The fury of the fight centred round the _Soleil Royal_, Tourville's flagship, which at last had to be turned out of the line. Then, as at Jutland in the Great War, mist veiled the fleets, so that friend and foe were mixed together. But the battle went on here and there between different parts of the fleets; while a hot action was fought after dark by Admiral Carter, who, though a Jacobite, was determined that no foreign army should ever set foot in England. Mortally wounded, he called to his flag captain, "Fight the ship as long as she swims," and then fell dead. All through the foggy 20th the battle was continued whenever the French and Allies could see each other. Next morning the _Soleil Royal_ became so disabled that she drifted ashore near Cherbourg. But Tourville had meanwhile shifted his flag to another ship and fought his way into La Hogue with twelve of his best men-of-war. Some of the other French ships escaped by reaching St. Malo through the dangerous channel between La Hogue and the island of Alderney. Five others escaped to the eastward, and four went so far that they rounded Scotland before getting home. On the 23rd and 24th Admiral Rooke, the future hero of Gibraltar, sailed up the bay of La Hogue with his lighter vessels; then took to his boats and burnt Tourville's men-of-war, supply ships, and even rowboats, in full view of King Louis and King James and of their whole army of invasion. No other navy has seen so many strange sights, afloat and ashore, as have been seen by the British. Yet even the British never saw a stranger sight than when the French cavalry charged into the shallow water where the Dutch and British sailors were finishing their work. A soldier-and-sailor rough-and-tumble followed, sabres and cutlasses slashing like mad, and some of the horsemen being dragged off their saddles by well-handled boat-hooks. La Hogue was not a glorious victory, like Trafalgar, because the odds were nine to four in favour of the Dutch and British. But it was one of the great decisive battles of the world, because, from that time on, the British Isles, though often threatened, were never again in really serious danger of invasion. CHAPTER XIV THE SECOND WAR AGAINST LOUIS XIV (1702-1713) King Charles II of Spain, having no children, made a will leaving his throne to Philip V, a grandson of Louis XIV, whose wife was sister to Charles. Louis declared that "the Pyrenees had ceased to exist"; by which boast he meant that he would govern the Spanish Empire through his grandson, turn the Mediterranean into "a French lake," and work his will against British sea-power, both mercantile and naval.