On the 23rd and 24th Admiral Rooke, the future hero of Gibraltar, sailed up the bay of La Hogue with his lighter vessels; then took to his boats and burnt Tourville's men-of-war, supply ships, and even rowboats, in full view of King Louis and King James and of their whole army of invasion. No other navy has seen so many strange sights, afloat and ashore, as have been seen by the British. Yet even the British never saw a stranger sight than when the French cavalry charged into the shallow water where the Dutch and British sailors were finishing their work. A soldier-and-sailor rough-and-tumble followed, sabres and cutlasses slashing like mad, and some of the horsemen being dragged off their saddles by well-handled boat-hooks.
La Hogue was not a glorious victory, like Trafalgar, because the odds were nine to four in favour of the Dutch and British. But it was one of the great decisive battles of the world, because, from that time on, the British Isles, though often threatened, were never again in really serious danger of invasion.
CHAPTER XIV
THE SECOND WAR AGAINST LOUIS XIV
(1702-1713)
King Charles II of Spain, having no children, made a will leaving his throne to Philip V, a grandson of Louis XIV, whose wife was sister to Charles. Louis declared that "the Pyrenees had ceased to exist"; by which boast he meant that he would govern the Spanish Empire through his grandson, turn the Mediterranean into "a French lake," and work his will against British sea-power, both mercantile and naval.
The war that followed was mostly fought on land; and the great British hero of it was the famous Duke of Marlborough, who was a soldier, not a sailor. But the facts that England, as usual, could not be invaded, and that her armies, also as usual, fought victoriously on the continent of Europe, prove how well British sea-power worked: closing the sea to enemies, opening it for friends, moving armies to the best bases on the coast, and keeping them supplied with all they needed at the front—men, munitions, clothing, food, and everything else.
The great naval feat of this war was the daring attack Rooke made on Gibraltar in 1704 with the help of some very gallant Dutch. Landing all the Marines ("Soldier and Sailor too") on the narrow neck of ground joining the famous Rock of Gibraltar to the mainland of Spain, and ranging all his broadsides against the batteries on the seaward front, Rooke soon beat the Spaniards from their guns and forced them to surrender a place which, if properly defended, should have kept out a fleet ten times as strong. No sooner had Gibraltar fallen than a French fleet came to win it back. But, after a fierce battle off Malaga, with over fifty ships a side, the French gave up the idea; and from that day to this Gibraltar has been British.
British sea-power won many advantages by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. France and Spain agreed that one king should never rule both countries. The British kept Gibraltar and Minorca, which together made two splendid bases for their fleet in the Mediterranean; while France gave up all her claims to Newfoundland and the Territory of Hudson Bay, besides ceding Acadia (Nova Scotia), to the British Crown.