one English merchant ship and no less than six Turkish men-of-war, which made much noise, in the year 1616. Two accounts of this spirited battle were published: one by the English captain, in the following year, and dedicated to Henry Stuart, the young Prince of Wales; and the other by John Taylor, the "water poet,” an author now little known, though a note to the "Dunciad" states that "he wrote fourscore books in the reigns of James and Charles I." Towards the close of December, 1616, the ship Dolphin, of London, Captain Edward Nicholls, left Zante, one of the Ionian Isles, with a full cargo for the Thames. She was a craft of 220 tons, or thereabout; her crew consisted of thirty-six men and two boys; and she was armed with nineteen pieces of cast ordnance and five "murderers," a name then given to small pieces of cannon having chambers, and made to load at the breech. They were mostly used at sea, in order to clear the decks when an enemy had boarded a vessel. Her master was "a man of great skill, courage, industry, and proved experience;" and these good qualities were soon to be put to a terrible test. On the 1st of January, 1617, the Dolphin lost sight of the Fior de Levante, and on the morning of the 8th sighted the island of Sardinia. The wind being westerly, at nine in the morning she stood in shore for Cagliari, and about noon was close to two small watch-towers, from which two cannon were fired, as a signal that the guards there wished to speak with the crew. Their object, Captain Nicholls afterwards learned, was to acquaint him that Turkish war-vessels were cruising off the coast; but their intention was misunderstood, and the Dolphin's course was continued towards the Cabo di Paula, westward of the Gulf of Cagliari. On the 12th of January, at four o'clock in the morning watch, they discovered, with doubt and alarm, a large ship steering towards them. She proved to be a sattie, or Turkish craft, which Captain Nicholls describes as being "much like unto an argosy, of a very great burthen and bigness," and manned by armed men. Perceiving that she was endeavouring to get between the Dolphin and the island of Sardinia, the master sent a seaman into the maintop "with his perspective glass," from where he saw five other vessels coming up before a south-west breeze. "He perceived them to be Turkish men-of-war, the first of them booming by himself before the wind, with his flag in the maintop and his sails gallantly spread abroad. After him came the admiral and vice-admiral, of greater burden than the first; after him two more—the rear-admiral, larger than all the rest, and his companion." Their ports were open, and it was evident they were bent on hostility and mischief; so the Dolphin cleared away for action. Powder and shot were served out for the guns; the crew armed themselves and stood to their quarters, while the captain harangued them in the following terms from the poop: "Countrymen and fellows! You see into what an exigency it has pleased God to suffer us to fall. Let us remember that we are but men, and must of necessity die, where, when, and how, is of God's appointment; but if it be His pleasure that this must be the last of our days, His will be done; and let us, for His glory, our souls' welfare, our country's honour, and the credit of ourselves, fight valiantly to the last gasp! Let us prefer a noble death to a life of slavery; and if we die, let us die to gain a better life!" He then assured those who might survive that, if maimed, they should be maintained as long as they lived, and be secured from want, adding, "Be therefore resolute, and stand to it, for here there is no shrinking. We must be either free men or slaves. Die with me, or if you will not, by God's grace, I shall die with you!" He brandished his sword; the crew responded by loud cheers, and the trumpets were sounded, as he was assailed in succession by the sattie and the five other Turkish ships, the size and strength of which vary in the two accounts, but are given thus by Captain Schomberg in his "Naval Chronology:" Two of 300 tons, 28 guns, and 250 men each; one of 200 tons, 24 guns, and 250 men; two of 200 tons, 22 guns, and 200 men each. In the sattie were said to be 1,500 men. The leading Turkish ship got to windward of the Dolphin, one of whose crew was killed by the first shot from her; and in the fight that ensued, her heavy guns so battered and beat down the bulwarks of the Dolphin "that," says Nicholls, "we used our guns clear of the ports," as she was all exposed and open. But so bravely fought the crew of the little English ship, that the ordnance of the Turk was dismounted, nearly half her crew were slain, and the officers were seen beating the others with their scimitars to keep them to their duty. Moreover, the Dolphin had given her many dangerous shots between wind and water. By this time she was laid aboard by the 200-ton ship, the captain of which proved to be an English renegade, named Walsingham. He fought his way over her larboard quarter at the head of a gang of ferocious desperadoes, armed with sabres ("which The Isle of Rhé.] SIX TO ONE. were called faulchions "), hatchets, and half-pikes. The conflict on the poop continued for half an hour, during which the Turks strove to tear up the "nail-board and trap-hatch;" but the well-directed fire from a murderer in the round-house abaft the mainmast swept them away and cleared that portion of the ship; while theirs was plied by cannon, musketry, and another murderer, that was planted in the trap-hatch, till her hull was shot through and through. She fell away astern, receiving a parting broadside as she passed, and lay to, that her leaks and shot-holes might be plugged; and this ended "Walsingham's part in the fight," which the Sardinians on the shore gathered in numbers to see. And now the shattered Dolphin was assailed by two other Turks, of 300 tons each, one of which was commanded by another renegade, named Kelly, probably an Irishman, who carried his flag in the maintop, while the other's ensign was hoisted at the fore. Ranging close alongside, one boarded her on the starboard quarter, the other on the larboard, or, as it is now called, port side. They poured in “thick and threefold, with their scimitars, hatchets, half-pikes, and other weapons," and with loud shouts and yells of fury and defiance. They succeeded in tearing down the British flag; but the steward of the Dolphin shot the Turk who had it, and he was flung into the sea, while the flag remained on deck. After a conflict maintained for an hour and a half, by sweeping the deck with the murderers, and the vigorous use of their weapons, the ship was again cleared, and the Turks were compelled "to lay their ships by to stop their leaks, for they had been grievously torn and battered;" but the Dolphin was not yet free, for she was almost immediately assailed by "two more of Captain Kelly's ships." 197 that the Dolphin's crew was lessened by death, and that nearly all who were left to fight did so covered with wounds and blood, "we shot them quite through and through," says Nicholls, "and laid him likewise by the lee, as we had done the others before." But they were boarded again by the other ship, on the starboard quarter, and summoned to yield, with promises of quarter, liberty, and half the cargo. To these offers no attention was paid; by pike and sword they were all tumbled overboard, and the ship again cleared, but ere this was achieved the Dolphin caught fire, balls of burning matter being tossed into her by the enemy. One of these lighted in the basin of the surgeon, as he was in the act of dressing the wounds of the master, who, though injured in both legs, had still to stand by the tiller, and steer. The fire was extinguished, and the sorely-battered Dolphin crept in shore, and was about to anchor, when another ship bore down to attack her. Her appearance so alarmed Nicholls, that he slipped or cut his cable and ran into the roadstead of Cagliari, and took shelter between the two forts whose signals he had some time before disregarded. There he remained for five days repairing damages, attending to the wounded, and burying the dead on shore; for, after all this boarding and cannonading, his loss was only seventeen killed, but all the survivors were more or less injured. These Turks were doubtless corsairs; as Nicholls says that three of their captains were Englishmen, who came "to rob and spoil upon the ocean, and their names were Walsingham, Kelly, and Sampson." After encountering a dreadful tempest, during which one of her wounded men died and was cast overboard, in the middle of February the But notwithstanding this overwhelming force, Dolphin came safely to anchor in the Thames. CHAPTER XXXVI. THE ISLE OF RHE, 1627. To add to the difficulties in which the year 1626 | his own. Hence he projected a new embassy to France, which Cardinal Richelieu prevented, by making Louis send a message to the effect that he must not think of such a journey; but Buckingham, in the heat of his romantic passion, swore, says Clarendon, that "he would see the queen in spite of all the power of France!" From that moment he determined to engage Britain in a war with that kingdom. troops were then besieging it. "This Englishman," | forty-two men-of-war and twenty-three transports, says Voltaire," made his master declare war against France merely because that Court had refused him the liberty of carrying on his amour. Such an adventure seemed more adapted to the times of Amadis de Gaul; but so connected and interwoven are the affairs of this world, that the romantic amours of the Duke of Buckingham produced a religious war and the taking of Rochelle !" Charles had but small sympathy, perhaps, with the Huguenots, who so much resembled his own sour Puritans in discipline and worship, in politics and religion; but he allowed himself to be won over by the arguments of Soubize, the Huguenot leader, then in London, and by the ardent solicita having on board seven regiments of a thousand men each, a squadron of horse, and many French Protestant refugees; and it was given out that this force was destined for the recovery of the Palatinate. By a Royal Commission, the duke was made Admiral of the Fleet and Commander of the Land Forces, among which Sir James Balfour states there were 3,000 Scots, commanded by William, Earl of Morton, K.G., and captain of the King's Guard. By this time, military training had become more and more the study of the soldier. In a treatise called "England's Trainings," published in 1619, by Edward Davis, we find the mode of handling the matchlock by the English musketeer. Buckingham's armament sailed from Portsmouth on the 7th of June, 1627, leaving eleven sail, which were not quite ready for sea, to follow him; but they were off the Isle of Rhé before him, as the fleet had spent some time in pursuit of certain Dunkirkers. On seeing the English ships, the Rochellers shut their gates to the seaward, fearing some snare or surprise, as they had no tidings given to them previously that relief was coming from England. "A soldier must either accustom himself to bear | answer of an honourable soldier" (" Relations of the a piece or a pike. If he bear a piece, then must Most Famous Kindgoms"). he first learn to hold the same, to accommodate his match between the two foremost fingers and his thumb, and to plant the great end on his breast with a gallant soldier-like grace; and if ignorant, to the intent that he may be more encouraged, let him acquaint himself first with the firing of touchpowder in his panne, and so by degrees both to shoot off, to bow and bear up his bodye, and so, consequently, to attain to the level and practice of an assured and serviceable shot, readily to charge and, with a comely touch, discharge, making sure at the same instant of his mark, with a quick and vigilant eie." This process is precisely the same as the snapping and aiming drill of the present hour. Davis adds, "His flaske and touch-box must keep his powder, his purse and mouth his bullets; in skirmish his left hand must hold his match and piece, and the right hand use the office of charging and discharging." On the 12th of July, the duke sent Soubize and Sir William Beecher to the city with a message, and they were admitted by a small postern gate, to deliver it to the Huguenot leaders. It was to the effect that "the King of England, out of compassion for their sufferings, had sent a fleet and army to their assistance; and if they refused his aid, he declared that he was fully quit of his engagement of honour and conscience for their relief." The mayor replied, in the name of the inhabiA most complete detail of the then elaborate tants, that "they most humbly thanked His Majesty system of drilling pikemen and musketeers, in the for the care he had of them; but that, being in first years of Charles's reign, will be found in a quaint strict union with all the Protestants of France, they folio volume of the Scottish Colonel Munro, pub- could not receive into the city the offered suclished at London, in 1637, by "William Jones, in cours without consulting their friends, and obtainRed Crosse Street." Platoon firing was first prac-ing previously the consent of the whole body of tised by the Scottish troops; and Harte says, in his "Life of Gustavus Adolphus," that by this new method they spread terror and amazement among the Austrians in the wars of Germany. Huguenots." By this reply, the duke finding himself shut out of Rochelle, directed his course to the Isle of Rhé, where the officer commanding the French troops was the Marquis de Thoiras, afterwards a Marshal of France, whom Sir Philip Warwick, in his Memoirs, calls an old and well-experienced soldier, who had in readiness such a force as made the intention of the British alike hazardous and danger The musketeers, says Munro, should be formed in companies with a front of thirty-two men, but six ranks deep; the first, firing at once, casting about and reloading; the second rank passing to the front between the files, to give fire next; then the third rank, and so on; "all blowing, priming, cast-ous. The duke's first blunder, in appearing unaning about, and charging all alike, where they stand, nounced and unexpectedly before Rochelle, was now till per vices the whole ranckes have discharged, till to be followed by another; for, instead of attacking the enemye turn back, or that they come to push of the fertile and defenceless Isle of Oleron, he turned of pike." About this period, the rondelle, or ron-his attention to that of Rhé, which was both welldache, as the French called it, a light shield or target, was pretty generally used by the pikeman. A good example of one of these is still preserved at Warwick Castle. garrisoned and strongly fortified. It lies opposite to Rochelle, is of irregular form, about eighteen miles long by three broad. Its capital, St. Martin, was defended by a citadel, and on the shore were several forts. The mode of landing was arranged by a council of colonels, and the event took place at four o'clock in the afternoon of the 12th, near La Prée, a fort with which some shots were exchanged. The Rainbow, the Vanguard, and two other ships, under Robert, Earl of Lindsay, who was Admiral of England and Governor of Berwick, were to lie well in shore, near a promontory, while the Globe, |