.

THE BATTLE OFF BREST.
When Bligh's expedition returned, Europe was staggering under the shock of the French Revolution.

The head of Louis XVI was severed in January; the knife of Charlotte Corday was plunged into the heart of Marat in July; Marie Antoinette, the grey discrowned Queen of thirty-eight, mounted the scaffold in October.

The guillotine was very busy, and France was frantic amid internal disruption and the menace of a ring of foes.
The English governing classes had been clamouring for war.

It seemed to many political observers that it was positively needful to launch the country into an international struggle to divert attention from demands for domestic reform.