possible except in an age when the relations of seafaring nations were habitually lawless, and when an act of robbery by one was left unpunished, except when it provoked retaliation in kind by the other. The battle of Sluys was a great regular engagement fought in pursuit of a national war. Edward III. had openly assumed the title of King of France in January 1340, and was preparing to assert his right by conquest. Philippe de Valois made ready to defend his throne, and took the measure dictated by sound sense. He collected a great fleet, composed in part of ships belonging to his subjects, in part of vessels hired from the Genoese. But the wisdom of the King of the French stopped at this preliminary stage. Although it appears that his fleet was collected as early as March, when King Edward had only forty ships in the Orwell, the great French armament lay idle in the little Flemish river Eede, at the anchorage of Sluys. The calculation perhaps was that its mere presence would suffice to delay the English king from attempting to cross. King Edward was not to be frightened. In spite of the opposition of his Chancellor and the backwardness of some of his captains, he decided to attack. Vigorous use was made of the time allowed him by the sloth of the enemy. Ships were called in from the north, and about the middle of June the king stood over to Blankenberg on the coast of Flanders. His fleet was somewhat stronger than the French. He puts the force opposed to him at a hundred and ninety vessels, while his own, including small craft, was over two hundred. But the French acted as if it had been their intention to deprive themselves of the advantage of their numbers. They remained in the river, with their ships lashed side by side to one another in three divisions. At a time when all battles were finally decided by hand-to-hand fighting, this was a not uncommon device with fleets which decided, or were compelled, to accept the attack. Nor was it altogether unreasonable, for it seemed to possess this advantage, that it forced the assailant to come on bow to bow, where his beaks would act with least effect, and where his men must board along a narrow passage; while the defender had the advantage of being able to make a barrier across the fore part of his vessel with his yard and his oars. The fatal defect of the formation was that an enemy who could fall on one end of the line could roll it up. As the French were drawn up along the bank of an estuary, and the English fleet was coming in from the sea, there was nothing to force King Edward to make a front attack. This fatal weakness of the position is said to have been noted by Barbavera, the veteran admiral of the Genoese. He is credited with an effort to induce King Philip's officers, Kiriet and Bahuchet, to stand out to sea so soon as the English appeared on the coast, but they showed the timidity which has commonly been noted in the sea fighting of the