By the end of the year 1794 five out of seven thousand of Grey's men had died, and Guadeloupe had been recaptured by the French. By the summer of 1795 St Lucia had also been recaptured; and the British even in their own islands of St Vincent and Grenada had been dispossessed of all but the two forts and capitals. Scattered regiments of boys sent out by Pitt sufficed only to fill the graveyards, for they could not stand the active work of the campaign; and at last Pitt was obliged to despatch a fresh army of seventeen thousand men to recover the lost ground. The expedition, owing to the usual blundering, started too late, and the troops were of the worst quality, young, untrained and of poor physique. However, thanks to their commander, Sir Ralph Abercromby, they managed to recapture the lost islands, which by that time had been reduced to desolation by the insurgent negroes; and then of course they died like flies. Meanwhile ever since 1793 Haiti had swallowed up more and more troops, the black insurgents opposing the British most gallantly but proving far less deadly than the yellow fever. Year after year reinforcements arrived to complete the work of conquest, and year after year the army was reduced to a shadow before it could accomplish its task. But Pitt, still insatiable, sent Abercromby out a second time in 1797 to capture Trinidad and Porto Rico, which latter island by great good fortune was too strong for him. It was not until 1798 that the bickering over these miserable islands ceased, and even then by no fault of Pitt's. It was a military officer who decided on his own responsibility to evacuate Haiti, against the wishes of the Government, but none too soon. By that time Pitt's military policy, so called, had cost us 100,000 men, but had not contributed in the slightest degree to check the aggression of Revolutionary France.