It was time, for the Richard was on fire in two places, all her main-deck guns were dismounted, and she was sinking fast.  She was kept afloat with great difficulty until morning, giving Jones time to place his wounded on the Serapis, and to save such of her fittings as could be removed.  The Pallas, another of Jones’s ships, had captured the Scarborough, and with these prizes, Jones put back to France.  He was welcomed with great enthusiasm there, received the thanks of the Congress, and was designated to command the ship-of-the-line then building.  But he fought no more battles under the Stars and Stripes.  After a brief service with Russia, he returned to Paris, broken in health, and died there in 1792.  His body was only recently brought to this country and interred with national honors at Annapolis.

We have said that there was only one other naval commander of the Revolution whose name shines with any lustre to-day—­Nicholas Biddle.  His career was a brief and brilliant one.  Born in Philadelphia, he had gone to sea at the age of thirteen, was cast away on a desert island, was rescued, and enlisted in the English navy, but returned to America as soon as revolution threatened.  He was given command of a little brig called the Andrea Doria, took a number of prizes, and made so good a record that in 1776 he was appointed to command the new frigate, Randolph.  Using Charleston, South Carolina, as his base, he captured four prizes within a few days, but on his second cruise, fell in with a British sixty-four, the Yarmouth.  After a sharp action of twenty minutes, fire got into the magazine of the Randolph, in some way, and she blew up, only four of her crew of 310 escaping.  The blow was a heavy one to the American navy, for Biddle was its best commander, next to Jones, and the Randolph was its best ship.  Luckily the French alliance placed the French fleet at the disposal of the colonies—­or Cornwallis would never have been captured at Yorktown.

It is one of our polite fictions that the United States has always been victorious in war; but, as a matter of fact, we were not victorious in the second war with England, and, when the treaty of peace came to be signed, abandoned practically all the contentions which war had been declared to maintain.  On land, the war was, for the most part, a series of costly blunders, beginning with the surrender of Detroit, and closing with the sack of Washington, and had England had her hands free of Napoleon, the result for us might have been very serious.  The only considerable and decisive victory won by American arms was that of Andrew Jackson at New Orleans—­a battle fought after the treaty of peace had been signed.

But on the ocean there was a different story—­a series of brilliant victories which, while they did not seriously cripple the great English navy, caused Canning to declare in Parliament that “the sacred spell of the invincibility of the British navy is broken.”  The heaviest blow was struck to British commerce, no less than sixteen hundred English merchantmen falling victims to privateers and ships-of-war.