Thus through two men of the Seventeenth the Irish volunteers were finally brought to an end. It must be remembered in defence of these two dragoons that their regiment had fought through the whole of the American War, which had failed mainly through the Alliance of the French with the Americans; and that it was a little hard on them, when at home, to hear abuse of the King whom they served, and witness the exaltation of French and American heroes. Moreover, in those days the Irish had injured so many soldiers by hamstringing them when peaceably walking in the streets that there was a deal of bad blood between the Irish and the Army. In that same year began the great war with France which was destined to last, with only a few months intermission, for the next twenty years, and to be finally closed by the victory of Waterloo. The efforts of Mr. Pitt were early directed against the French possessions in the West Indies--a policy which, after having been for many years condemned, in deference to the verdict of Lord Macaulay, has lately been vindicated by a more competent and impartial authority, Captain Mahan of the United States Navy. The richest of the French West Indies was the Island of St. Domingo, which accordingly became one of Pitt’s first objects. Ever since 1790, when the revolutionary principles of Paris had first found their way thither, the island had been in a state of disturbance, which had culminated, partly through mismanagement and partly through wilful mischief, in a general rising of the negroes against the whites, accompanied by all the atrocities that inevitably attend a servile war and a war of colour. Of the white planters many took refuge in Jamaica, whence they pressed the British Government to take possession of St. Domingo, averring that all classes of the population would welcome British dominion, and that on the first appearance of a British force the Colony would surrender without a struggle. It was the story of the Carolinas repeated, and we shall see that the story had the same end. [Sidenote: 1793.]