This step has been blamed by the French, but needlessly, as Hawke would never have let her get away.
The great French fleet was annihilated; for the fourteen ships not taken or destroyed were divided into two parts, and those in the Vilaine only succeeded in escaping, two at a time, between fifteen months and two years later.

The English lost two ships which ran upon a shoal (a), and were hopelessly wrecked; their losses in action were slight.

At nightfall Hawke anchored his fleet and prizes in the position shown in the plate (b).
[Illustration: Pl.

VIII.] All possibility of an invasion of England passed away with the destruction of the Brest fleet.

The battle of November 20, 1759, was the Trafalgar of this war; and though a blockade was maintained over the fractions that were laid up in the Vilaine and at Rochefort, the English fleets were now free to act against the colonies of France, and later of Spain, on a grander scale than ever before.