French Revolution their altars". In October the Convention troops captured Lyon and reinstated a Montagnard government there. Criteria for bringing someone before the Revolutionary Tribunal, created March 1793, had always been vast and vague. By August, political disagreement seemed enough to be summoned before the Tribunal; appeal against a Tribunal verdict was impossible. Late August 1793, an army general had been guillotined on the accusation of choosing too timid strategies on the battlefield. Mid-October, the widowed former queen Marie Antoinette was on trial for a long list of charges such as "teaching [her husband] Louis Capet the art of dissimulation" and incest
Action of 24 October 1793 counter these operations, the Royal Navy sent their own frigates to sea, sometimes in squadrons and sometimes on single patrols. A French frigate squadron sent to on a cruise in the Northern Bay of Biscay in the early autumn of 1793 was commanded by Captain Zacharie Allemand and consisted of the frigates "Carmagnole", "Résolue", "Sémillante" and "Uranie" with the brig-corvette "Espiègle". On 22 October, the squadron sighted the 16-gun Spanish brig "Alcoudia" and Allemand ordered "Uranie" under Captain Jean-François Tartu to separate from the squadron and pursue the Spaniard. "Uranie" was easily able to capture "Alcoudia", taking the prisoners on