south-west, and the fleet was preparing to start; but the distance was short; a Flemish spy carried news of his danger to D'Annebault, and the admiral at once slipped from his anchorage, and made off into the open sea.[1] He crossed the Channel to Boulogne, where the French had by this time an army of twenty thousand men, and, landing his pioneers, he returned to the English coast with his vessels less inconveniently crowded. A desultory attack on Seaford was his next effort. A landing was effected, and the village was pillaged and set on fire; but, in an over-confidence that the country was unguarded, the French remained too long. The hardy Sussex volunteers were brought down upon them in swarms by the smoke of the conflagration. Every wall and hedge became alive with armed men, the boats were destroyed at the piers, and but a small fraction of the invaders recovered the fleet.[2] Encouraged by these successive failures, Lisle now ventured out into the Channel to cover the transport of troops to Calais. The hot weather had returned; AugustAugust brought with it its light easterly winds and calms; and, if we may judge by the constantly recurring com-
- ↑ Du Bellay's Memoirs. It is not often that in the independent records of two countries, we find separate portions of the same story which fit so accurately as Du Bellay's narrative and the letter of Lord Lisle.
- ↑ There is a difficulty in fixing the day of the failure at Seaford; Du Bellay relates it as if it followed immediately on the departure from the Isle of Wight. But there may have been some other attempt elsewhere, or he may have mistaken the exact order of events.—See Hall, Holinshed, and a letter among the MSS. State Paper Office, Domestic, vol. xvi. On the 30th of July D'Annebault was at Boulogne.—State Papers, vol. i. p. 795, note.
