As the _Barfleur_ got nearer, De Grasse fired a challenging gun. It was to attract the approaching flagship's attention. Hood marked the gun and understood it. He at once headed the _Barfleur_ directly for the _Ville de Paris_. 'I concluded,' said Hood, 'the Count de Grasse had a mind to be my prisoner, as an old acquaintance, and therefore met his wishes by looking towards him.' As the _Barfleur_ began to close with the French flagship, De Grasse made a show of opening fire on her, 'which I,' continued Hood, 'totally disregarded till I had proved, by firing a single gun from the quarter-deck, that I was within point blank.'[43] That was the _Barfleur's_ distance. Ranging up to the _Ville de Paris_ Hood greeted the French admiral with one tremendous salvo of round-shot and grape at close quarters that crashed through the sides of De Grasse's doomed flagship as though they were cardboard. That one broadside struck down sixty men. All was over for the French admiral now. In less than ten minutes the end had come. De Grasse stepped to the taffrail, and with his own hand pulled the _Ville de Paris's_ ensign down. The battle of the 'Glorious Twelfth of April' had been fought and won. As the _Ville de Paris's_ ensign dropped the sun's rim touched the sea-line. There were but three unwounded men on the _Ville de Paris's_ quarter-deck when the admiral hauled down the flag. De Grasse himself was one. More than a third of the flagship's immense company, officers and men, had gone down, while he himself, at the most exposed point of all from the first shot to the last and seeming to court death throughout, had come through the day unscathed, except for a contusion across the loins from a splinter which did not break the skin. [Illustration: DE GRASSE'S FLAG COMES DOWN. RODNEY WATCHING THE SURRENDER OF THE _VILLE DE PARIS_ After the picture by Robert Edge Pine; now in the Town Hall of Kingston, Jamaica. [Immediately behind Rodney's left shoulder is seen the head of Lord Cranstoun. Midshipman Dashwood is readily recognisable, and the tall, bulky man on the extreme right of the picture is Sir Charles Douglas with the little bantam cock near his feet. The picture was shown at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1784.] ] The grand finale was witnessed from the _Formidable_, now close at hand and drawing up, but just too late to share in the honour of the event. Dr. Blane saw the French flag drop. 'The _Formidable_ was right astern, and having come within shot, was yawing in order to give the enemy a raking broadside, when, Sir Charles Douglas and I standing together on the quarter-deck, the position of our ship opened a view of the enemy's stern between the foresail and the jib boom, between which we saw the French flag hauled down!'[44]