* 1798 – French Revolutionary Wars: Battle of the Nile ( Battle of Aboukir Bay ) – Battle begins when a British fleet engages the French Revolutionary Navy fleet in an unusual night action.

* 1810 – Battle of Grand Port – the French accept the surrender of a British Navy fleet.

* 1799 – The entire Dutch fleet is captured by British forces under the command of Sir Ralph Abercromby and Admiral Sir Charles Mitchell during the Second Coalition of the French Revolutionary Wars.

* A battle of annihilation is one in which the defeated party is destroyed in the field, such as the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile.

As Bonaparte's fleet crossed the Mediterranean, it was pursued by a British force under Nelson, sent from the British fleet in the Tagus, to establish the purpose of the French expedition and defeat it.

With the French army ashore, the fleet anchored in Aboukir Bay, a station northeast of Alexandria, in a formation that its commander, Vice-Admiral François-Paul Brueys D ' Aigalliers, believed established a formidable defensive position.

When Nelson's fleet arrived off Egypt on 1 August and discovered Brueys's dispositions, he ordered an immediate attack, and his ships advanced on the French line.

As they approached, they split into two divisions, one of which cut across the head of the line and passed between the anchored French and the shore while the other engaged the seaward side of the French fleet.

With Brueys dead and his van and centre defeated, the rear division of the French fleet attempted to break out of the bay, but ultimately only two ships of the line and two frigates escaped, from a total of 17 ships engaged.

However, the French Navy was dominant in the Mediterranean Sea, following the withdrawal of the British fleet after the outbreak of war between Britain and Spain in 1796.

During the spring of 1798, Bonaparte assembled over 35, 000 soldiers in Mediterranean France and Italy and developed a powerful fleet at Toulon ; he also formed the Commission des Sciences et des Arts, a body of scientists and engineers intended to establish the French colony in Egypt.

Bonaparte demanded that his fleet be permitted entry to the fortified harbour of Valletta, and when the demand was refused the French general responded by ordering a large scale invasion of the Maltese Islands, overrunning the defenders after 24 hours of skirmishing.

Within a week Bonaparte had resupplied his ships, and on 19 June his fleet departed for Alexandria in the direction of Crete, leaving 4, 000 men at Valletta under General Claude-Henri Vaubois to ensure French control of the islands.

Although he now had enough ships to challenge the French fleet, Nelson suffered two great disadvantages: he had no intelligence regarding the destination of the French, and no frigates to scout ahead of his force.

Striking southwards in the hope of collecting information about French movements, Nelson's ships stopped at Elba and Naples, where the British ambassador Sir William Hamilton reported that the French fleet had passed Sicily in the direction of Malta.

Despite pleas from Nelson and Hamilton, King Ferdinand of Naples refused to lend his frigates to the British fleet, fearing French reprisals.

On the evening of 22 June, Nelson's fleet passed the French in the darkness, overtaking the slow invasion convoy without realising how close they were to their target.

Nelson had missed the French by less than a day, the scouts of the French fleet arriving off Alexandria in the evening of 29 June.

I heard subsequently that my Uncle and Aunt had dinner in a nearby restaurant in the French Quarter after which he went home to get into his costume to keep the date.

The name presumably derives from the French royal house which never learned and never forgot ; ;

In secret he also acted as a member of the prisoners' Central Committee, which plotted sabotage, planned a few escapes, and maintained a hidden control over the wretched French slave-laborers.

Alarmed by this display of weapons, I looked toward the bridge and there saw, stretched across the near side, a cordon of policemen, their bicycles forming a roadblock before which stood several French officers in uniform and a small waspish man in a brown derby.

As the field on which my tent was pitched was a favorite natural playground for the kids of the neighborhood, I had made many friends among them, taking part in their after-school games and trying desperately to translate Grimm's Fairy Tales into an understandable French as we gathered around the fire in front of the tent.

The great spectacle was a source of rancor, and Son et Lumiere, which the French were trying to promote with the Athenians, was the reason.

Oersted remodeled Ritter's notes into an essay in French which was submitted to the Institut De France for its annual prize of 3,000 francs.

There is a fairly wide selection of models of English, German and French manufacture from which you can choose from the very small Austin 7, Citroen 2 CV, Volkswagens, Renaults to the 6-passenger Simca Beaulieu.

Rummaging through a stack of drawers nearby, you unearthed an antique French chess set in ivory and sandalwood, which, along with two box Kodaks, you added to your haul.

Cubism, in its 1911-1912 phase ( which the French, with justice, call `` hermetic '' ) was on the verge of abstract art.

The director of the post at Mobile kept an adequate amount of French goods, of a kind to which they were accustomed, to supply the Indian needs.

At Geneva in 1954, to get the war in Indo-China settled, the British and French gave in to Russian and Communist Chinese demands and agreed to the setting up of a Communist state, North Viet Nam -- which then, predictably, became a base for Communist operations against neighboring South Viet Nam and Laos.

Do you say chantey, as if the word were derived from the French word chanter, to sing, or do you say shanty and think of a roughly built cabin, which derives its name from the French-Canadian use of the word chantier, with one of its meanings given as a boat-yard??

Nostalgia week at Lewisohn Stadium, which had begun with the appearance of the 70-year-old Mischa Elman on Tuesday night, continued last night as Lily Pons led the list of celebrities in an evening of French operatic excerpts.

( This contrasted with Malinowski's functionalism, and was quite different from the later French structuralism, which examined the conceptual structures in language and symbolism.

Throughout the interwar years, French interest in anthropology often dovetailed with wider cultural movements such as surrealism and primitivism, which drew on ethnography for inspiration.

His later novels included fixups such as The Beast ( aka Moonbeast ) ( 1963 ), Rogue Ship ( 1965 ), Quest for the Future ( 1970 ) and Supermind ( 1977 ); expanded short stories ( The Darkness on Diamondia ( 1972 ), Future Glitter ( aka Tyranopolis ) ( 1973 ); original novels such as Children of Tomorrow ( 1970 ), The Battle of Forever ( 1971 ) and The Anarchistic Colossus ( 1977 ); plus sequels to his classic works, many of which were promised, but only one of which appeared, Null-A Three ( 1984 ; originally published in French ).

It has no etymological connection in French with Agincourt, Meurthe-et-Moselle ( attested as Egincourt 875 ), which is derived from another Germanic male name * Ingin -.

The English word Alps derives from the French and Latin Alpes, which at one time was thought to be derived from the Latin albus (" white ").

The " Days of April " ( journées d ' avril ) is a name appropriated in French history to a series of insurrections at Lyons, Paris and elsewhere, against the government of Louis Philippe in 1834, which led to violent repressive measures, and to a famous trial known as the procès d ' avril.

He envisaged instruments in which the French late-romantic full-organ sound should work integrally with the English and German romantic reed pipes, and with the classical Alsace Silbermann organ resources and baroque flue pipes, all in registers regulated ( by stops ) to access distinct voices in fugue or counterpoint capable of combination without loss of distinctness: different voices singing together in the same music.

He was a regent for the French Foundation for the Study of Human Problems during the Nazi occupation of Vichy France which implemented the eugenics policies there ; his association with the Foundation led to allegations of collaborating with the Nazis.

Renan's head was turned away from the building, while Athena, beside him, was depicted raising her arm, which was interpreted as indicating a challenge to the church during an anti-clerical phase in French official culture.

The term Rococo was derived from the French word " rocaille ", which means pebbles and refers to the stones and shells used to decorate the interiors of caves.