"JULY 1st [just in the days while Friedrich was first trying Horse Artillery], Rear-Admiral Rodney sails from Portsmouth with a few Frigates, and Six Bomb-ketches [FIREDRAKE, BASILISK, BLAST, and such nomenclatures [List of him, in Beatson, _Naval and Military Memoirs_ (London, 1804), ii. 241; his Despatch excellently brief, ib. ii. 323]]; and in the afternoon of Tuesday, 3d, arrives in the frith or bay of Havre. Steers himself properly into 'the Channel of Honfleur' before dark; and therefrom, with his Firedrake, Basilisk and Company, begins such a bombardment of Havre and the flat-bottomed manufactories as was quite surprising. Fifty-two incessant hours of it, before he thought poor Havre had enough. Poor Havre had been on fire six times; the flat manufactory (unquenchable) I know not how many; all the inhabitants off in despair; and the Garrison building this battery to no purpose, then that; no salvation for them but in Rodney's 'mortars getting too hot.' He had fired of shells 1,900, of carcasses, 1,150: from Wednesday about sunrise till Friday about 8 A.M.,--about time now for breakfast; which I hope everybody had, after such a stretch of work. 'No damage to speak of,' said the French Gazetteers; 'we will soon refit everything!' But they never did; and nothing came of Havre henceforth. Vannes was always, and is now still more, to be the main place; only that Hawke--most unexpectedly, for one fancied all their ships employed in distant parts--rides there with a Channel Fleet of formidable nature; and the previous question always is: 'Cannot we beat Hawke? Can we! Or will not he perhaps go, of himself, when the rough weather comes?'" Chapter III.--FRIEDRICH IN PERSON ATTEMPTS THE RUSSIAN PROBLEM; NOT WITH SUCCESS. Before Wedell's catastrophe, the Affair of those Haddick-Loudon Detachments had become a little plainer to Friedrich. The intention, he begins to suspect, is not for Berlin at all; but for junction with Soltikof,--at Crossen, or wherever it may be. This is in fact their real purpose; and this, beyond almost Berlin itself, it is in the highest degree important to prevent! Important; and now as if become impossible!