"portus famâ celeberrimus atque
Villa potens opibus."

These historians, however, of former days are not always the most
accurate; but from this period the annals of the place are preserved,
and at certain epochs it is far from unimportant in French history: as,
when Talbot raised in 1442 the fortress called the Bastille, a defence
so strong and in so well-chosen a situation, that even Vauban honored
its memory by lamenting its destruction; when the inhabitants fought
with the Flemings in the channel, in 1555; when Henry IVth, with an army
of less than four thousand men, fled hither in 1589, as to his last
place of refuge, winning the hearts of the people by his frank
address:--"Mes amis, point de cérémonie, je ne demande que vos coeurs,
bon pain, bon vin, et bon visage d'hôtes;" and when, as I have already
mentioned, the town sustained from our fleet a bombardment of three
days' duration, and was reduced by it to ashes.

For the excellence of its sailors, Dieppe has at all times been
renowned: no less an authority than the President de Thou has pronounced
them to be men, "penes quos præcipua rei nauticæ gloria semper fuit;"
and they have proved their claims to this encomium, not only by having
supplied to the navy of France the celebrated Abraham Du Quesne, the
successful rival of the great Ruyter, but still more so by having taken
the lead in expeditions to Florida[12]; by having established a colony
for the promotion of the fur trade in Canada, if indeed they were not
the original discoverers of that country; and by having been the first
Christians who ever made a settlement on the coast of Senegal. This
last-mentioned event took place, according to French writers, at as
early a period as the XIVth century; and, though the establishment was
not of long duration, its effects have been permanent; for it is owing