put out to sea with twenty-seven sail of the line, was met on the fourteenth of February 1797 by Admiral Jervis off Cape St. Vincent with a force of but fifteen; and driven back to Cadiz with a loss of four of its finest vessels. Disheartened as they were, however, their numbers still exceeded that of the force which blockaded them; and France counted with confidence on the fleet of Holland, which was ordered to join its own fleet at Brest. The aim of this union was to protect a fresh force in its descent upon Ireland, where the United Irishmen now declared themselves ready for revolt. But a yet sterner fortune awaited the Dutch than that which had fallen on the Spaniards. Their admiral, De Winter, who had quitted the Texel during a storm with eleven sail of the line and four frigates, fell in on the eleventh of October with a far larger fleet under Admiral Duncan off Camperdown. The Hollanders fought with a stubborn courage worthy of their old renown, and it was only when their ships were riddled with shot into mere wrecks that they fell into the hands of the English. [Sidenote: The Irish Rising.] The French project for an expedition to Ireland hung on the junction of the Dutch fleet with that of Brest, and the command of the Channel which this junction would have given them. Such a command became impossible after the defeat of Camperdown. But the disappointment of their hopes of foreign aid only drove the adherents of revolt in Ireland to a rising of despair. The union of the national party, which had lasted to some extent from the American war, was now broken up. The Protestants of Ulster still looked for aid to France. The Catholics, on the other hand, were alienated from the French by their attack on religion and the priesthood; and the failure of the French expedition, while it damped the hopes of the Ulstermen, gave force to the demands of the Catholic party for a purely national rising. So fierce was this demand that the leaders of the United Irishmen were forced to fix on the spring of 1798 for the outbreak of an insurrection, in which Lord Edward Fitzgerald, who had some small military experience, was to take the command. But while yielding on this point to the Catholic section of their party they conciliated the Protestants by renewed appeals for aid to the Directory. In spite of its previous failures France again promised help; and a division was prepared during the winter for service in Ireland. But the passion of the nation was too intense to wait for its arrival. The government too acted with a prompt decision in face of the danger, and an arrest of Lord Edward Fitzgerald with three of their chief leaders in February 1798 broke the plans of the insurgents. On the 23rd of May, however, the day fixed for the opening of the revolt, the Catholic peasantry of the south rose in arms. Elsewhere their disorderly gatherings were easily dispersed by the yeomanry; but Wexford