined action of the forces destined to operate against him. With this view he marched with an army of 13,000 men against St. Jean d'Acre, the appointed rendezvous of the Turkish forces, which the Governor of the fortress, Djezzar Pasha, had been selected to command. Captain Sir Sidney Smith, then at Constantinople, on hearing of Napoleon's movements, proceeded in the Tigre to Alexandria, hoping by a bombardment of that city to arrest his march, and gain time for Acre to be put into a state of defence. Failing in this, Sir Sidney sailed for Acre, where he anchored on the 15th March, and found the fortifications in a ruinous and dilapidated condition, and almost destitute of artillery; in fact, to most men the place would have appeared incapable of defence, as will appear from the following account of an experienced English officer of artillery who arrived at the close of the operations, and who thus describes it:-" It is situated upon a rectangular piece of land, two sides close to the water's edge, the other two terminating and meeting in a square tower towards the main land. There is no flanking fire from the place; the wall is not anywhere proof against a 3-pound shot; the ditch does not quite go round it; the gates are worse than good barn-doors in England; the approach is completely covered by ruins, by an aqueduct, and by hollow places

so close up to the wall, that the enemy began to break ground within 400 yards of the place. I am persuaded that most general officers would have declined defending Acre with 5000 good troops." Such was the fortress which, defended by the undisciplined Turks, animated and incited by the presence of a few English seamen, turned the modern Sesostris in his course of victory, and drove him baffled from before its walls.

While the Turkish garrison, under the direction of Colonel Philippeaux, a French emigrant officer of engineers, was strengthening the works, Sir Sidney Smith proceeded with the Tigre's boats to intercept the French maritime portion of the expedition, and on the night of the 17th March, while rowing in shore near Caiffa, he discovered the advanced guard of the French army marching along the sea-shore. Returning to his ship, he dispatched the launch of the Tigre to the mouth of the small river-the brook Kishon of Scripture -which falls into the sea in the bay of Acre, to guard and defend the ford; and the French troops, flushed with the triumph that had just attended their arms in the successful storm of Jaffa-the ancient Joppa,-were surprised at the break of day on the 18th by a fire unexpected and vigorous, which was their first intimation of the opposition they afterwards experienced, while the capture of the flotilla, which the Tigre pursued and overtook, was the main cause of the eventual successful defence; as Buonaparte was thus not only deprived

of his chief means of aggression, but the guns and stores were landed and employed in the defence of the beleaguered fortress. Under these circumstances, and obliged by the fire from the British ships to make his approaches on the north-east side of the town, where the defences were the most formidable, Buonaparte opened. his trenches on the 18th March. The importance which he attached to a successful result may be gathered from some of his speeches which have been preserved: "On that little town," said he to one of his generals, as they were standing on an eminence which takes its name from our Coeur de Lion-"on that little town depends the fate of the East. Behold the key of Constantinople, or of India. The moment Acre falls, all the Druses will join me; the Syrians, weary of Djezzar's oppression, will crowd to my standard. I shall march upon Constantinople with an army to which the Turk can offer no effectual resistance, and it seems not unlikely that I may return to France by the route of Adrianople and Vienna, destroying the house of Austria on my way."

The capture of their artillery in the flotilla had been so complete, and ammunition was so scarce, that Montholon tells us, that at first Sir Sidney Smith provided the French with the balls they fired, the soldiers receiving five sous for each ball they brought in; but they afterwards received supplies, and this eventful siege