4. Throughout the seventeenth century numerous incidents illustrate the pretensions of Great Britain; and so also in the next century. Émérigon, the famous French authority on the Law of Insurance, mentions one which deserves notice. In 1757, a French bark, La Victoire, chased by a British privateer, sought refuge in the neutral waters of Majorca, where she anchored within pistol-shot of the shore. The British privateer seized the bark, notwithstanding three shots fired from the castle. A few days later the prize was recaptured by a French privateer. The original owners of the bark claimed her, on the ground that her capture was null; but the court of prizes awarded one third to the recaptor.[12] The learned author fails to record any reparation by Great Britain. Advancing to later times, the historic precedents multiply. I pass over a considerable period, not without examples, and come at once to those occurring in the protracted war against the French Revolution. 5. War had hardly begun, when, in 1793, the port of Genoa was the scene of an incident differing from that in Bahia only in its very aggravating circumstances, and in the bloodshed that ensued. The French frigate La Modeste was quietly at anchor in this neutral harbor when a British ship-of-the-line came alongside. Suddenly the British commander summoned the Frenchman to surrender. On his refusal, the frigate was boarded, and three hundred of the unarmed crew were massacred. The frigate was carried to England. Such is the account given by a French author, who complains bitterly that the British Government did nothing to punish the outrage. The Genoese Government was powerless; and the French Convention, in a decree marked by great moderation, proceeded to release it from all responsibility, although at a later day it appears to have paid two millions of francs as an indemnity.[13] The reader curious in dates will not fail to observe that it was in the very year when the neutrality of Genoa was thus set at defiance that the British minister in the United States claimed the surrender of a ship seized by a French frigate in defiance of our neutrality. Such are famous contradictions of national conduct. A British ship captured by France in neutral waters was surrendered at the demand of Great Britain; a French ship captured by Great Britain in neutral waters was hurried off by the captor as prize of war. 6. The same author who has described the outrage in the harbor of Genoa adds that Admiral Nelson afterwards carried off another French vessel in full view of the Genoese batteries.[14] 7. Another instance appears, where Admiral Nelson, in 1798, entered the neutral port of Leghorn, and seized a fleet of Genoese ships with rich cargoes. The author who records this outrage makes it “yet otherwise culpable on account of the high position of the personage, who, without respect for the independence and dignity of a friendly and neutral nation, assumed the moral responsibility of it.”[15]