DUGUAY-TROUIN, René (1673-1736), a famous French admiral, was the son of a sea captain, and was born at St Malo on the 10th June 1673. He was originally intended for the church, and studied with that view at Rennes and Caen; but on the breaking out of the war with England and Holland in 1689 he obtained leave to enter the marine. Accordingly he embarked in the capacity of a volunteer on board a small vessel of 18 guns, equipped by his family, and during the first three months his courage was tried by a violent tempest, an imminent shipwreck, the boarding of an English ship, and the threatened destruction of his own vessel by fire. The following year, as a volunteer in a vessel of 28 guns, he carried off the honours in a bloody combat with an English fleet of five merchant vessels. The courage he then showed was so remarkable that in 1691, at the age of eighteen, he obtained the command of a frigate of 14 guns, when, having been thrown by a tempest on the coast of Ireland, he burned two English ships in the river Limerick. In 1694 his vessel of 40 guns was captured by the English, and, being taken prisoner, he was confined in the castle of Plymouth, where, however, he made love to the daughter of the jailer, and by her aid managed to escape. He then obtained command of a vessel of 48 guns, and made a capture of English vessels on the Irish coast. In 1696 he made a brilliant capture of Dutch vessels, and the king hearing an account of the affair raised him in 1697 to the rank of captain of a frigate. In 1704-5 he desolated the coasts of England. In 1706 he was raised to the rank of captain of a vessel of the line. In 1707 he was made chevalier of the order cf St Louis, and captured the greater part of an English convoy of troops and munitions bound for Portugal. His most ...