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H southward, some into the Loire, some into Rochefort; but in either case their service during that war was at an end. The circumstances of the action—the short November day, the gale, the rocks, the ‘hawk-like swoop’ of the English fleet, the destruction of the French, and the relief from the tension of the last few months, during which an invasion had appeared imminent—all combined to raise popular enthusiasm in England to an unwonted pitch. Afloat, it appeared to the seamen as if the country expressed its gratitude coldly. The heavy weather of November continued through December. The fleet was safely anchored in Quiberon Bay, but the communication with England was interrupted; the supplies of fresh provisions became irregular; the ships' companies, no longer sustained by the excitement of a prospective battle, fell sick. The situation was shortly described in the familiar doggerel:— Ere Hawke did bang Mounseer Conflans, You sent us beef and beer: Now Mounseer's beat, We've nought to eat, Since you have nought to fear. Hawke meantime was engaged in a curious correspondence with the Duc d'Aiguillon, the commander-in-chief of the French army, relative to the exchange or surrender of prisoners. He demanded the men of the Héros, who had escaped by a breach of faith. D'Aiguillon of course refused: it is, indeed, now recognised that a ship in the position of the Héros has a right to escape if she can; but in 1759 the victor's theory was that a ship, by striking her flag, surrendered, ‘rescue or no rescue.’ The severity of the French loss is illustrated by Hawke's letter to the admiralty (2 Dec.): ‘As the number of men much wounded on board the Formidable was very great and very nauseous, I desired the Duc d'Aiguillon would send vessels to take them on shore. … The wounded were sent for. He also sent an officer to desire that I would send on shore five companies of the regiment of Saintogne and 140 militia on the terms of the cartel. … As only about 120 of the French soldiers survive, I consented that they should go on shore on parole given.’

His work being finished, on 16 Dec. Hawke requested to be relieved. He had, he wrote, been thirty-one weeks on board, without setting his foot on shore. It was not, however, till 17 Jan. 1760 that he was permitted to return to England. On the 21st the king received him at court in the most flattering manner. On the 28th he received the thanks of the House of Commons, conveyed by the speaker in a glowing eulogium. The government was less enthusiastic; and a pension of 1,500l., afterwards increased to 2,000l. a year for two lives, was the sole official acknowledgment of the greatest victory at sea since the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Personal pique on the part of Pitt, and personal jealousy on the part of Anson, probably explain the government's niggardly recognition (cf., p. 422). Their neglect has reacted on historians, who seem scarcely to have recognised the importance of the victory. So far as England was concerned, Quiberon Bay was the decisive action of the war; not only did it put an end to the long-cherished scheme of invasion, but for the time it completely destroyed the naval power of France. During the rest of the war no French squadron ventured to sea; the Bay of Biscay was an English sea; Quiberon Bay and Basque Roads were the anchorages of the English fleets, and their islets were cultivated as cabbage gardens for the refreshment of English seamen.

To Hawke's career, too, the battle was decisive. It left nothing further for him to do. His command in Quiberon Bay from August 1760 to March 1761, or at Spithead and in the Bay of Biscay from April to September 1762, was uneventful; though during these last months he was enriched by the capture of several valuable Spanish ships by his cruisers. He struck his flag for the last time on 3 Sept. 1762. On 21 Oct. he was promoted to be admiral of the white, and on 21 Dec. to be rear-admiral of Great Britain; on 21 Oct. 1765 to be vice-admiral of Great Britain, and on 15 Jan. 1768 to be admiral and commander-in-chief of the fleet.

In September 1766 Pitt, then Earl of Chatham, constant in his dislikes, passed over Hawke, and selected Sir Charles Saunders [q. v.] to be first lord of the admiralty. Hawke was nevertheless, it is said, one of the first to call on Saunders with his congratulations. Saunders, however, held the office for only a couple of months, and on his resignation Hawke was appointed, 28 Nov. 1766. Walpole, often merely the retailer of ignorant gossip (Memoirs of the Reign of George III, iv. 205, 257), Junius, who wrote what he thought might be pleasing to Chatham (5 March 1770, 17 Jan. 1771), and other scurrilous opponents of the government (Gent. Mag. 1770, p. 63), have represented Hawke as an incapable administrator, a charge entirely unsupported by any evidence. Proof positive of the efficiency of a naval administration in time of peace is difficult to obtain; but it was openly stated that his guiding maxim was ‘that our fleet could only be termed considerable in the proportion it bore to that of the House of Bourbon,’ and