To enable him to operate more effectively against Tripoli, arrangements were on foot to establish a base for him at Malta, and meanwhile he had been using the Venetian port of Zante.

It was at this time that Charles II, in a last effort to throw off the yoke of Louis XIV, had married his eldest niece, the Princess Mary, to the French king's arch-enemy William of Orange, and relations between France and England were at the highest tension.

Preparations were set on foot in the British dockyards for equipping a 'grand fleet' of eighty sail; on February 15 was issued a new and enlarged commission to Narbrough making him 'admiral of his majesty's fleet in the Straits'; Sicily, which the French had occupied, was hurriedly evacuated; Duquesne, who commanded the Toulon squadron, was expecting to be attacked at any moment, and Colbert gave him strict orders to keep out of the British admiral's way.[1] It will be seen that it was in virtue of his new commission, and in expectation of encountering a superior French force, that Narbrough issued his orders, and they may be profitably compared with those of Lord Sandwich on the eve of the Second Dutch War as the typical Fighting Instructions for a small British fleet.

No collision however occurred; for Louis could not face the threatened coalition between Spain, Holland, and England, and was forced to assent to a general peace, which was signed at Nymwegen in the following September.
FOOTNOTE: [1] Corbett, _England in the Mediterranean_, ii.

97-104.