Last year, a war broke out between Algiers and France at Dey Baba Hassan’s initiative. It implicitly involves the whole Barbary Coast, so the deys of Tripoli and of Tunis as well. This is a weird escalation from the usual tensions provoked by the Barbary pirates against shipping – a lasting plague. From time to time, an European nation retaliates by destroying a few pirate ships. The last expedition was a British one : with some success for just a while, Admiral John Narbor

On the 11th of May, thirteen French warships run aground on the reefs of an isolated small archipelago in the West Indies. This is the final act of the Franco-Dutch war which has seen, after the series of setbacks suffered in the North sea in 1672-74, a number of naval victories of the French against the Dutch in the Mediterranean sea, then in Africa at Gorée island, and then in the Caribbean sea. The campaign in the West Indies has been successful so far and Admiral Jean II