Never in the long history of war was the truth that the timid is also the dangerous course more convincingly shown than in this battle. As the English ships overtook the French, ranging up on both sides, they did not linger by the first they met, but pushed on ahead, leaving the work of destruction to be completed by their comrades coming on behind. Thus the French rear ships were successively assailed by superior numbers firing into them from right and left. It must also be remembered that when the ships turned round Les Grands Cardinaux and headed to the north and north-west, they turned their left sides to the wind and were pressed over to the right. The slope, or list, given to them was so great that it was impossible to open the ports of the lowest tier of guns on the lee side. When any English captain came up on the lee side of a Frenchman, he himself had the full use of his weather battery, while his opponent could not fire his heaviest and most effective tier of guns. Conflans, in fact, had so managed matters that he gave Hawke’s superiority of numbers an effect it could not have had if the French fleet had accepted battle outside Belleisle, in good order, and in a united body. The rear of his line was miserably crushed. The _Formidable_, 80, the flagship of the Chef d’Escadre Saint-André Duverger, was shattered to pieces by our fire. Duverger himself and 200 of his men were slain, and his ship surrendered. The _Thésée_, 74, filled and went down with all hands, unquestionably because her captain, M. de Kersaint, opened his lower deck ports to fire and allowed the water to rush in. Keppel on the =Torbay= all but incurred the same fate by running the same hazard, but his ship freed herself of the water in time.