The hot Welsh blood cooled down before reason, and courage.  Vaughan saluted Chacon; and marched back, hooted by the Republicans, who nevertheless kept at a safe distance.  The French hunted every English and Irish person out of the town, some escaping barely with their lives.  Only one man, however, was killed; and he, poor faithful slave, was an English Negro.

Vaughan saw that he had done wrong; that he had possibly provoked a war; and made for his error the most terrible reparation which man can make.

His fears were not without foundation.  His conduct formed the principal count in the list of petty complaints against England, on the strength of which, five months after, in October 1796, Spain declared war against England, and, in conjunction with France and Holland, determined once more to dispute the empire of the seas.

The moment was well chosen.  England looked, to those who did not know her pluck, to have sunk very low.  Franco was rising fast; and Buonaparte had just begun his Italian victories.  So the Spanish Court—­or at least Godoy, ’Prince of Peace’—­sought to make profit out of the French Republic.  About the first profit which it made was the battle of St. Vincent; about the second, the loss of Trinidad.

On February 14, while Jervis and Nelson were fighting off Cape St. Vincent, Harvey and Abercrombie came into Carriacou in the Grenadines with a gallant armada; seven ships of the line, thirteen other men-of-war, and nigh 8000 men, including 1500 German jagers, on board.

On the 16th they were struggling with currents of the Bocas, piloted by a Mandingo Negro, Alfred Sharper, who died in 1836, 105 years of age.  The line-of-battle ships anchored in the magnificent land-locked harbour of Chaguaramas, just inside the Boca de Monos.  The frigates and transports went up within five miles of Port of Spain.

Poor Chacon had, to oppose this great armament, 5000 Spanish troops, 300 of them just recovering from yellow fever; a few old Spanish militia, who loved the English better than the French; and what Republican volunteers he could get together.  They of course clamoured for arms, and demanded to be led against the enemy, as to this day; forgetting, as to this day, that all the fiery valour of Frenchmen is of no avail without officers, and without respect for those officers.  Beside them, there lay under a little fort on Gaspar Grande island, in Chaguaramas harbour—­ah, what a Paradise to be denied by war—­four Spanish line-of-battle ships and a frigate.  Their admiral, Apodaca, was a foolish old devotee.  Their crews numbered 1600 men, 400 of whom were in hospital with yellow fever, and many only convalescent.  The terrible Victor Hugues, it is said, offered a band of Republican sympathisers from Guadaloupe:  but Chacon had no mind to take that Trojan horse within his fortress.  ’We have too many lawless Republicans here already.  Should the King send me aid, I will do my duty to preserve his colony for the crown:  if not, it must fall into the hands of the English, whom I believe to be generous enemies, and more to be trusted than treacherous friends.’