So ended the battle of the 20th May. It was first and foremost an example of what must happen so long as our navy continued to be bound by the stupid pattern set up in the Fighting Instructions for all actions against an enemy of equal, or approximately equal, force—so long, in fact, as we continued to engage to windward, ship to ship, leaving the enemy his line of retreat open, and depriving ourselves of the power to push the attack home, by making it a rule to adhere to the formation in which we began the fight. In these conditions decisive results were not to be achieved. But Byng did ill even according to this stupid model. He ought to have arranged his fleet parallel to the enemy before he bore down, and he ought not to have begun firing, as he did, when at such a distance that he could do no harm. Yet the lame and impotent conclusion of the battle and his own bungling might both have been forgiven, or even passed unnoticed, but for what followed. The fleet was satisfied that it had made the enemy run, and the nation would have been satisfied too, if there had been any effort to help Fort St. Philip in the days following the battle. There was none. For four days Byng loitered near the scene of the action, repairing the vessels crippled on the 20th. He said it was not easy to do, and indeed, from first to last, showed a marked disinclination to attempt anything that was not “easy.” Then a council of war came to the conclusion, which is always so welcome to weak men weakly led, that nothing more could be done. The fleet returned to “cover” Gibraltar, leaving Minorca to its fate. Before the complacent dispatch in which Byng announced his decision could reach home, the news of the failure had been given by La Galissonière’s boastful letter to his own king. It was published in Paris, and sent on from thence. In truth the French admiral was very nervous, constantly expecting the reappearance of the English in superior force, and was only kept from retiring to Toulon by the incessant driving of Richelieu. The honour both of the defence and of the attack in this campaign belongs wholly to the soldiers. When the result of the meeting of the two fleets was known, there burst out a storm of rage of which the echoes can be heard to this day. It is not pleasant to hear a people howling for the life of a man, whether he be the great and terrible Strafford or poor, weak, self-satisfied John Byng. The manifestations, too, were vulgar. The mob hanged the admiral in effigy, the City of London sent deputations asking for his life, the Prime Minister gabbled promises that he should be punished. Meanwhile Byng had returned to Gibraltar on the 19th June. He found there a reinforcement of five line-of-battle ships under Commodore Brodrick, who had arrived on the 15th from England. Preparations were being made to return to Mahon when Hawke came into Gibraltar to take command and also to send Byng home for trial together with the witnesses. Fowke was